What is Shame-Resilience?

Most of us are familiar with that inner voice. The one that shows up the moment something goes wrong, or doesn't go to plan, when we sense we don't measure up to some standard we've internalised.

"I'm failing. I'm not good enough. It's just me."

The other voice too many of us hear is that voice that says: "Who do you think you are?" or "Get back in line", or "Don't rock the boat", when we are preparing to, or even imagining that we might, do something we want or need to do - especially it is something that is not 'expected of us' in society - A common example here is that feeling of "I just can't do that", when we dare to carve out regular time for self-care, or when we want to set a boundary with someone.

What many of us are not so familiar with, is that this voice is fueled by a very specific emotion: Shame.

And if you're a woman navigating the beautiful, exhausting complexity of modern life — motherhood, work, relationships, your health, your identity — chances are you hear shame talking to you often.

Too often, this feeling of shame keeps us stuck. It paralyses us. It also keeps us hidden, struggling in silence, while telling everyone who asks that we are "fine".

But the good news is that we don't need to get stuck in shame. Once we understand our shame, and know how to more consciously and intentionally respond to it, then we can become unstuck, we can find our voice, and we can stand in our truth and authenticity with courage and self-confidence.

We can also move from feeling 'all alone' with our struggles, to realising that all of us hear those critical voices, often - we are never alone in our struggles - that idea is just a trick of the shame we are feeling.

Researcher and author Brené Brown has spent decades studying shame, and what she's found is this: shame is not a fixed state. It is something we can learn to work with.

Brené Brown calls this shame-resilience, and it is a practice I return to every single day.

Here is how it works, for me:

1. Name it: The first step is simply recognising shame when it arrives. This sounds straightforward, but shame is sneaky — it often disguises itself as other things: perfectionism, anger, withdrawal, or a vague sense of "not good enough." It also easily be confused with 'guilt', 'humilation' and 'embarassment' - but these are all distinct emotional experiences, and being accuratingin our labelling of our shame is important to being able to become free from it. Getting to know your own shame — how it feels in your body, what tends to trigger it — and then naming it out loud ("this is shame") begins to loosen its grip immediately.

2. Zoom out: Brené Brown calls this step “practicing critical awareness”, where as I find the visual imagery of a zoom lens useful for this practice. Shame thrives when our thoughts make all of our struggles about our own personal failings. The antidote is to consciously widen the lens — to shift from only seeing "I am bad" to "I exist in a world that makes it very hard to be the perfectly balanced, endlessly capable person I feel I should be." This isn't about avoiding personal responsibility. It's about placing yourself in your context, and recognising that many of the standards we feel we're falling short of are unrealistic, patriarchal, or simply not designed with real women's lives in mind.

3. Reach out: Shame grows in isolation. Connection is its antidote. As Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly: "If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive." This doesn't mean sharing with everyone — it means finding even one person who can meet us without judgement, and letting ourselves be seen by them, in our vulnerablity.

4. Speak it aloud: This final step is perhaps the most powerful. Giving shame words — actually speaking it or writing it — transforms it. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brown puts it beautifully: "Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it — it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes."

Shame shrinks when we speak. Every time.

In my experience, this practice won't silence your inner critic overnight. It is exactly that — a practice. Some days it flows easily; other days it takes real effort.

But over time, it genuinely shifts something. It moves you from the painful, isolating story of "it's just me, I'm broken" to something far more truthful and compassionate: "I'm not alone in this, and I am enough."

If you'd like to explore this further, Brené Brown's books The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly are wonderful places to start.

And if shame is something you're navigating in your own life and would like some support with, I'd love to hear from you. You can contact me here.

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I'm Dr. Jenny Turner, Clinical Psychologist, Mum, late-discovered AuDHD human, and founder of Mind Body Soul Psychology - a specialist, feminist, trauma-informed, neuroaffirmative, private psychological therapy service for women.

I can help you at any stage of your life journey - whether you need support to enter adulthood, navigate perimenopause, heal from trauma, finally transform your relationship to your own anxieties, shame, guilt, rage and/or overwhelm - I can support you to enrich your life, relationships and psycho-spritual development.

My services are collobrative, non-pathologising, compassion-focussed, and always offered through an intersectional feminist lens - while most of the people I work with identify as a woman, my services are trans & non-binary inclusive.

I offer online appointments to women based all over the UK, and I offer in-person appointments in Ripon, North Yorkshire - click here to find out more: www.mindbodysoulpsychology.co.uk

You might also like to follow me on Instagram, @drjennypsychologist , or perhaps you'd like to receive regular doses of solidarity and compassion right into your inbox? If so, you can sign up here to my Substack newsletter for regular moments of solidarity in the challenges of being a woman in this patriarchal world, as well as compassion & inspirations for guilt-free self-care - so we can all stay resourced for the experiences we're navigating, and fights we're facing.