How to Dissolve Shame

So you can move your life forward

A group walks through Arashiyama Bamboo Forest in Kyoto. © 2025 Joseph Dalton

The following is the second entry in my summer long-form series: Escape the Life of Quiet Desperation. It’s a challenge based on over 7 years of failures and triumphs, healing and excavation. Commit today to get to the top of the mountain, following the activities and challenges issued in each post. I promise you will emerge a better, stronger person. If you missed the first post, start here.

Through August, I’ll be issuing new life-changing challenges—each with lessons to carry forward on your path to the fullest expression of yourself.

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Months ago, I was on a call with my friend Tony. He is part business coach, part life coach, and part master energy healer. We “dropped in” to meditate and move some energy around. At the end of the session, he said something that stuck with me. “Think of how easy it is to be you at this moment. You’re right on time. Right on time for this moment.”

If we want to escape the victim mentality and live with present-state gratitude, this is the attitude we need to embody.

I spent most of my 20s working and partying: many 16-hour days and drunk, near-sleepless nights. I was chasing a future that would never arrive and did all I could to distract myself from the moment.

I wasted years living as a wasted, stressed-out manchild. Those steps on my life’s staircase were in disrepair. I needed to fall through those cracks and climb my way up to the next step.

In my 30s, I settled down a bit. Yet joy still lived in the future. Pain lived in the present, if only in my mind.

When I look at my circle of highly successful friends, one theme is pervasive: nobody is on track. This is one edge of the sword of always striving for more.

Release the story you’ve been telling yourself

So many people feel that they are not where they need to be. It will never be enough.

They can be enough once they hit that earning mark, buy that house, marry that person, or have those experiences.

Every moment, whether horrible or blissful or somewhere between, brought us here, to the (right) now.

You don’t have to be in some other moment. You don’t have to face something you’re not facing here and now.

The past had to happen as it did. It couldn’t have happened any other way, simply because it didn’t. Whether or not you felt you created the future you are living in now, it’s done. They are but particles in a world of past possibilities.

Just be with what’s true in you and realize you’ve got this moment. You’re fully resourced for the only version of now.

Release the story that you aren’t enough as you are or enough to get where you know you can be.

It starts by stepping into imperfect existence now.

Breathe in this moment and let go. Breathe in the things you want to create. Imagine only what’s essential.

What is it that you want to create? What is it you want more of in your life?

Breathe that air into all the cells of your body.

While we can certainly play the role of creator in our lives, much more is happening behind the scenes.

Much is so far beyond anyone’s control. Yet, we put all the pressure on ourselves.

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”
— Randy Pausch

What if the experience of this moment was enough, no matter what outcome it produced? What if your experiences, good and bad, were necessary to create the person the world needed most?

Take that step towards that thinking with your breath. What is it that no longer serves you? What is it that you can let go of as you exhale?

Let go of resentment.

Let go of shame.

Let go of limitations.

Let go of the past.

Let go of the weight of choices.

Let go of the idea that somehow you’re not on track.

Let go of the idea you must get somewhere other than this moment.

As you exhale, release that story. Release that resentment that’s been poisoned in your system. Let it out. Let it go as you exhale.

You’re right on time now, in the here and the now.

You can seize your future only when you let go of your need for total control of the present—and the idea that you’re not on track.

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Shame: The ultimate nervous system hijack

There are three things that hijack our nervous system and completely alter our human experience: trauma, attachments, and shame.

Shame is a byproduct of social evaluation, as well as a perceived failure to meet expectations, internal or external. Guilt is action-based. Shame is identity-based. It’s the difference between “I did something bad” versus “I am bad.”

Shame is born within the gap between who are—or who we feel we are—and who we should be, in the eyes of others and within our minds.

Humiliation can be perceived as worse than death. After all, public speaking is often cited as the greatest human fear. Thousands of years ago, humiliation was, in fact, a death sentence. In the wake of wrongdoing, people were banished from their tribes, stripped of resources, and sent to the wild to fend off threats, alone.

