The Comfort of Shame

I always knew when I was lying to myself. Not through words, but through sensation. The tightness in my chest. The feeling of wanting to crawl out of my skin. The silence I kept around others because speaking would make the truth real. Our bodies often recognize this truth before our conscious minds do.

I felt it every time I forced myself to go along with something that wasn’t mine. Every time I told myself to suck it up, to keep going, to be a man.

And when it didn’t work, when the results didn’t come, when the relationships failed, when the bridges burned, I became ashamed.

The shame didn’t just creep in. It took over. It made everything feel like it was my fault, not because I made a bad choice, but because there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Once that idea takes root, you start living your life trying to compensate for something that isn’t really you.

Shame warps your perception. It makes you see yourself through a cracked lens. You stop trusting your instincts. You assume your discomfort means failure. You believe your sadness is a sign you’re weak. You start interpreting every setback as proof of some deep personal flaw. It’s not that the thing didn’t work out. It’s that you didn’t work.

It’s easy to get addicted to shame. It gives a ready-made excuse. It became the script I leaned on. The reason why nothing felt right. The reason why I couldn’t move forward. The reason why I kept choosing the wrong path. Shame gave me a neat little out. If I was broken, then I didn’t have to face the truth. I didn’t have to admit I was avoiding myself.

I didn’t realize I was addicted to my shame and to my self loathing. It’s easier to believe I’m flawed than to admit I was running from myself. Easier to sit in judgment than to look in the mirror. Shame gives you a framework. A place to hang all your confusion. But it also traps you in the same loop, over and over.

Carl Jung said that when we refuse the pain and suffering life asks of us, we pay for it in worse ways. That’s what shame became for me. A way to avoid paying life’s dues. A way to deflect the real cost by pretending the bill was already settled because I was broken from the start.

But avoidance always comes back around. Most of my worst mistakes happened when I ignored my gut. When I said yes to things I didn’t believe in. When I forced myself to stay silent in situations where everything inside me was screaming no. My body always knew. The discomfort, the anxiety, the restlessness. I treated it like something to push through when really it was direction.

I’ve lived both extremes. The years where I tried to fix everything about myself. And the years where I gave up and let it all fall apart. You need both to understand yourself. To know what’s real and what’s performative. To learn how to want without begging. How to hold without clinging. How to show up even when you will receive nothing.

In the last few years, I got tired of performing for my own shame. I stopped needing a label for everything I felt. I let things be as they were. And I started paying attention to what made me shy away, what drained me, what made me hide. I stopped calling that weakness. I started calling it truth.

Facing the mirror wasn’t about solving anything. It was about finally looking, without flinching.

There’s only one path. The more I avoided mine, the more distorted everything else became. Not because the world was against me. But because I couldn’t bear to see myself clearly.

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