Willow & Sage Counseling

You can’t build a healthier relationship with yourself by constantly making yourself feel worse.

“I know what I need to do. I just don’t understand why I keep doing the same things.”

My client sat across from me, visibly frustrated.

We had been discussing a pattern in their relationships. They struggled to set boundaries, often agreed to things they didn’t want to do, and later felt resentful. They knew the pattern wasn’t helping them, but they couldn’t seem to change it.

“I feel like I’m just weak. I know better. I should be past this by now.”

I asked, “When you tell yourself you’re weak, does that make it easier to do something differently?”

They paused.

“No. It actually makes me feel worse. Then I get upset with myself, and I end up doing the same thing again.”

We explored that response for a while.

I pointed out that they were already struggling with the behavior itself. Now, they were also carrying the belief that struggling with it meant something was fundamentally wrong with them.

They weren’t just trying to change a behavior. They were trying to change it while constantly attacking themselves for having it.

This is something I see frequently in therapy. Clients come in wanting to work on people-pleasing, anxiety, procrastination, unhealthy relationships, emotional reactions, or difficulty setting boundaries. But underneath those concerns, there is often a significant amount of shame.

And shame can make the process of healing much harder.

Shame Is Different From Guilt

Before we talk about how shame affects therapeutic progress, it’s important to understand the difference between shame and guilt.

Although we often use these words interchangeably, they communicate very different messages.

Guilt says: “I did something wrong.”

Shame says: “There is something wrong with me.”

For example, imagine you lose your temper with someone you care about.

Guilt might sound like:

• “I shouldn’t have spoken to them that way.”
• “I need to take responsibility for what I said.”
• “I want to find a better way to communicate next time.”

Shame sounds different:

• “I’m a terrible person.”
• “I always ruin everything.”
• “Nobody should have to deal with me.”
• “I’m never going to change.”

Guilt can help us recognize when our actions don’t align with our values. It can encourage accountability, repair, and different choices.

Shame, however, turns the behavior into an identity. Instead of thinking, “I made a mistake,” you begin thinking, “I am a mistake.” And when you believe something is fundamentally wrong with you, it becomes much harder to imagine that change is possible.

Why Shame Doesn’t Actually Motivate You

Many people grow up believing that being hard on themselves is what keeps them accountable.

Maybe you were criticized when you made mistakes. Maybe your parents used guilt to encourage good behavior. Perhaps you learned that if you weren’t constantly pushing yourself, you would become lazy, irresponsible, or unsuccessful.

You may have even received praise for being hard on yourself.

“You’re your own worst critic.”

“You have such high standards.”

“You always push yourself to do better.”

Over time, you may have started believing that shame was necessary for improvement.

But consider this:

If calling yourself lazy, stupid, irresponsible, or weak actually helped you change, wouldn’t you have changed by now?

When shame becomes the primary way you motivate yourself, it can create a cycle:

1. You struggle with something or make a mistake.
2. You criticize yourself for struggling.
3. You feel discouraged, inadequate, or overwhelmed.
4. You avoid the situation, withdraw, or return to familiar behaviors.
5. You criticize yourself even more for not changing.

Eventually, the shame becomes another problem you have to manage.

For example, a client who struggles with procrastination may already feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities. When they start calling themselves lazy or undisciplined, they add another layer of emotional distress to an already difficult situation.

Instead of making the task easier to approach, the shame may make them want to avoid it even more. Shame doesn’t necessarily inspire action. Often, it makes the possibility of taking action feel even more overwhelming. This doesn’t mean accountability isn’t important. It means that accountability and self-punishment are not the same thing. You can take responsibility for your actions without treating yourself as though you’re undeserving of compassion.

How Shame Can Interfere With Progress in Therapy

One of the most important parts of therapy is creating a space where clients can explore experiences, thoughts, and behaviors they may have spent years hiding.

But shame can make that process difficult.

1. Shame Makes It Harder to Be Honest

Imagine you’re working with a therapist on an unhealthy relationship. You’ve discussed the ways your partner has hurt you, the boundaries you want to establish, and the reasons you believe the relationship isn’t healthy.

Then, after another argument, you return to the relationship. You may walk into your next session thinking: “My therapist is going to be disappointed in me. They’re going to think I’m not trying. I already told them I was done. I can’t believe I’m still here.”

