6 Steps to Heal The Cycle of Shame!

Do painful memories haunt you? Or do you constantly walk through life feeling like you did something wrong?

These are all signs that you struggle with toxic shame and guilt. 

Everyone experiences regretful moments where they wished they had done something better. But a person that struggles with toxic shame is constantly battling negative thoughts and self-hate.

What is toxic shame?

The root cause of toxic shame is insecurity, worthlessness, guilt, regret, and self-hate. Unfortunately, people carry around guilt and regret as a part of their identity. If someone lacks a sense of self or a solidified identity, then it’s hard to view themselves with positive traits. Ultimately, the core of who they are is broken.

Individuals who severely struggle with shame usually have memories of moments they deeply regret carved in their brain. The guilt they feel from these experiences causes them to internalize the concept that they are bad people or “screw-ups.” This self-hate becomes their identity, and they start to believe they’ll never change and that others view them the same.

Usually, people with toxic shame appear to lash out for no reason. But they do have a reason for lashing out. The anger is unleashed whenever they feel others can see the things they hate about themselves.

The person who struggles with shame often thinks they’re being attacked and/or ridiculed, so they’re on the defensive to protect themselves from pain. Everything related to their past experiences of guilt makes them remember how horrible they are.

What is guilt?

Guilt is feeling regret for how we handled a situation. A healthy level of guilt pushes us to fix our behavior.

Guilt shows that we can see a situation from someone else’s perspective and sympathize with their emotions. Feeling a normal level of guilt also shows growth and the ability to aim for better handling of situations in the future.

Guilt vs Shame

Shame occurs when guilt becomes the loudest voice in a person’s thoughts. It can cause someone to start thinking they’re a bad person and believe others will view them negatively as well.

The results of this feeling can look different, but it’s equally dysfunctional. It can cause some people to engage in behavior to try and get others to like them (people-pleasing). Or, it can cause people to emotionally numb themselves, hurt themselves, or hurt others. They tend to feel they can’t ever please anyone. So, why even bother?

Both ways of dealing with shame are selfish because they cause us to act with self-fulfilling motives (to feel better).

People who struggle with shame also struggle with low self-esteem and deep-rooted insecurities. Therefore, they don’t see conflict as a chance for mutual growth in relationships. They mostly see conflict as black and white, where someone is wrong and must be punished. Punishment hurts! To feel better, they will often use unhealthy coping skills to transfer their pain to someone or something else.

Related Article: Am I Toxic? Quiz + 11 Tips to Heal Toxic Traits!

20 Signs of Struggling with Shame

1. Feeling ashamed of yourself around people or after social engagements.
2. Believing that people don’t like you.
3. Harboring painful memories that are deeply regretted.
4. Constantly apologizing for every action.
5. Using negative terms to describe yourself.
6. Viewing problems in a black-and-white manner, as right or wrong.
7. Believing that someone must be blamed in every situation.
8. Feeling nervous that others will think you are a bad person.
9. Lying, manipulating, and using other tactics to control others’ perceptions about you.
10. Attacking others before being attacked.
11. Obsessing and over-analyzing every detail of behavior and thoughts.
12. Constantly checking to see if you made feel uncomfortable.
13. Over-explaining yourself.
14. Catering to the emotions of others to prevent them from exploding.
15. Pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong instead of addressing your contributions to the problem.
16. Feeling stuck in painful emotions.
17. Feeling guilty about various situations.
18. Having negative thoughts about oneself.
19. Questioning self-worth and qualifications over small mistakes.
20. Aiming for perfection and feeling frustrated when falling short.

How to Recover From Toxic Shame

Here are resources to Break the Cycle and Let Go of Shame:

1. Identify the Painful Memory and Get to the Root
   The first step in healing from toxic shame is to acknowledge and identify the painful memory. Take the time to reflect on your past actions and ask yourself: What was I trying to achieve? Did I do my best at the time? Was I unaware of the pain it might cause others or myself? It’s important to realize that, given your knowledge and circumstances at the time, you were doing the best you could. The key here is to approach the memory with compassion, recognizing that your past self was not acting out of malice or bad intent, but rather, with the understanding and awareness they had.

2. Expose the Lie or Belief System in the Memory (Change Your Perspective)
   Once you’ve identified the painful memory, it’s crucial to examine the belief system that may have emerged from it. Is there a lie or distorted thought that you’ve internalized, like  “I could of prevented…” “I’m unworthy” “I would have… if … didn’t happen.” or “I’m a failure”? These lies keep us stuck in cycles of shame. Challenge these beliefs. Seek support from trusted friends, therapists, or coaches to help you rewrite your inner narrative. Changing your perspective isn’t about erasing the past but about reframing it in a way that serves your growth and healing.

3. Forgive Yourself and Stop Judging Your Past Self
   One of the most powerful steps in healing is to forgive yourself. It’s easy to judge your past actions harshly, but it’s important to remember that it’s unfair for your present self to judge your past self. It’s like a 60-year-old person judging the decisions of an 18-year-old. Everyone is on a journey, and growth often comes through making mistakes. Embrace the truth that you were doing the best you could with the limited knowledge, resources, and maturity you had at the time. Be gentle with yourself, understanding that mistakes don’t define you—they refine you.

4. Practice Self-Care and Self-Love
   Healing from toxic shame requires consistent effort to nurture yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally. Engage in practices that promote well-being, such as therapy, journaling, and grounding exercises. When the painful memory resurfaces and tempts you to escape or withdraw, choose to face it with compassion. Engage in self-care routines that replenish your energy, boost your confidence, and remind you of your worth. Therapy and coaching can offer valuable tools for emotional healing, helping you navigate the complexities of shame while learning how to love and care for yourself on a deeper level.

