Moving Shame from the Cellar to the Table

Why Transformation Requires Vulnerability, Empathy, and Grace

Recently, a friend shared how events decades later transformed a shameful teenage memory. He couldn’t control the timing, but he’d always believed transformation would come—and kept himself open to it. His story sparked a question that’s been stuck in my head: “How do we transform our shame so we don’t transmit it?”

What is Shame?

Brene Brown might be the world’s expert on shame, having written several books on it, as well as speaking one of the most popular Ted Talks of all time. Brown defines shame as the “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.” She goes on to distinguish between shame and guilt, with shame saying “I am bad”, while guilt says “I did something bad”. Shame focuses on self, while guilt focuses on behavior.

According to Brown, shame grows in the petri dish of secrecy, silence and self-judgement. According to psychiatry and neuroscience research, it takes the brain only three seconds to process a shaming comment, putting your whole nervous system on high alert, whereas it takes 30-90 seconds to absorb validation, empathy or the feeling of being loved. We feel shame because we first let it in, then keep it sequestered in dark and lonely places.

Fr. Richard Rohr writes about shame from a spiritual and contemplative perspective, reframing “Original Sin” as “Original Shame,” and noting that Adam and Eve’s first response to their nakedness was shame. Rohr says that shame creates the “false self” or “shadow” that hides our true identity. The false self is the persona we construct to protect ourselves—the image manager, the perfectionist, the people-pleaser. It’s the part of us that says “I must be successful to be worthy” or “I can’t let anyone see my struggles.” This false self works overtime to hide what we perceive as flaws, keeping us trapped in an exhausting performance mode. In one of my favorite Rohr passages he says “I am convinced that guilt and shame are never from God. They are merely the defenses of the false self as it is shocked at its own poverty — the defenses of a little man who wants to be a big man.”

Fr. Isaac Slater, a Trappist monk, warns us about another way shame maintains its grip: “emotional bypassing.” In a powerful homily, he writes about our tendency to “do an end-run around difficult feelings, both our own and those of others. We dismiss, minimize, ridicule, ignore, rationalize, or spiritualize our grief, guilt, anger, shame and fear.” We think we can outsmart our shame by intellectualizing it, praying it away, or simply white-knuckling through it. But Slater insists that “for any kind of emotional healing to take place in our lives, we need to once again feel the difficult feelings, and release the trapped energy we hold in our bodies. It’s not enough to understand the dynamics we’re stuck in. We have to get to the hurt feelings at the root.”

This means we can’t just think our way out of shame. We have to feel our way through it.

The Voice

Shame prevents us from pursuing our dreams, listening to our intuition, being courageous, or as Teddy Roosevelt famously said, getting in the arena. Shame is the little monster on your shoulder who speaks up at that critical moment, saying “you’re not good enough” or “who do you think you are?” It keeps us small, stuck, and filled with regret.

So how do we transform our shame? I had to answer this question for myself when facing one of my deepest shame battles: being divorced, twice. As a cradle Catholic, I heard lots of voices. “You failed at marriage—twice.” “You can’t receive communion.” “Who are you to write about wisdom?” I let shame in. I questioned my worth as a partner, the relationship with my Church, and whether I had the credentials to write about life on Substack.

Eventually though, through lots of hard work and exposure to loving wisdom (therapy, spiritual direction, and friends who wouldn’t let me hide), I did what I always do when facing a complex problem—I looked for the pattern. I developed my own Transformation Equation:

Transformation = Speaking Your Shame + Finding Your People + Rewriting the Script

Part I: Speaking Your Shame

We have to have the courage to speak about our shame, to let it out of the cellar. This requires vulnerability. Vulnerability is the most accurate measure of courage. Courage enables us to have 3rd vault conversations (those deep, heart-level talks where we share what truly matters). But here’s the hardest part: the first person you speak your shame to is yourself. You have to name it, out loud, even if you’re alone in your car. “I am ashamed that...” Once you can say it to yourself, you can begin to say it to others.

Part II: Finding Your People

We need caring people who listen to us, who really hear what we’re sharing. Empathy is the antidote to shame, and we need empathetic people at our table. People who can say “me too” when you’re in the heat of battle. These aren’t just any people—they’re the ones who’ve earned the right to hear your story. The ones who won’t try to fix you or minimize your pain, but who will sit with you in it and remind you that you’re still worthy of love.

Part III: Rewriting the Script

We need to evolve our shame…to let it become something else. This might mean recognizing that a lifelong script you’ve been following isn’t really yours but somebody else’s. Or reframing your shame to guilt. Guilt is a powerful tool that lets us examine something we’ve done or failed to do, against what our best self can be. Guilt is uncomfortable and difficult to work through, but it’s adaptive if you don’t use it as “shame lite”.

My own journey took perseverance, finding my voice and those who would listen, and learning to risk vulnerability. Now, when that little voice speaks up—and it still does—I tell him we have a new script. I put him in my backpack or the backseat. He’s still around (and probably always will be), but he’s more of an audience now than on stage.

Most importantly, I try daily to let grace work its magic on me. Richard Rohr is convinced that guilt and shame are never from God. He says that “grace and divine love dissolve shame.” Or in the words of Anne Lamott, “grace bats last”, which makes me smile. And the great thing about grace? We just need to be open to receiving it. That’s all. So I’m opening my hands today, and every day, to receive what I cannot earn.

What role has shame played in your life? What paths have transformed your shame? How has grace worked its wonders on you?

May you have gratitude, may you have forgiveness, may you have love.

Ray

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