Instead of openly discussing what happened, you might minimize the situation, leave out details, or focus on what you think your therapist wants to hear. But therapy cannot effectively address patterns that you feel too ashamed to discuss. You don’t have to demonstrate progress to deserve support in therapy.

Returning to an unhealthy relationship, struggling with boundaries, or repeating a behavior you’ve been working on doesn’t mean therapy has failed. It gives us more information about what may be getting in the way of change.

2. Shame Can Make You Avoid the Very Things You Need to Address

Sometimes clients avoid discussing certain experiences because they feel embarrassed about them.

They may struggle to talk about:

• Staying in an abusive relationship.
• Having difficulty managing money.
• Feeling jealous or resentful toward family members.
• Experiencing anger toward a parent.
• Struggling with parenting.
• Feeling disconnected from their children or partner.
• Repeating relationship patterns they promised themselves they would never repeat.
• Feeling unable to manage responsibilities that seem easy for other people.

There may be a fear that acknowledging these experiences will confirm something negative they already believe about themselves. So they avoid the conversation. The problem is that avoidance can keep the underlying beliefs and patterns intact.

In therapy, we work toward making difficult experiences easier to discuss—not by forcing someone to share before they’re ready, but by creating enough emotional safety to explore them at a manageable pace.

3. Shame Turns Setbacks Into Evidence That You’re Failing

Therapeutic progress rarely happens in a straight line. You might spend several sessions working on boundaries, begin practicing them outside therapy, and then find yourself agreeing to something you really didn’t want to do. Or you may work on managing anxiety and still experience an overwhelming week.

Shame can turn these moments into evidence that nothing is changing.

I’m right back where I started.

I knew I couldn’t do this.

I’m never going to get better.

But a difficult week doesn’t erase the work you’ve done.

Sometimes progress means recognizing a pattern sooner than you used to. Sometimes it means recovering from an emotional reaction more quickly. Sometimes it means understanding why you made a particular decision, even if you’re not ready to make a different one yet.

A setback is something to learn from, not a verdict on your ability to heal.

4. Shame Makes It Difficult to Recognize Your Strengths

When someone is carrying a lot of shame, they often have difficulty recognizing anything positive about themselves. They may dismiss their accomplishments, minimize their efforts, or focus almost exclusively on what they haven’t done.

For example, a client might tell me:

“I only managed to set one boundary this week. I should have done it with everyone.”

I might respond:

“Let’s slow down. A few months ago, you told me you couldn’t say no to anyone without feeling incredibly guilty. Now you’re telling me you were able to communicate a boundary. Why are we treating that as a failure?”

This is an important part of the therapeutic process. If you only measure yourself by what you haven’t accomplished, you may overlook the changes that are already happening. Recognizing your strengths isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about developing a more accurate and compassionate understanding of yourself.

Where Does All This Shame Come From?

Shame doesn’t develop in a vacuum. For many people, it begins through repeated experiences in which they learn that certain emotions, needs, behaviors, or parts of themselves are unacceptable.

Maybe you were criticized when you made mistakes.

Maybe affection or approval depended on your behavior.

Maybe you were compared to siblings, cousins, or other children.

Maybe you were told you were too sensitive, too emotional, too needy, or too difficult.

Maybe you experienced abuse and were made to believe that what happened was your fault.

Or perhaps you grew up in an environment where mistakes were treated as personal failures rather than opportunities to learn.

For some first-generation Americans and Latino clients, family and cultural expectations can add another layer. You may have learned that you needed to succeed to honor your parents’ sacrifices, that family problems should remain private, or that expressing certain emotions was disrespectful. You may feel ashamed for struggling when your parents worked so hard to provide opportunities for you. You may criticize yourself for wanting independence, setting boundaries, or choosing a path that looks different from what your family expected.

It’s important to recognize that culture itself isn’t the problem. Family connection, responsibility, perseverance, and respect can be meaningful values. The difficulty arises when those values become connected to the belief that your worth depends on meeting every expectation.

In therapy, we can explore where those beliefs came from and whether you still want them to define how you see yourself.

