When Shame Came into View
A personal journey from unrecognised shame to compassion and freedom.
When I first thought about shame, I didn’t even know I felt it. I would’ve said I was shy, easily embarrassed perhaps, but I didn’t realise it was shame. Toxic shame.
Looking back, I see it everywhere in my childhood and adult life. I couldn’t ask the neighbours for a cup of milk. Shame stopped me. I never expected people to remember me, even those I worked with every day for over a year. Shame also shut down my anger. I think my inability to hold my own anger led me to marry the angriest man I could find, and then I shamed him for it. That was my first husband. When I was sacked after twelve years at a company, I carried that shame too, masking it with resentment and blame, and quietly passing it on.
It’s been almost 30 years since I got together with my current husband, William Ayot. He told me that shame was the most important thing to understand, and that most therapists didn’t understand it. I didn’t either. Not then, and not for a long time.
Now I see that shame exists on a spectrum. From feeling shamed to being shameless, from grandiosity to non-entity, from superiority to worthlessness. I like William’s distinction, “Shame is about who you are. Guilt is about what you do.”
Years later, we were asked to give a talk called Shame and Compassion. I told William, “I’ll talk about compassion, you talk about shame.” But in order to prepare, I started reading more deeply about shame. And then came the revelation. What I had always called shyness or embarrassment was actually shame. The penny dropped. Carl Jung called shame “a soul-eating emotion.” William describes it as “a feeling of total overwhelm. It utterly diminishes you.”
I began to see how shame binds and freezes. Emotions like grief, anger, and sadness can move through to completion, but shame halts the process. I now tell clients, “If you feel stuck, that could be shame.” Now I see shame everywhere, hidden beneath withdrawal, denial, or rage. As William says, “It’s like a fish swimming in water. It’s just there, and we don’t notice it.”
So what do we do with shame? Too often, we pass it on. We keep that dark flame alive without even realising it. Recognising this, both as someone who has suffered from shame and as someone who has transmitted it, has been my deepest and most important learning.
After that first talk, William and I went on to give two full series on shame, thirteen talks in total. You can find them on our website: jandw.thinkific.com. There is nothing like teaching a subject to make you truly study it, confront it, and live its lessons.
Now, I don’t fear shame. I understand it. I can see its disguises. I know how it infects relationships and quietly steals years from a life. But I also know how to meet it with compassion, how to interrupt the cycle, and how to guide someone from that cold, exiled place back into connection, dignity, and quiet self-worth.
My own shame, once invisible, now stands in the light. And in the light, it has loosened its grip. If there is any wisdom here, it might be this: Shame thrives in secrecy, but it cannot survive compassion. Once we see it clearly, we have a choice. Carry it, or lay it down, and begin again.
By Juliet Grayson
www.therapyandcounselling.co.uk
jandw.thinkific.com
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