Shame & Self-Worth

What Is Shame?

Perhaps you spend a lot of your life wondering why you never quite feel good enough.

Why compliments don't seem to stick. Why one criticism can stay with you for days. Why you find yourself trying to earn approval, avoiding conflict, or hiding parts of yourself because you're afraid people wouldn't like the real you.

Maybe you carry a quiet sense that there's something fundamentally wrong with you. That if people really knew who you were, they'd reject you.

If any of that feels familiar, you're not alone.

There's a good chance you're experiencing shame.

Shame can shape almost every part of our lives. It influences how we see ourselves, how we relate to other people, the relationships we choose, the boundaries we set, and whether we believe we deserve love, happiness, success, or simply to be accepted as we are.

In my experience, shame sits at the heart of many of the difficulties people bring to therapy, including addiction, anxiety, low self-esteem, people-pleasing, codependency, loneliness, and relationship problems.

Healthy Shame vs Unhealthy Shame

Not all shame is unhealthy.

Healthy shame plays an important role in our lives. It helps us recognise when we've hurt someone, encourages us to make amends, and reminds us that our actions affect other people.

If we lie to someone we care about, for example, healthy shame might prompt us to apologise and try to put things right.

The kind of shame that brings people to therapy is very different.

It doesn't tell us we've made a mistake.

It tells us we are the mistake.

Instead of thinking:

"I did something wrong."

We begin believing:

"There is something wrong with me."

Over time, that belief can become so familiar that we stop questioning it. We assume it's simply the truth about who we are.

This is the kind of shame that attacks our sense of worth and identity. It leaves us feeling defective, inadequate, and fundamentally flawed.

How We Learn Shame

None of us are born believing we are not good enough.

Shame is something we learn.

Sometimes we learn it through obvious experiences such as bullying, rejection, abuse, discrimination, or being repeatedly criticised.

Sometimes it develops in more subtle ways.

Many people I work with grew up with parents who loved them but were unable to meet all of their emotional needs. Their parents may have been struggling with addiction, mental health difficulties, trauma, stress, or simply repeating the patterns they themselves had inherited.

As children, we naturally assume that our parents are right. So when our emotional needs go unmet, we often conclude that the problem must be us.

We may begin to believe:

"I'm too much."

"I'm not enough."

"My feelings don't matter."

"My needs are a burden."

"If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me."

These beliefs often continue into adulthood long after the original circumstances have passed.

I explore this process in more depth in Healing Isn't About Becoming Someone Else, where I look at how the survival strategies that protected us in childhood can continue shaping our adult lives, even when we no longer need them.

The Shame We Learn From Society

Shame doesn't only come from our families.

We also absorb messages from the wider world around us.

We are constantly told how we should look, behave, perform, earn, achieve, parent, love, and live.

Many of us grow up comparing ourselves to impossible standards.

For LGBTQ+ people, shame can be reinforced through experiences of stigma, rejection, discrimination, or messages that who we are is somehow wrong.

For men, shame often appears in messages that we should be strong, self-sufficient, emotionally controlled, and never vulnerable.

The result is that many people spend years hiding parts of themselves in order to feel accepted, safe, or loved.

How Shame Keeps Us Stuck

Shame thrives in secrecy.

The more ashamed we feel, the more we hide the parts of ourselves we fear other people would reject.

Over time, we naturally look for ways to escape those feelings.

We might lose ourselves in relationships, constantly seek other people's approval, throw ourselves into work, or become the person everyone else needs us to be.

Or we might turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, compulsive exercise, or other addictive behaviours to numb the pain of feeling not good enough. Shame often sits beneath chemsex too. If that's part of your story, you can read more about how I work on my Chemsex & Recovery page.

For a while, these strategies can seem to work. They bring relief, distraction, or a sense of connection.

But because they never challenge the underlying belief that there's something wrong with us, the shame remains.

Often, it grows stronger.

How Therapy Can Help

Shame survives when we believe we have to hide.

It begins to lose its grip when we're able to bring those hidden parts of ourselves into a relationship where they're met with understanding instead of judgement.

Not the polished version of yourself.

Not the version you've learnt to present to other people.

But the parts you've spent years believing are unacceptable.

Therapy offers a space where those parts no longer have to stay hidden. Instead of being judged or rejected, they can be explored with curiosity, compassion and understanding.

Over time, many people begin to discover that the things they believed made them unlovable, broken, or defective are often the very things that connect them to their shared humanity.

As shame begins to loosen its grip, many people find they're no longer working so hard to prove their worth. They become more comfortable setting boundaries, speaking to themselves with compassion, and allowing themselves to be seen for who they really are.

Because the truth is that there is nothing inherently wrong with you.

There may be wounds that need tending, losses that need grieving, and old beliefs that need questioning.

But beneath all of that, there is something inherently right with you.

Together, we can begin helping you reconnect with it.