Shame: What It Is For and How It Starts to Hold Us Back

At a work meeting, Oksana is asked when her project will be ready. She opens the file and suddenly notices an error in the calculations. It would take half an hour to fix, but her face is already burning, she cannot find her words, and a colleague's ordinary question begins to sound like an exposure of her incompetence. She snaps that nobody could have done better with those deadlines. That evening she will regret her answer and dread the next meeting.

Someone else has a similar experience outside a dance class. They have wanted to go for a long time and finally found a studio, but at the door they imagine how awkward they will look beside everyone else. Nobody has said anything, yet they already feel ashamed. They go home and tell themselves they simply do not have time right now.

Shame can arise after a mistake or before an attempt to do something good for ourselves. That makes it difficult to understand: sometimes it helps us notice the impact of our behaviour, and sometimes it keeps us away from learning, closeness, and a life we want. A useful starting point is to look at what it urges us to hide and whose judgement we are trying to avoid.

If shame is connected to violence or ongoing humiliation, choose a less distressing incident for any reflection on your own. You do not need to disclose personal feelings to someone who threatens you or uses openness against you; safety and available support come first.

We need relationships in which we can cooperate, receive help, and find closeness. Other people's opinions matter, even when we would prefer to feel completely independent of them. Shame often appears when we think others have seen, or might see, something that will lower their opinion of us.

In a study by Daniel Sznycer and colleagues, participants in three countries evaluated different situations. Anticipated shame closely tracked how negatively other people judged the relevant actions or circumstances. The authors interpret this as a possible mechanism for protection against social devaluation. It is one scientific model of shame's function, rather than a complete explanation of every personal experience. Sznycer and colleagues, 2016.

This helps make sense of the urge to look away, fall silent, cover our body, or explain ourselves quickly. We are trying to become less visible or change the impression we make. Sometimes the feeling helps us stop after an inappropriate joke and notice the face of the person we hurt. However, social approval can be unjust: a particular community may condemn an accent, poverty, disability, declining alcohol, or disagreeing with an older person. Shame responds to a group's rules, but it does not assess their fairness for us.

In our book about anger, we explore the moment when someone returns to what they said during a conflict. At first the thought is specific: “I humiliated my colleague in front of the team.” Then it grows: “Nobody can work with me. I ruin everything.” As this shift happens, it becomes harder to see what needs repairing.

Guilt more often directs attention to an action: I broke a promise, lied, or left someone else to do my work. Shame can spread across our whole sense of ourselves: I am unworthy, incompetent, or fundamentally wrong. This is a useful distinction, although the feelings often overlap in lived experience. Researchers studying moral emotions also caution against an overly simple division: outcomes depend on context and how the emotion is experienced. Tangney, Stuewig, and Mashek, 2007.

For Oksana, the distinction becomes practical when she returns to the facts. There is an error in the spreadsheet, and she spoke sharply. She can correct the spreadsheet and tell her colleague: “You asked about the deadline, and I answered as though you were humiliating me. I want to put that right.” Deciding that she is unfit for her profession will not help her do either of those things.

After an ill-judged joke, we might notice that the other person has gone quiet, feel ashamed, and return to apologise. If the relationship can withstand that conversation, we gain an experience of acknowledging a mistake while still being able to remain in contact.

A meta-analysis by Colin Leach and Atilla Cidam found that shame was more closely linked to constructive action when people saw the situation as repairable. When repair seemed impossible, avoidance was a more common direction. This is not an instruction to shame people deliberately: the research describes conditions in which an existing emotional experience can have different consequences. Leach and Cidam, 2015.

A useful question is: what became possible after this feeling? If we can hear the other person, clarify a fact, and adjust our behaviour, the emotion has not taken over everything. If all that remains is the urge to disappear or prove that everyone else is at fault, it is worth looking at how we are trying to cope with shame.

A child spills milk, and an adult says, “You always ruin everything.” Classmates laugh at an answer, and the teacher suggests thinking before opening one's mouth next time. These are different incidents, but repetition can produce a shared rule: being noticed is dangerous, not knowing is humiliating, and a mistake reveals what kind of person you are.

Later, the people who said those things may no longer be around. The adult rewrites a short message ten times, keeps a question to themselves during a meeting, and refuses to show unfinished work. Expected condemnation starts to operate before anyone has actually responded.

This persistent self-condemnation is often called toxic shame. The term describes an experience; it is not a separate diagnosis. One way to recognise it is through the scale of the conclusion: one unsuccessful presentation calls every ability into question, rejection by one person undermines the possibility of being loved, and asking for help threatens the right to consider oneself an adult.

Learning includes a period when we cannot yet do something. Early writing needs revision, a new language comes with an accent, and our hands struggle with an unfamiliar task. Someone who associates mistakes with humiliation must cope with both the difficulty of the task and the fear of being exposed as inadequate.

Preparation can then continue for years. Another course, a little more reading, a few more months before offering one's work. Preparation is genuinely necessary, but sometimes its duration is being determined by the wish to avoid evaluation. The idea never gets tested, and eventually the person begins to treat their postponed life as evidence that they are incapable.

Changing the conditions of an attempt can help: showing a draft to one person, agreeing on specific feedback, or joining a beginners' group. This does not remove every difficulty. Money, time, health, and access to education remain real circumstances that also need attention. But they no longer disappear inside the sweeping judgement “I am incapable of anything.”

