I want to talk about shame and how you can manage and navigate feelings of shame.
I admit that I faced and worked through a lot of shame and guilt throughout my life. As a young boy, I felt a strong sense of shame over many things. I felt shame over my parents’ divorce and the conflicts at home. I felt shame because I did not get the love, support, and attention that I wanted. I felt shame because I failed to be the perfect son, failed to get perfect grades, and failed to make many friends.
Growing up, I often felt unlovable. These feelings drove me into specific coping mechanisms. People manage or fail to manage shame in four main ways: fighting, fawning, flying (running away), or freezing.
My Early Coping Mechanisms
Growing up, I fell into two primary patterns. First, I tried to earn the best grades, present a perfect image, act happy, please my teachers, and get adults to compliment me.
Sometimes I sought approval from teachers through good assignments, essays, or paintings because I felt bad about myself. Other times, putting myself in the spotlight raised my hand in class and exposed me to public view. That exposure created more shame because I suddenly worried about how I appeared to other kids and my teacher. I thought achievement would help me work through shame, but it did not. I carried these patterns into adulthood.
Over time, these patterns manifested in several ways:
- People-Pleasing at Home: I constantly cooked and cleaned at home so my parents would not get stressed or angry.
- Seeking Redemption in Politics: I entered politics thinking that if I could save the world or make a positive impact, I could make up for my personal mistakes and flaws. I held an inherent belief that I was not lovable as I was. I believed I had to do something productive or fix something to earn worth.
- Hyper-Competitiveness at Work: When I entered the workforce, I became hyper-competitive. I constantly tried to build the best websites and write the best code. I turned my colleagues into enemies that I had to beat. When they received promotions, I could not feel genuine joy for them because I thought their success put me behind. I had to work hard to unlearn this mindset and appreciate their achievements.
- Seeking Validation on YouTube: Putting myself in the spotlight created a vicious cycle. I thought more views would make my parents proud and prove that I contributed to the world. However, as more strangers watched my videos and left comments, I felt less personal intimacy. I ended up with superficial connections, and fewer people truly knew me.
Fame, political success, and saving the planet cannot redeem inner feelings of shame. They only magnify shame and bring it into the spotlight.
The Trap of Negative Motivation
Negative emotions like shame can drive positive actions. Shame can push you to work harder, perform better, or help others. However, the root action still stems from a painful emotion.
When you use shame to motivate yourself—acting like a drill sergeant who tells you that you suck and must work harder—you create a double-edged sword. It might drive temporary growth, but it also creates an uncrossable wall.
Shame often makes you feel that you face an insurmountable wall. If you hurt a friend or partner, you might wonder how you can ever forgive yourself or gain forgiveness. When you identify with shame, you freeze. You conclude that no point remains in trying, and you give up on the relationship. You tell yourself that others are better off without you and that you are just a bad person.
Harsh self-judgment distorts your perspective. When you tell yourself that you are a loser or not good enough, you fail to view yourself objectively. You then make decisions that lack real-world wisdom.
Nature contains a fundamental truth: every person deserves love just as they are. Even bad actions often originate from good intentions, and those intentions deserve recognition and understanding. Practices like self-acceptance, metta (loving-kindness), gratitude, and compassion journaling help you view life and people objectively.
Even if you never change—even if you never quit smoking, overcome a social media addiction, or become the perfect partner or parent—the effort still matters. The attempt, intention, and practice remain valuable. Recognizing that you deserve love and acceptance even while flawed allows you to navigate life with clarity and mindfulness rather than guilt.
The Four Coping Responses to Shame
1. Freeze
When you respond with freeze, you stop and over-analyze your shame. You completely identify with the flaw. You say, “I am a bad person, but that is just who I am.” This mindset creates a reluctance to change. You become obsessed with why you are broken instead of taking action to improve. For example, if your partner asks for vulnerability, you might say, “I am just not the kind of person who talks about emotions.” That excuse stems from freeze. It does not resolve the feeling or change the situation.
2. Flight
Flight involves running away from shame through overcompensation and distraction. For example, a smoker might say, “I smoke because I am a deep, sensitive, and complicated person.” They build a logical justification to defend the habit and offset the shame. However, the shame remains. Being a talented author does not compensate for being an absent father. Distractions hide the real issue. At work, you might send extra emails because you feel inadequate, but sending more emails does not make you a better employee.
3. Fight
Fight involves aggressive competition, obsessing over work, over-delivering, and cutting corners to maintain an image of success. You present perceived value to others because you feel a lack of real internal value.
4. Fawn
Fawn involves people-pleasing and over-helping. You say yes to every request. You tell yourself, “I might not love myself, but at least I donate to charity, volunteer, or answer every phone call.” This behavior creates an elaborate distraction from true self-acceptance.
Moving Beyond False Solutions
These four responses offer false solutions because they do not address the root cause. They merely manage the surface emotion. They act as a whip that you use to force yourself to work harder. They rely on the myth that external approval will eliminate internal shame.
True self-love means wanting to grow and making your future self proud. When you accept yourself, you also love your future self. You want to provide your future self with a good foundation, environment, and set of skills. Love leads to care and support. In contrast, self-hate and harsh self-criticism lead to self-sabotage in relationships, work, and career.
A Grounded Approach to Shame
I practice facing feelings of shame directly without forcing them away and without identifying with them. Even if I continue to feel shame, I will still show up and attempt to accept myself.
You cannot approach personal growth with the sole goal of eliminating shame. Sometimes shame acts as an accurate signal that you did something wrong. When conflict occurs—such as making a mistake in a relationship—you must show up with love, vulnerability, honesty, and clarity. You cannot hide from your actions, and you cannot undo the past. You can only show up and try to do better the next day.
Ground yourself in core values and objective right and wrong. Ask yourself:
- What would a good person do in this situation?
- What action moves me forward correctly right now?
- Am I seeing this situation clearly?
Growth requires mindful presence, clarity, and courageous vulnerability. Humans make mistakes, but humans also possess the capacity to improve.
Questions for Reflection
- When did you experience intense shame or guilt that made constructive movement difficult?
- How did you stop yourself from falling into avoidance or simple coping mechanisms?
- How did you find a path forward through that emotion?
- Did you eventually reach forgiveness and self-acceptance?
Check out personalitytopia.com for resources and tests on the Enneagram to better understand your emotions, patterns, and coping mechanisms.
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