How We Can Begin Replacing Shame With Accountability and Self-Compassion

One thing I often tell clients is that we don’t have to choose between being compassionate toward ourselves and taking responsibility for our actions.

We can do both.

The goal isn’t to eliminate accountability. It’s to stop using shame as the primary tool for creating change.

Here are a few ways to begin.

1. Separate Your Behavior From Your Identity

When you catch yourself making a negative statement about yourself, try to get more specific.

Instead of:

“I’m irresponsible.”

Try:

“I didn’t follow through on something I said I would do. I need to understand what got in the way.”

Instead of:

“I’m a terrible daughter.”

Try:

“I feel guilty because I made a decision my family doesn’t agree with.”

Instead of:

“I’m weak because I went back to that relationship.”

Try:

“I’m struggling to leave a relationship that has been important to me. I need support understanding what makes leaving difficult.”

Notice the difference.

The second statements acknowledge the situation without turning it into a judgment about your entire identity.

2. Get Curious About the Behavior

Rather than immediately criticizing yourself, ask what was happening before the behavior occurred.

If you avoided a difficult conversation, were you afraid of someone’s reaction?

If you agreed to something you didn’t want to do, were you worried about disappointing someone?

If you procrastinated, were you overwhelmed, unsure where to start, or afraid of making a mistake?

Understanding the reason behind a behavior doesn’t excuse it.

It gives you information about what needs to change.

You cannot develop a different response if you don’t understand what is driving the current one.

3. Practice Talking to Yourself Differently

Consider how you speak to someone you care about when they’re struggling.

If a friend tells you they’ve made a mistake, do you immediately call them lazy, weak, or incapable? Probably not. You might acknowledge that they made a mistake, help them consider what happened, and encourage them to try again. You deserve that same opportunity.

Try asking yourself:

What would I say to someone I love in this situation?

What do I need right now to take the next step?

Can I acknowledge what happened without attacking myself?

Self-compassion isn’t telling yourself that everything you do is okay. It’s allowing yourself to address difficult things without believing you have to suffer emotionally to make things right.

4. Measure Progress Differently

If your only measure of progress is whether you have completely stopped a behavior, you may overlook meaningful changes.

Instead, consider asking:

• Did I recognize the pattern sooner?
• Was I able to identify what I was feeling?
• Did I communicate something I would have previously kept to myself?
• Did I recover from a difficult moment differently?
• Was I able to ask for help?
• Did I treat myself with a little more understanding?

These are meaningful changes.

Healing isn’t about becoming someone who never struggles. It’s about developing new ways to respond when you do.

What I Want My Clients to Understand About Shame

When clients come to therapy, they often believe they need to be harder on themselves. They think they need more discipline, more accountability, more motivation, or more pressure to finally change. But sometimes, what they need is to stop making every struggle another reason to dislike themselves.

If you’ve spent years criticizing yourself, it makes sense that changing that internal conversation may feel unfamiliar. You may even worry that being kinder to yourself will make you less motivated. But compassion doesn’t mean giving yourself permission to avoid responsibility.

It means recognizing that you can take responsibility without believing you’re fundamentally flawed. You can acknowledge that you hurt someone and work toward repairing the relationship. You can recognize an unhealthy pattern and begin making different choices. You can acknowledge that you’ve made mistakes without allowing those mistakes to define your worth. And you can work toward change without treating yourself as someone who needs to be punished into becoming better.

You don’t need more shame to become a better version of yourself. You need the space, support, and understanding to make meaningful changes.

Ready to Work Through the Shame That’s Holding You Back?

If you find that you’re constantly criticizing yourself, feeling guilty about your needs, or believing that your struggles mean something is wrong with you, therapy can help you understand where those beliefs originated.

At Willow & Sage Counseling, I work with adults navigating trauma, abuse, anxiety, relationship challenges, family dynamics, and the patterns that can make it difficult to develop a healthier relationship with themselves.

Using a narrative-based, trauma-informed approach, we’ll explore the experiences that have shaped your self-perception, identify beliefs that may no longer serve you, and work toward creating a story that makes room for your strengths, growth, and self-trust.

You don’t have to shame yourself into changing. You deserve support that helps you understand yourself and move forward.

Visit Willow & Sage Counseling to learn more about therapy and take the first step toward a healthier relationship with yourself.