What If There's Nothing Wrong with You?
A dear friend is carrying a lot of shame right now.
Her story isn't mine to tell. But learning how much shame she's carrying brought me back to a place I know well.
Because I've carried shame too.
Deep shame.
The kind that doesn't simply say...
"I did something wrong."
It goes deeper.
It tells you...
"There is something wrong with me."
For a long time, that's what shame told me.
That I was bad.
Wrong.
Broken.
Unworthy.
A horrible person.
At its worst, shame told me I was a piece of shit.
And when you believe those things about yourself, it's very easy to look at your behaviors, your choices, your relationships, your past, and use them as evidence.
See?
There's the proof.
Something really is wrong with me.
I did that for years.
If I became completely activated during an argument and my reaction was ten times bigger than the situation called for, shame followed.
There was a pattern.
Activation.
Fight or flight.
Often one followed by the other.
Then regret.
Sadness.
Shame.
Shutdown.
And eventually...
"What the f*ck is wrong with me?"
I knew the language of fight or flight.
But knowing the words didn't magically change the pattern.
That took work.
I had to begin noticing what activation actually felt like in my body before my mind took over and created the story.
I had to understand the patterns I'd developed and where some of them came from.
I had to learn different ways of responding.
I had to use somatic movement to move and process some of that activation through my body instead of letting it consume me.
And I had to practice.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The more I understood trauma and my own nervous system, the more I began to see that some of the things I'd spent years judging hadn't developed in a vacuum.
Our nervous systems learn from what we live through and can develop ways of responding that once helped protect us.
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Disconnect.
Control what we can when so much has felt outside of our control.
And those patterns can continue long after the circumstances that shaped them have changed.
But it gave me something shame never could.
Context.
And with context came compassion.
Understanding why we behave a certain way doesn't mean we don't have a responsibility to change behaviors that hurt ourselves or other people.
We can take responsibility.
We can repair.
We can learn.
We can change.
But we don't have to hate ourselves while we do it.
Instead of asking...
"What's wrong with me?"
I could begin asking...
"What happened to me?"
Those questions lead us to very different places.
One begins with judgment.
The other begins with curiosity.
One looks at the behavior and decides who we are.
The other invites us to understand the human being underneath it.
As part of my own healing journey, I began reconnecting with younger versions of myself. I gathered photos of myself at different ages and hung them on the wall in my office.
They're still there.
I never took them down.
One of them is a photograph of me at about four years old.
I see her all the time.
And when I look at that little girl now, I don't see someone to blame.
I see a child who experienced too much, too soon.
A little girl who was robbed of the safe, healthy childhood she should have had.
A little girl who should have been protected.
A little girl who deserved better.
Sometimes I look at her, and then I look at my niece, and I think...
How could I ever blame a child for any of this?
How could I expect that little girl to understand things she couldn't possibly have understood?
How could I hold her responsible for circumstances she didn't create?
Yet as an adult, I had looked back at parts of my childhood and young adulthood — and the ways I learned to cope and survive — with shame and disgust.
I had blamed her.
Understanding my trauma helped me begin to stop.
Therapy helped.
Forgiving myself helped.
Compassion helped.
And bringing what I had carried in darkness into the light helped.
My grandmother always said...
"The truth always surfaces."
I've come to understand those words in my own way.
Bringing something into the light doesn't mean we owe everyone our stories.
We don't.
Very few people know my full history — my wife, two therapists, and two homeopaths (one of my homeopaths has since passed away).
But allowing what I had buried to come into my awareness...
Allowing it to be witnessed by people I trusted...
Allowing someone else to remind me...
"You were a child."
"That wasn't yours to carry."
"You don't have to be ashamed of this."
...helped loosen shame's grip.
Because shame is heavy.
For me, it was like wearing an invisible cloak.
No one else could necessarily see it.
But I could feel the weight of it.
I carried it into my relationships.
Into conflict.
Into the way I looked at my past.
Into the way I saw myself.
And I carried it for a very long time.
I think that's one of the cruelest things about shame.
It wants us to hide.
Don't let anyone see this.
Don't let anyone know.
They'll think differently about you.
Shame thrives in secrecy.
In silence.
In the fear of being judged if someone ever sees what we've worked so hard to keep hidden.
So we tuck the messy parts away.
We bury them.
We isolate.
We try to get everything cleaned up before we allow ourselves to be seen again.
But shame can grow very well in the dark.
That doesn't mean everyone is entitled to our stories.
They're not.
Privacy is not shame.
Boundaries are not shame.
You get to decide who has earned the privilege of witnessing the most vulnerable parts of you.
But with the right people, bringing what we've carried in darkness into the light can allow us to see it differently.
Maybe even to see ourselves differently.
And if any of this feels familiar...
If you're carrying something you're deeply ashamed of...
If there's a part of your story you've kept buried because you're afraid of what it says about you...
I see you.
And I hope you'll remember that shame doesn't get to tell the whole story of who you are.
Maybe you don't need to force it away.
Maybe you don't even need to share it.
Maybe, for now, the invitation is simply to meet it with a little curiosity and ask...
"What happened to me?"
instead of...
"What's wrong with me?"
I still carry some shame.
But it doesn't feel the way it once did.
Now, when it shows up, it feels old.
Familiar.
Like a story I've heard many times before.
The difference is...
I don't automatically believe it anymore.
Because the more I understood what happened to me, the less I believed there was something wrong with me.
And maybe that's been one of the biggest shifts in my healing.
I stopped asking...
"What's wrong with me?"
And started asking...
"What happened to me?"
That's the Superfine Way 💜
— Danielle
P.S. This Reflection is part of The Superfine Way — an ongoing series about the beliefs and practices that shape how I approach healing, hold space, and support this community.
If you've missed any of the previous Reflections, you can explore the entire series here.
This reflection was originally shared with our email community.
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