Why do I feel Shame when I make a Mistake? 

When you feel shame for making a mistake, it’s probably over amplified, and WHY you are feeling that shame may not even be founded. 

Shame is a widely misunderstood feeling, and in this article I am going to share what I have learned about it, and how I have personally overcome it. 

Here are the top 3 things you need to know about Shame

• It has probably been used against you as a child.
• Your relationship to shame is most likely a toxic one.
• Shame can be a way our subconscious makes us better than someone, or makes us feel less than someone. 

I am going to share some valuable shame knowledge, so that hopefully you can feel less of it, while feeling better about yourself. 

Shame is an underlying poison in our society. It has been used in one way or another to keep you feeling bad about yourself. It has been weaponized.  It’s covert, it’s in many cases unintentionally used by us, or against us.  Let’s take a minute to see how it starts from childhood. 

Shame in Parenting

All parents love their children very much.  No one would outright try to cause their children harm, but shame has been used for generations in parenting with many people either unaware they are doing it, or they feel it’s the proper way to raise children.  Before I share how it is used in parenting, it’s important to think of this.  If a parent had been raised being shamed, and it’s covert, how are they to know how to do anything differently as parents? This is a generational cyclical issue that YOU can stop with some knowledge and work. 

Here is how we might use shame in a harmful way.  “Johny, I told you not to do that 3 times already! I am very disappointed in you!”  “Sarah! Stop doing that now or you are going to bed with no dinner!”  As a parent, most of us have unfortunately done and said things like this because we are frustrated, at our wits end. We are weaponizing shame to get the result we want.  

Why do we weaponize shame in parenting? Because we were probably shamed for just trying to figure out how to be a little human by our parents. It’s a cycle that going unchecked is passed generation to generation.  In a lot of parenting scenarios, we are expecting our children to be able to process situations and have the cognitive ability of an adult.  And that’s simply not fair. The human brain does not fully develop until we are 26. So a 6,8,10,12 year old cannot grasp many things we are expecting them too.  

Your Relationship with Shame is Toxic.

John Bradshaw was a pioneer in working with shame and he coined the term, toxic shame.  Shame, in itself, is not bad.  I think of another term that has been confusing to our modern society.  Toxic Masculinity. Now, we have a confusing spot in society where we decided that masculinity is bad. No, it’s not.  The term Toxic is overused and has become a Prefix that when used makes the subject matter very uncomfortable.  

Shame is an uncomfortable topic, and by avoiding it all together we contribute to the toxic relationship with it.  Let’s dive into it head first and pull the monster in the closet into the light so we can see, it’s just a stuffed animal that we created a scary story about. 

Healing this relationship to shame, relearning and allowing mistakes to be what they are can transform your life into one that feels much freer, lighter.  It can help you be a parent that instils this free, light feeling in your children, or if you don’t have children the people around you.  Shame has its place, and it won’t disappear altogether but your relationship to it can evolve.  

I am going to share a personal experience with shame, one that ate me alive and made me feel like a horrible human being for years until I learned to have a better relationship with the shame, and myself. 

When my children were younger, I got frustrated with them. I yelled, I was unkind sometimes.  I felt so ashamed for treating them that way. No parent wants to make their children cry, feel small, feel like we don’t love them.  But it was MY shame that was causing me to lash out, more on that in the next section.  But how did I change my relationship to this shame? How did I heal some of the toxic nature and perspective I had on my feelings of shame? 

There were 3 major steps I took on to change my relationship to shame

• Compassion for myself for mistakes made. Showing kindness, forgiveness and the understanding that I was 100% doing my best in that moment as a dad as I could with the knowledge and skills I had. 
• Getting clear on my personal values, not the ones I adopted by my parents, and what society told me a man’s values should be.
• Hold myself accountable to those values, and have compassion for myself when I slip. 

The next section will help tie together why these steps worked, and give a better understanding of how toxic, covert shame influences our thinking and behaviour. 

Shame can be a way our subconscious makes us better than someone,  or feel less than someone. 

“Did you see what that jerk just did?! Learn how to drive buddy!” Who has said something like that? Now, have you ever made a mistake in traffic? Do you think you were on the receiving end of a rant like that? I would venture to guess that you answered YES to both of those. 

 Here is why that’s covert shame in action. 

The human experience is making mistakes. They are simply unavoidable.  Remember the examples of the children being scolded for being little humans? Your psyche took that on. It imprinted on you “I must be a bad human, I can’t do anything right”.  

In the traffic example, our subconscious found a way to make the driver that made a mistake less than human. We didn’t allow him the space to make a mistake.  We shamed him.  We made him less, so we could subconsciously feel bigger than him.  Unfortunately, this is partly what our parents did to us too.  

You may have a default way shame manifests. You might think “I am not a good human. Everyone is better than me, I can’t do anything right” or, you might default to the other extreme. “Look at all these dumb people, they can’t do anything right, Why can’t they figure that out?” It is also possible you swing between the two ways of processing toxic shame. 

Understanding how shame has been weaponized, used against you, and how you may use it against others is the first step in creating a new way of relating to shame. 

To deep dive into it, pick up John Bradshaws “Healing the Shame that Binds You”. 

I hope this has left you with some knowledge that you can start using to heal the shameful feelings.  It’s a gift you can give yourself with some work to feel lighter and better about yourself.