Even today, humiliation can spell disaster. Bullying is bad enough on its own. With the advent of social media, humiliating events find eternal, digital light. When a traumatic event is given new life, shame loops become even more dangerous.

Unlike guilt, which motivates repair, shame leads to withdrawal, self-loathing, and avoidance. It also activates the brain’s default mode network, causing obsessive rumination and cognitive looping, both common in depression.

Shame creates a certain kind of anxiety in the body that says where I am in life isn't okay. The way I am is not okay. We begin to live in the chatter of mind, instead of being grounded in the body.

We develop a shame construct that says we need to be further along.

I should have done more with my life by now.

Why have I not reached more people?

I can’t believe I’m still single.

I can’t believe I did that … and EVERYONE saw. How can I live with this humiliation?

I’m so far behind on my goals.

It's all built on this subtle but powerful mental construction of shame. The shame says, “How I am is not enough. I have to be something else. I have to do something else. I have to have something else. And then I can finally be okay.” And this is an insidious trap. It’s invisible until it's not.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change … the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging,”
— Brené Brown

Shame has the power to sabotage our health, relationships, and dreams. Shame manifests in the same way it dissolves: in the presence of others. However, we need to be with somebody who understands the technology of how to dissolve shame.

We can dissolve shame in a safe container, free from the fear of being seen fully and without judgement. That's why it ought to be a therapist or coach—somebody who is really good at holding space.

When we reveal the part of ourselves that feels most unworthy—the part we fear will lead to rejection or abandonment—and instead receive empathy, something powerful happens. The nervous system softens. The fear of being "too much" or "not enough" begins to lose its grip. In that moment of being seen and still accepted, shame no longer has a place to hide.

Our nervous system responds to this. In its own way, it whispers, “It's okay to be the animal that I am.”

Choose compassion over criticism

We so often put life on hold due to feelings of shame. We procrastinate on our dreams. Our inner voice, the tireless self-critic, convinces us that we’re undeserving of love and fulfillment.

Instead of trying to force yourself out of the shame loops, you can create psychological safety by communicating thoughts and feelings of shame, out loud, in a safe space

Research shows that self-compassion, rather than self-criticism, dramatically reduces depression, procrastination, and so much more. It’s so hard to move forward in life when shame is attacking your nervous system. Shame paralyzes us.

When you remove the layers of shame, you make it easier for your brain to move towards life’s next mountain, no matter how daunting the climb may be.

When shame arises in your system, ask:

Where does this feeling come from? What is underneath the shame? What story have I been told—or am telling myself—about the shame? How is this story trying to threaten—or redefine—my identity? About who I am and how I operate in the world?

Speak your truth out loud with a therapist, coach, or friend. In a safe container, shame can dissolve. When we speak from our heart without wearing a veil of vulnerability, only to find that love remains, it dissolves the shame. We disarm and disempower it; the shame story can no longer gain momentum around each turn, thought, and event.

Activities for Dissolving the Shame

Remember that guilt is action-based and shame is identity-based. It’s okay to feel bad about something. It’s not okay to ruminate and enter an endless loop of shame.

There are three things I want you to do this week:

• Find the story and challenge it. Make it a practice to write out the stories behind the shameful thoughts. Whenever a shameful thought comes up, ask these questions:

  • What is underneath the shame?

  • What story have I been told—or am telling myself—that is fueling these feelings of shame?

  • How is this story trying to threaten—or redefine—my identity?

  • What does this story say about who I am and how I operate in the world?

  • How can I challenge this story? What do I know to be true about myself that strips it of all its power?

• Write a shameful letter … and burn it. Draft a letter to yourself, filled with all the things that bring you shame and regret. Then light it on fire and watch it burn.

• Go through my friend Gabe’s Letting Go Meditation.

See you next week.