Shame makes us feel alone, exposed, and deeply flawed. We cannot become resistant to shame, but we can develop resilience to it. Here's how.

Releasing feelings of shame through shadow work involves exploring the roots of these feelings, understanding how they've shaped your life, and cultivating practices that foster self-acceptance and compassion. Tackling these questions is a courageous step toward healing.

This worksheet highlights the concept of the shame spiral, a psychological cycle that can occur when feelings of shame lead to negative thoughts and behaviors, which in turn reinforce feelings of shame. This worksheet provides a common framework of the model and provides some tools and resources for how to get out of a shame spiral.

Nobody is perfect. When you make a mistake, do you treat yourself with compassion? Or do you fall into harmful patterns of shame-based interior dialogue? Shame urges you to look at yourself not as a human being who did a bad thing, but as a human being who is fundamentally bad. Guilt, on the other hand, allows you to separate yourself from the action that was bad. You can feel regret, acknowledge that you would like to do better, and move forward having learned a valuable lesson.

A Guide to Overcoming Shame