5. Start the heart detox and start to fix your broken core with love and introspection. The free workbook contains exercises for healing shame. One exercise is to write the lies and negative things you believe about yourself. Then, look up the dictionary antonym. Use those words to affirm yourself. More detail are in the workbook.

6. You can book a free EMPOWERMENT COACHING session with me where I’ll help you find your inner power and strengthen your ability to love yourself!

Remember, recovery from toxic shame is not a linear process. It takes time, patience, and support, but with each step you take, you’re moving closer to freedom and self-acceptance.

Unhealthily Coping with Shame Causes Toxic Behaviors

Shame is a nasty emotion.  We all experience it at times, but when it becomes a dysfunctional pattern, it can lead you to avoid facing negative emotions by constantly walking on eggshells.

The dysfunctional methods of dealing with guilt is called a negative coping mechanism. Coping mechanisms are the ways you express and deal with your emotions. Not all coping mechanisms are bad; some are good, and others depend on how you use them.

Related Quiz: What is your coping style?

What is unhealthy coping? 

For instance, let’s say you’re talking to a friend, and they mention your comment hurt their feelings. An unhealthy way to deal with that is to blame the friend for being too sensitive. By blaming the friend, you don’t have to take responsibility for hurting them, and you don’t have to accept you did anything wrong. If you did accept some responsibility, it could potentially cause a cycle of self-hate and pain that you hurt someone.

Related Article: 6 Negative Coping Mechanisms That Are Unhealthy!

What is Good Coping? And when does it turn ugly? 

Someone with healthy coping would deal with the problem by accepting that their friend is different and that’s okay. They wouldn’t see the need to adjust their communication as someone being right or wrong. Also, if a healthy person felt pain for hurting their friend, they would seek trusted counsel to help them move from shame to self-love.

But healthy coping can turn ugly. Sometimes we can be so quick to reflect, introspect, and change our behavior to make someone else feel comfortable (people-pleasing) that we can fall prey to abuse. Relationships should involve mutual growth.

Talking to someone about how we feel for clarity, encouragement, and advice is a great way to cope with pain. However, individuals who feel toxic shame may seek counsel from many people and constantly share biased information about the situation. Venting in excess and with resentment leads to gossiping and slandering someone’s character.

If any of that information is leaked, the person doing the venting may continue to use lies, manipulation, blame-shifting, and other strategies to avoid responsibility and feelings of shame. This creates a perpetual cycle of shame. Ultimately, shame causes us to enter a spiral of unhealthy behavior that is impossible to exit without admitting one’s own problematic behavior and making changes.

Toxic Shame and Codependents

Narcissism, Borderline Personality Disorder, and other disorders, as well as individuals with toxic emotions, have trouble regulating their negative emotions (mood swings and intense highs and lows). They cope with their shame by projecting their negative feelings onto others through methods such as blaming, manipulating, gaslighting, and controlling what others think about them. These individuals usually seek out empathetic codependents to carry their pain for them.

Codependents struggle with intense shame too, making it a perfect dysfunctional pairing. The codependent fears saying NO and feels guilty when they don’t meet their partner’s needs. An empathetic codependent becomes a crutch for individuals struggling with toxic shame. The codependent usually does everything for them, takes all the blame for anything that goes wrong, and bends over backwards to please the other person. This prevents the individual with toxic shame from growing and removing their dysfunctional traits because the codependent is accommodating their pain.

Toxic Shame in Relationships

Shame in marriage, friendships, and relationships can be extremely difficult to deal with. An individual with shame often feels broken at their core and views life through a dirty window. To function, they develop toxic traits to make themselves feel unbroken and to convince themselves and the world that their window isn’t dirty.

Admitting they need others to help them see the world clearly and to learn to love themselves is embarrassing for them. This embarrassment is rooted in the fear that others will think negatively about them.

10 Characteristics Of Toxic Shame in a Relationship

• They may have anxiety, constantly check to see if they’re hurting you, and go out of their way to make you happy.
• Your partner twists everything in their mind to make it everyone else’s fault (blame shifting)
• They may hurt you so that you feel what they do and to trigger your worst self to come out, so they can say you’re just as bad (Emotional Abuse)
• They falsely believe they are being attacked by their partner/spouse (victim mentality)
• Your spouse may get mad and hurt you in their rage, then become even more ashamed afterward. This is the shame-rage cycle that gets more intense as more negative experiences happen.
• They may assume you’re saying and doing things to hurt them because of their sensitivity to you believing they’re a bad person.
• The person rejects or belittles your attempts to love them because they feel unworthy.
• It is common for them to bring up all the things you’re doing wrong to distract you from the real problems (projection)
• They may be prideful and overcompensate for their low self-esteem by denying or ridiculing your perspective of the problem (gaslighting)
• In extreme situations, toxic shame in marriages can lead to physical abuse.

Related Article: Toxic Relationship Quiz: Test If It’s Emotionally Abusive!

Shame and Depression

Depression can lead to feelings of shame, and shame can make depression worse. This shame can be so intense that individuals may feel like they don’t belong, like they’re fundamentally flawed, and that everything in life will cause them pain.

Additionally, people who are depressed often lack motivation and hope for the future. They may feel like they’re just going through the motions of life without any real purpose. To cope with these overwhelming feelings of shame and hopelessness, many people turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms. These can temporarily mask their emotional pain but ultimately do not address the underlying issues.

This can lead to a cycle where shame and depression feed into each other, making it difficult to break free. Some people with depression might have what’s known as “high-functioning depression,” where they appear normal and functioning on the outside, but inside they feel lifeless and unhappy.

Dealing with Shame at Work

To deal with shame at work you need to build your self esteem. Making a mistake shouldn’t make you feel like you’re going to get fired and you are not qualified.