Someone may want tenderness while feeling embarrassed to say what feels good. They may hide their tiredness to avoid seeming weak, or agree to intimacy they do not currently want because refusal seems ungrateful. Their partner sees outward agreement and may not realise how much remains unspoken.

Pleasure can also become subject to a test of acceptability. May I enjoy myself when others are struggling? Is it acceptable to want more when I already have what I need? Will I look ridiculous if I dance? A person can work very hard at living correctly while noticing less and less of what they actually enjoy.

Greater freedom can begin in a specific conversation: “I don't want to today,” “That feels good,” or “I want to try, but more slowly.” Mutuality requires room for different answers, including refusal. It makes sense to be open in relationships where openness will not be used as a reason for punishment.

Return to the work meeting. A second before her sharp reply, Oksana felt that she had been seen as insufficiently competent. Anger quickly changed her position in the conversation: now she was accusing others of setting unrealistic deadlines. For a short time, this may have pushed the painful thought about herself further away, but the mistake and the tension between colleagues remained.

In our anger book, we explore several possible responses: attacking the person who noticed a mistake, arguing about tone, turning harshly against oneself, or withdrawing from contact. None of these behaviours proves that hidden shame is present. Anger can also arise from actual humiliation, injustice, exhaustion, or a broken agreement. Understanding requires a particular scene rather than a ready-made explanation that shame lies behind every angry feeling.

When the feelings do occur together, it can help to notice their sequence: what happened, what meaning it acquired, when the urge to attack appeared, and what was actually done. That creates some room between an unpleasant experience and an action for which we will be responsible.

Psychiatrist James Gilligan, who worked with people who had committed serious violence, gave shame and humiliation a central place in his theory. He described how a perpetrator might experience an attack as a way to restore lost dignity or retaliate against devaluation. His work also links this process to social conditions and a lack of accessible, nonviolent ways to regain self-respect. Gilligan, 2000.

This perspective can help explain why a small remark sometimes provokes a response out of proportion to the event. For the person hearing it, the remark may have meant much more than its words: a public loss of status, helplessness, or a repetition of an earlier humiliation. That meaning needs to be explored rather than assigned from a distance.

Experiencing shame does not make violence inevitable or remove responsibility. Understanding causes matters for preventing repetition; a person who has been harmed is not obliged to heal the perpetrator's shame or remain beside them. Stopping an attack, stepping away, and seeking help are the responsibility of the person losing control of their actions.

A manager can silence a room by asking, “Is this really so difficult to understand?” Parents can stop unwanted behaviour with “I'm ashamed to have a child like you.” Outward compliance can appear quickly, making the method seem effective. Yet compliance alone does not reveal what the person learned.

Perhaps they understood the consequences better. Or perhaps they decided to hide mistakes, stop asking questions, and keep difficulties to themselves. When maintaining an acceptable image becomes the main task, there may be less honesty in the relationship.

A precise request provides more useful information for change: “Two expenses are missing from the report. They need to be added by Friday.” It leaves room for questions, checking, and consequences if the work is not done. Respect for dignity is entirely compatible with firm rules and accountability for breaking them.

After an uncomfortable incident, first describe what can be checked: the words spoken, what was done, and what had been agreed. Then look at the conclusion added to those facts. “I was turned down for this job” and “Nobody will ever want to work with me” have very different scopes.

The next question concerns harm: who was affected, what part did I play, and what could I actually influence? An insulting remark can call for an apology. An accent, a need for rest, or not wanting to agree to sex does not require compensation. When shame arises from someone else's humiliation of us, a first step may be limiting contact or asking for support.

It is also worth examining the rule by which we are being judged. Would I agree to apply it to another person? Must a beginner already know everything? Does adulthood require never needing help? Shame can then become something we examine rather than final evidence that we are in the wrong.

Choose a recent incident of moderate difficulty and write three sentences. The first concerns the event: “I lost my place twice during class.” The second concerns your conclusion: “I decided everyone thought I was hopeless.” The third concerns what is actually known: “The teacher suggested repeating it more slowly; I don't know what everyone in the group thought.”

Then name the wish that felt threatened. Perhaps you wanted to learn, be liked, stay in the group, or do the work well. Choose one action proportionate to the incident: clarify the task, correct an error, ask for feedback, or leave a conversation that has become humiliating.

Return to the note a few days later. What happened after that action? Did your first conclusion change? The purpose is to become more precise about the differences between a feeling, an evaluation, and an event while leaving yourself room to reconsider.

This approach continues our anger book's discussion of guilt, shame, self-criticism, and repair after conflict. For further exploration, see our article about anger and boundaries or the Ukrainian-language workbook “About Emotions. Anger: How to Understand and Experience It”.

Living more freely does not require us to stop considering other people. We still need mutuality, rules, and the ability to acknowledge harm. At the same time, development requires room to be inexperienced, closeness requires the ability to express a wish, and joy becomes harder when we must repeatedly prove that we deserve to feel it.

Oksana can bring a corrected spreadsheet to the next meeting. The person outside the dance studio can ask whether there is a class for people who have never danced. The uncomfortable feeling may still be there. But something will have happened in their lives beyond an attempt to avoid embarrassment.