Toxic Shame: What It Is and How You Can Work Toward Releasing It
Do you constantly carry a voice that tells you that you are not enough or that you are too much?
No matter how much you do or how much you accomplish, do you always feel like you are coming up short? Maybe you can achieve your goals, receive praise, and have people who love you, yet still carry a deep feeling that there is something inherently wrong with you.
If this sounds familiar, you may be carrying toxic shame.
What is toxic shame?
Simply put, toxic shame is the belief that something is inherently wrong with you.
Toxic shame is often developed in childhood and reinforced by traumatic experiences, relationships, and systems of oppression throughout our lives. It can show up as deeply internalized beliefs about who we are:
I am not enough.
I am bad.
I am broken.
I am too much.
There is something wrong with me.
The more often we experience things that confirm the story we already carry about ourselves, the more deeply that story can become ingrained.
When I work with clients experiencing anxiety and depression, I often find that shame is sitting underneath many of the symptoms. It can quietly shape the way we see ourselves, our relationships, our careers, and the choices we make.
The good news is that shame is not a life sentence. With awareness, compassion, and the right support, we can begin to loosen its grip.
What is the difference between shame and guilt?
Simply put, guilt is the belief that you did something wrong, while shame is the belief that you are wrong.
That distinction is incredibly important.
Guilt can actually be healthy. If I hurt someone's feelings, I might feel guilty, reflect on what happened, apologize, and try to do something differently next time. Guilt can help us take responsibility and grow.
Shame is different.
When we experience shame, the focus shifts from I did something wrong to there is something wrong with me.
And when we believe there is something fundamentally wrong with us, it becomes much harder to change.
Shame does not usually motivate us toward growth. Instead, it can leave us feeling stuck, defensive, anxious, depressed, or even paralyzed.
Because the truth is, none of us are inherently bad or broken.
We are human beings. We make mistakes. We disappoint people. We lose our tempers. We misunderstand each other. We sometimes act in ways that do not align with who we want to be.
None of those things make us bad people.
Where does shame come from?
Shame is often formed through our childhood experiences, particularly experiences that teach us that we are the problem.
This can happen when our physical or emotional needs are not consistently met by our caregivers.
As children, our sense of safety depends on the adults around us. They feed us, house us, care for us when we are sick, and help us understand and regulate our emotions. We need to feel loved and connected to them in order to feel safe in the world.
But young children do not have the developmental capacity to understand their parents' limitations in the way an adult can.
A child cannot think:
My mom is unable to soothe me because she is overwhelmed and doesn't have the emotional capacity to meet my needs right now.
Instead, a child may think:
Mom cannot soothe me. I must not deserve her love. There must be something wrong with me.
Children tend to internalize their caregivers' responses to them as information about themselves.
And when a child learns that certain parts of themselves lead to disconnection, criticism, rejection, or withdrawal, they often find ways to become the person they believe they need to be in order to stay safe and loved.
The little girl who learned she was "too much"
Imagine a little girl who has big emotions.
She has not yet learned how to regulate those emotions, so when she becomes overwhelmed, she cries. Crying is her way of communicating that something is wrong and that she needs support.
But imagine that when she cries, her parents ignore her.
Maybe they tell her to stop crying. Maybe they call her dramatic or overly emotional. Maybe they communicate, directly or indirectly, that her feelings are inconvenient.
Over time, this little girl may begin to internalize the belief that she is too much.
She learns:
My emotions are too big.
My needs are a burden.
People don't want to be around me when I am emotional.
In order to be loved, I need to make myself smaller.
So she starts pushing her emotions down.
She becomes less likely to ask for what she needs. She learns to be easy. She learns to take care of everyone else. She may become incredibly independent and self-sufficient because needing other people feels unsafe.
And eventually, this belief can follow her into adulthood.
It can show up in friendships, romantic relationships, work, and the way she relates to herself.
She may apologize for having feelings. She may struggle to ask for help. She may stay quiet when something hurts her. She may worry that she is too needy or too emotional.
The shame has become so deeply internalized that it no longer feels like a belief she learned.
It feels like the truth.
Self-compassion is an antidote to shame
Self-compassion reminds us that we are human.
We are not inherently broken, too much, or bad. We are people with feelings, needs, limitations, and emotions.
We disappoint people. We fail. We get things wrong. We sometimes behave in ways we regret.
And we can hold all of that without deciding that it means we are unworthy of love.
Self-compassion sounds like:
This is painful.
This is hard.
I made a mistake.
I wish I had handled that differently.
And I am still worthy of love and acceptance.
Self-compassion allows us to meet ourselves where we are instead of demanding that we become someone else before we deserve kindness.
It is also a way of showing up as the adult we are today for the wounded parts of ourselves that developed these beliefs in the first place.
Because underneath shame, there is often a part of us that learned:
If I cannot receive love for who I am, then I am unsafe.
