Healing Shame Without Reliving It

One of the most powerful things I've ever learned is this: shame isn't actually an emotion. And to heal from it, you don't need to re-live it.

How can this be true? After all, the word "shame" instantly brings to mind a certain unpleasant emotion—that wrenching inner sense of being unworthy, less-than. Isn't shame that heavy, horrible feeling we all know and avoid? Isn't that why it's so hard to acknowledge in therapy or personal growth work—because we're afraid we might have to re-live it?

But what if shame isn't best understood as an emotion, but as an inner scene—a situation replaying in our psyche, driven by voices and messages from our past?

According to David Bedrick, the originator of UnShaming (a relational healing framework derived from Process-Oriented Psychology), shame is a state or condition of inner psychological abuse. In this state, we're actively judged and condemned by our inner critic—a force channeling the harsh voices, beliefs, and narratives we've absorbed throughout our lives.

Seen through this lens, shame is our inner critic actively attacking us in the present. It’s like being mistreated by someone else—but here, the abuse comes from within. And yet, we often don’t even realize it’s happening. Many of us are so merged with the critic that we simply accept its harsh voice as truth. Some of us, like me, may not even "hear" the negative self-talk at all. Instead, we just feel the effects—what Bedrick calls the "ghost critic."

These side effects can be subtle but profound: depression, anxiety, functional freeze states, emotional numbness, a sense of inadequacy, difficulty finding your voice, people-pleasing, or feeling blocked in your life. None of these experiences obviously scream “shame,” yet they often stem from it.

Personally, I never thought I had issues with shame. I thought I had decent self-esteem, especially in my work life. I had definitely struggled with imposter syndrome as a young academic, but didn’t everyone? Later in my career, when I began developing panic attacks despite years of public speaking, I chalked it up to stress. It never occurred to me that these experiences might be the result of prolonged, unrecognized exposure to my inner critic’s violence.

For years, I resisted confronting the shame inside me. When a therapist recommended Soul Without Shame by Byron Brown, I bought it, skimmed a few pages, and let it sit untouched for over a decade. I thought working with shame meant feeling that horrible emotion, and I wanted no part of it.

What I learned from David Bedrick changed my life: (1) Shame disguises itself, and (2) We can reverse its effects without reliving it.

Let’s explore each of these insights.

According to Bedrick, our natural psychic state is like an ecosystem—one that flows freely with thoughts, impulses, and emotions. But starting early in life, we receive countless messages that tell us our natural feelings are not acceptable. They need to change, stop, or disappear. Instead of holding up a compassionate mirror, our caregivers and communities shame us—explicitly or implicitly—into holding back and suppressing our emotions.

In response, we develop an inner censor, a kind of psychic police force that filters our emotions so only acceptable ones come through. Scar tissue forms where our natural expression used to be, transforming censored emotions into the side effects of shame: depression, anxiety, people-pleasing, and more.

It’s important to note that these effects can also manifest as physical symptoms or chronic illnesses. As Bessel van der Kolk famously wrote, "the body keeps the score" of our suppressed emotions.

Being shame-bound doesn’t mean walking around feeling flooded by the emotion of shame. It’s subtler than that. It’s when our inner life is governed by a barrier that blocks our true experience. This can affect certain areas of our lives more than others. For instance, you might feel free and alive in physical activity but shrink in your work life. Or you might be successful in your career but feel disconnected in your romantic life.

Shame freezes other people’s shaming words and actions as an internal process, replaying them like a broken record and creating emotional scar tissue that restricts and binds us.

The good news is that shame, though disguised, can be reversed. Just as it was created through relationships—with caregivers, communities, and cultures—it can be healed through relational experiences of being heard, believed, supported, and witnessed with compassion.

Many of us have experienced this organically—when someone truly listened, supported, or acknowledged us. But we can also practice "UnShaming" in a more targeted way: by following the map of our present-day emotional struggles: our painful patterns, fears, anxiety, depressive states, addictions, chronic pains and more. Flip this map over, and you'll find what I call a "shame map"—a blueprint of all the times we were mistreated, overlooked, or misunderstood.

But we don’t need to identify their precise origins or relive them. We don’t need to endure the awfulness of feeling unworthy or less-than again.

Instead, we can heal by bringing skillful witnessing to the scar tissue - through UnShaming Witnessing. As we do, it begins to melt away, transforming into creative intelligence and life-energy. This is the key insight of David Bedrick’s approach, and it has profoundly transformed my life and work.