How Shame Prevents Empathy

Shame prevents us from feeling and healing on a deeper level. Explore ways to move away from shame in your relationships and personal life.

Shame is a common condition, if a somewhat mysterious one. We relate shame to guilt because shame often arises when we’ve made a mistake or had an experience of rejection. While guilt can be a useful emotion that tells us we’ve done something we’d rather not repeat, shame is a condition in which we feel there is something fundamentally wrong with who we are at our core.

While guilt can teach us something about how we want to be in the world, shame sends us into a sort of painful paralysis; a feeling that we are fundamentally bad and don’t deserve to feel any better. Keep reading…