Overcoming Shame

All, Mental Health

by Tori Roalef
March 14, 2023

Shame is considered a negative emotion. It makes you want to hide from humiliation and flee from the situation. Shame freezes you, holding you from moving forward or acting on a behavior. Maybe you feel the tightness in your throat, the tensing of your muscles, and the heat in your face.

So, you flee the situation and back down from moving forward. Or, you do take a step toward your goal, but the shame overwhelms you. How do you stop hiding from the shame and finally overcome it?

The Idea of the Week

❝Shame lives in the gap between where you are and where you ideally should be.❞
Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG

What is shame (a 10-minute read)? Although shame is an often awful feeling to experience, shame is an evolutionary tool and carries information just as every other emotion does. As social beings, we all want to be accepted, so shame is a tool to “keep us in check” and adhere to cultural norms and laws. Shame becomes problematic when it’s internalized, overwhelming, and interferes with your functioning and happiness.

Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG (25-minute video) shares the different aspects of shame:

Emotional: this is an acute in-the-moment feeling of shame and can include physical reactions, such as a tight throat, tightened muscles, and freezing on the spot.
Identity: the idea of an ideal self. There is the current self; then there is the ideal self. Shame is born from the idea of the ideal self and lives in the gap between the current self and the ideal self.
Thoughts: the voice of shame that we hear in our thoughts is learned from external sources in the same way we learn a language.
Shame complex: the idealistic expectation comes from a build-up of experiences that left an emotional impact.

Practice of the Week

If shame lives in the gap between the current self and the ideal self, then it would logically follow that closing the gap and achieving the ideal self would banish shame…only, it doesn’t.

Oddly enough, achieving progress toward your ideal self doesn’t actually reduce shame for a few reasons:

Notice your thoughts and feelings after an achievement. Are you proud of your achievement? Or, are you ashamed and think, “I should’ve been doing this all along”?
The ideal self isn’t achievable because the idea of the ideal self is constantly changing. Any progress you make toward your ideal self becomes “pointless” because the ideal self changes and moves further away.
Progress is not a positive reinforcer when there is an ideal self because we still feel shame over not closing the gap all the way when we do make progress. Instead, progress reinforces shame.
Lastly, shame is born from the idea of the ideal self.

So, what do we do to overcome shame?

We must abandon the idea of the ideal self.

Put simply, the ideal self doesn’t exist. There is only you—the version of you that exists right now.

You can still grow and improve. Growth is achievable. Growth gives you the space to feel proud of your achievements. Whereas, the idea of an ideal self will always loom out of your reach and shame you for not being able to come close to it.

Acknowledge, realize, and have compassion that you, as you exist today, right now, are not someone to be ashamed of. Amy Morin from The Verywell Mind Podcast (10 minutes) shares tips and actionable steps To Reframe Your Shame.

In what ways will you be gentle with yourself this week? Let us know on our Instagram or Facebook page!