Shame

I sometimes wonder when I first began to feel ashamed of being myself...

Perhaps it happened in moments I no longer remember clearly. A moment when I expressed a need, asked a question, showed an emotion, disagreed, or simply wanted something that the people around me could not accept.

As children, we do not yet know how to understand the world of adults. We cannot always recognise that their reactions may come from their own wounds, limitations, fears, or inability to deal with what we express. We only experience what happens to us.

And when our genuine needs are met with humiliation, punishment, rejection, or ridicule, something can begin to change in the way we see ourselves.

We may begin to believe that something about us is wrong. Not just something we did. Something we are. This is where shame can take a different form...

There is a kind of shame that helps us recognise our boundaries. It can make us aware when we have hurt someone, crossed a line, or acted against our own values. In that sense, shame can serve a purpose. It helps us recognise that other people have boundaries too, and that respecting them is part of living together. But there is another kind of shame, one that does not tell us that a particular action was wrong. It tells us that we ourselves are wrong. This is toxic shame.

I find it particularly painful to think about how it can begin. A child expresses a genuine need, a feeling, a thought, or a desire, and instead of being met with understanding, is made to feel ashamed.

Perhaps the child is punished for saying no, humiliated in front of others, or made to feel guilty for something that should have been perfectly natural to express. And sometimes, when a child experiences abuse, they begin to feel ashamed of themselves for something that was never their fault.

Unable to understand what is happening or place responsibility where it belongs, the child may turn that experience inward.

The pain becomes something to hide. The parts of the self associated with that pain are pushed away, sometimes so deeply that they eventually disappear from conscious awareness.

And so, instead of learning that something painful happened to us, or that someone crossed our boundaries, we learn to feel ashamed of ourselves.

Perhaps this is one of the most painful consequences of toxic shame: we begin to organise our lives around avoiding the possibility of feeling it again.

We learn what is acceptable. What is expected. What makes us easier to love, easier to live with, easier to approve of. We adjust our behaviour, our words, our emotions, sometimes even our desires.

Little by little, we build an identity around what we believe we must be.

A persona.

A version of ourselves shaped by expectations, adaptations, and the need to belong. It may have protected us once. It may have helped us find a place in the world when being ourselves did not feel safe.

But when this constructed identity becomes the only way we know how to exist, we can lose touch with the person beneath it.

I think this is where we can begin to lose something essential. We may no longer recognise what we genuinely need, what we feel, or what we actually want. We become so accustomed to adapting that we mistake adaptation for our nature.

And perhaps we do not even realise how much of our lives is being lived from that place.

This also changes the way we experience boundaries.

When we have learned to feel ashamed of our own needs, saying no can become frightening. We may agree when we do not want to agree, accept responsibilities we cannot carry, remain silent when something hurts us, or allow others to decide what is acceptable for us.

Sometimes, we cannot even recognise that a boundary has been crossed until we are already overwhelmed.

And there is another side to this.

When we do not recognise our own boundaries, it becomes harder to recognise those of others. We may struggle to accept another person's no, especially when it challenges our expectations or needs.

This is how certain patterns can continue from one generation to another.

A parent who cannot recognise their own limits may become overwhelmed, frustrated, and unable to regulate their reactions. A child who expresses a need or refuses something may then become the target of that frustration. The child's no is not recognised as an expression of their own boundary, but experienced as disobedience, rejection, or a challenge to authority.

And the child learns again that expressing themselves comes at a cost.

What we have not learned to recognise in ourselves, we may struggle to recognise in our children.

I find this part particularly important because toxic shame can become a family inheritance, not necessarily through something that is consciously taught, but through what is repeatedly lived, silenced, and left unspoken.

In families where mistakes cannot be admitted, where certain subjects are forbidden, where feelings are dismissed, and where appearances matter more than honesty, shame finds a place to grow.

What cannot be spoken about does not necessarily disappear. It can continue to shape the way we relate to ourselves and to one another.

And perhaps this is why returning to ourselves requires more than simply deciding to be different.

It asks us to begin noticing.

What do I actually feel when I say yes? What happens inside me when I want to say no? Which parts of my identity have I built because I believed they were necessary for acceptance? What am I still hiding, even from myself?

Perhaps the first step is allowing ourselves to express something as simple as: I do not feel good. I do not agree. I do not want this. This hurts me.

I believe that this is where something can begin to change. Not by learning to become someone else, but by slowly allowing ourselves to express who we already are.

Not to provoke, blame, or reject others, but to stop abandoning our own experience.

As we begin to recognise the identities we have mistaken for ourselves, we may also come into contact with the parts we once had to silence. The vulnerable parts that still carry the pain of being rejected, humiliated, or hurt.

They do not need another reason to feel ashamed. They need to be seen, acknowledged, and given the space they never had.

This is not about rejecting everything we have become. It is about understanding how we became this way, and slowly discovering what remains when we no longer have to organise ourselves around fear.

Perhaps we can begin by allowing ourselves to have needs without feeling guilty for having them. By expressing our thoughts without immediately questioning whether we have the right to do so. By learning that another person's disappointment does not automatically mean we have done something wrong.

I believe every human being has the right to express what they see, hear, think, and feel. To speak honestly, express their needs, disagree, and say no.

Not by hurting others, but without having to hide who they are just to make others comfortable.

We should never have to make someone else feel small in order to express ourselves. And we should never have to silence ourselves just to make room for others.

We all deserve the freedom to be heard without shame, and the dignity to remain ourselves without taking that freedom away from anyone else.