I need to become who other people need me to be in order to be loved.
These parts of us were not trying to hurt us. They were trying to protect us.
They helped us survive environments where we did not yet have the ability to protect ourselves.
And there is something deeply powerful about recognizing that.
But as adults, we are no longer as dependent on our caregivers for our survival. We have more choices. We can set boundaries. We can choose relationships that feel safe. We can learn how to care for ourselves.
We can become the loving, compassionate adult we may have needed as children.
And through that process, we can begin to release the shame we have been carrying for so long.
Your inner child and reparenting your wounded parts
Self-compassion and reparenting go hand in hand.
Reparenting means learning to meet ourselves at the places where our needs were not met and offering ourselves the care, validation, protection, and acceptance we needed.
It means showing up for that younger version of ourselves and saying:
I see you.
Your feelings make sense.
You are allowed to have needs.
You don't have to make yourself smaller to be loved.
You are enough exactly as you are.
One way to begin this work is through visualization.
You might imagine yourself as a child in a moment when you felt scared, alone, rejected, or overwhelmed. Then imagine your adult self stepping into that moment.
What would you want that child to hear?
What would you want them to know?
What would you do differently?
You can also use photographs. I often encourage clients to find pictures of themselves as children as a way of making self-compassion easier to access and connecting with that younger part of themselves.
If visualization feels difficult, you can write your younger self a letter from your adult self.
And you don't have to start by going directly into the deepest wounds.
In fact, sometimes it is more helpful to simply begin developing a relationship with your younger self.
Get curious about them.
What did they love?
What made them laugh?
What did they want to be when they grew up?
What made them feel safe?
You can imagine playing with them, creating with them, or simply sitting beside them.
It might feel cheesy. It might feel strange at first.
That's okay.
The big feelings and beliefs that arise when we experience shame are not necessarily reflections of who we are today. They can be echoes of younger versions of ourselves who learned that something about them was unacceptable.
Healing means learning to meet those parts with compassion rather than continuing to abandon them.
How parts work and EMDR can help release shame
Because shame is often rooted in experiences from our past, simply telling ourselves to "think more positively" is rarely enough.
We can know intellectually that we are worthy and still feel, somewhere deep inside, that we are not.
This is where therapies that work with the deeper layers of our experiences can be helpful.
Parts work can help us become curious about the different parts of ourselves that developed in response to shame. Instead of judging the part that feels "too much," "not enough," or unlovable, we can begin to understand what that part learned and what it has been trying to protect us from.
EMDR can also help process experiences that contributed to shame and the beliefs we developed because of them. Rather than simply trying to convince ourselves that we are worthy, we can work with the experiences that taught us otherwise.
Healing shame is not about forcing ourselves to believe that everything is okay.
It is about slowly creating a new relationship with ourselves.
A relationship where we can make mistakes without attacking ourselves.
Where we can have needs without feeling ashamed of them.
Where we can experience difficult emotions without believing they make us too much.
Where we can take responsibility without believing that our mistakes make us bad.
And where we can finally begin to believe something that may have been difficult to believe for a very long time:
There was never anything inherently wrong with you.
You don't have to keep carrying the shame
If you have spent years believing that you are too much, not enough, broken, difficult, unlovable, or fundamentally flawed, those beliefs can feel like facts.
But a belief is not the same thing as the truth.
Shame may have been something you learned in order to survive your early relationships and experiences. It may have helped you make sense of things you could not understand as a child.
But you are allowed to question it now.
You are allowed to become curious about where it came from.
You are allowed to stop making yourself smaller.
And you are allowed to learn how to offer yourself the love, compassion, and acceptance you may have been searching for from other people all along.
You do not have to become a different person to be worthy of love.
You get to be human.
You get to have needs.
You get to make mistakes.
You get to take up space.
And you get to come home to yourself.
If you're ready to begin this work
Working with toxic shame can be deeply vulnerable, and you do not have to do it alone. Therapy can provide a safe space to explore where these beliefs came from, understand the parts of you that developed to protect you, and begin building a more compassionate relationship with yourself.
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Toxic shame is a deeply held belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you. Unlike guilt, which focuses on something you did, shame can make you feel inherently bad, broken, unworthy, or “too much.”
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Toxic shame can show up as chronic self-criticism, feeling like you are never good enough, difficulty accepting compliments, people-pleasing, perfectionism, difficulty asking for help, or a persistent fear that others will reject you if they see the “real” you.
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Toxic shame often develops through childhood experiences in which we learn that certain emotions, needs, or parts of ourselves are unacceptable. It can also be reinforced by traumatic experiences, relationships, and systems of oppression throughout our lives.
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Yes. Healing shame involves developing awareness of the beliefs you carry, understanding where they came from, and learning to relate to yourself with greater compassion. Approaches such as parts work, EMDR, self-compassion, and reparenting can help you process the experiences that contributed to shame and develop a new relationship with yourself.
