Have you ever carried a feeling that made you believe you were broken, unworthy, or unlovable? That’s the voice of shame but it doesn’t have to define you. In this follow-up to Episode 1 (“What Is Shame?”), Clinical Psychologist Dr Marianne Trent shares the practical, evidence-based strategies that help people recover from shame and rebuild their self-worth.

From naming and externalising shame, to tracing its roots, cultivating self-compassion, and rewriting your personal narrative, this episode is full of actionable tools you can use to loosen shame’s grip. You’ll also hear the next chapters in the fictional case studies of Amina and James, showing how recovery can look in real life.

Whether you’re an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or someone on your own healing journey, you’ll come away with fresh insight and hope that shame can be transformed.

Timestamps

• 00:00 – Welcome and recap of “What Is Shame?”
• 00:35 – Why naming shame is the first step to healing
• 01:22 – Tracing shame’s roots in your life
• 02:05 – Fictional case study updates: James and Amina
• 04:04 – The role of self-compassion in shame recovery
• 05:15 – How safe relationships support healing
• 06:02 – Practical tools for loosening shame’s grip
• 07:18 – Writing a new personal narrative
• 08:22 – Final thoughts and encouragement

#ShameRecovery #MentalHealthTips #SelfCompassion #OvercomingShame #PsychologyPodcast

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Have you ever carried something that made you feel broken, exposed, or unlovable that my friend might well be shame, but what if it didn't have to define you? What if you could recover from it? I'm Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist, and today we're going to be talking about how people heal from shame and how you can too. Hope you find it really useful, and if you do, please like and subscribe for more. Hi, welcome along and thank you for being here. So in episode one we were thinking about what shame is, where it comes from and how it can distort the way that we see ourselves. But today we're focusing on something even more powerful and that is recovery. Whether you are an aspiring psych, a mental health professional, someone supporting others, or just someone who's carrying that shame yourself. This one is definitely for you.

How do we actually recover from shame? Let's take a look at the practical and psychological strategies that help people move from stuckness to healing. Number one, name it and externalise it. Shame, loves secrecy. So the first step really is as simple as naming it, acknowledging that it's there. It might look like noticing, I feel ashamed, and then you're starting to explore why. Once we say it out loud, we start to see shame not as something we are, but as something we've been made to feel, and that is such a powerful and important shift. Number two, understand the roots. Shame often stems from early experiences, which could include trauma, cultural or family norms or experiences of repeated invalidation. Therapies such as compassion focused therapy, CFT, schema therapy and eye movement, desensitisation and reprocessing, EMDR can really help us begin to trace those roots and make sense of where the shame began, and importantly, why it was never our fault.

Number three, cultivate compassion. Shame says loud and clear, you are not good enough. Compassion says you are human and you are doing your best. We really do need to be able to cultivate, strengthen our inner compassionate voice. If we are going to be able to overcome shame, it's kind of a non-negotiable. We need to challenge that critical narrative that shame creates. And often then, when we are feeling brighter, speaking to ourselves more calmly and more kindly, we will often then be able to receive that same level of positive validation from others too. So if you have perhaps applied for a job and you didn't get it, a compassionate reframe of that might look like, well, I didn't get it this time, but I know that that doesn't mean I'm not worthy of it in future. And if you are noticing a real slump in your energy levels, we can honour and respect what we've been up to in the day, the week, the month, the year, and kind of reframe that not as being lazy, but while I'm allowed to be tired and I'm still good enough when I'm tired and I can allow myself to restore my energy levels and come out the other side when I'm ready.

Number four, we are going to reclaim the narrative. Once we stop treating shame like it's a hundred percent bon fighting truth, we can then start to rewrite the story from I'm broken to, I'm healing from, I'm weak to, I've survived more than people know. This is where our identity begins to shift, and that power, that position in the driving seat so to speak, really starts to return to you. Let's check back in with Amina who we met in the first episode. She was really struggling with her position in her career. She was weighed down by this shame and by what she learned was the impact of cultural expectations upon her. There was a very deep fear of disappointing others, and this was showing up for her as shame, and this was kind of linked to her job. But of course, when she began to go deeper on this with a therapist, she realised that this was mapping out in all areas of her life too, not just her career.

So recovery did start when she started working with a therapist who normalised her feelings and helped her explore her values, those which were her own and felt authentic to who she is and who she wants to be in future. She began to practise self-compassion. She gently challenged those inherited beliefs, and she found a sense of community with others who'd faced similar struggles in the past too. This then validated everything she felt and made her realise that it wasn't her as a bad person, it was just the treatment that she'd experienced was far from what she'd deserved. All along bit by bit she started to believe, I'm not selfish. I'm allowed to want more. This helped her to be able to apply herself in work situations to get the goals that she was striving for. It also allowed herself the time to get there when she was ready rather than measuring herself against someone else's yardstick.

Now, Amina has come to a place where she's still able to honour her culture, her religion, her heritage, but she no longer sacrifices herself in the process. She has found balance and she describes herself as learning to be authentically Amina. Of course, I've made Amina up. She's not a real person, but so many of her struggles might feel so relatable because this is what shame does to us. What about James? When we met him in the first episode, he was really struggling with a title wave of shame after finding out that his partner had cheated on him, he was blaming himself, he had withdrawn from others, and he was questioning his own judgement , his own masculinity, and whether he would ever be good enough to be with anyone again in future healing began for James when he started working with a therapist and named what had happened, not just the betrayal, but the shame he was experiencing, which was attached to it.

He learned that being cheated on doesn't mean that he's unlovable. It means someone else made a choice and that you got hurt in the process. Over time, he began to rebuild trust in himself. He even began dating not from a place of fear or of getting over his partner, but with curiosity and respect for himself. Of course, like any of us, he still has moments of doubt, but he stopped believing the story that shame was making him believe about himself. He's reclaimed that narrative. He's reclaimed his position in the driving seat. Now, he says about that experience. While it doesn't define me, it's just taught me what I want to do differently in future. So shame is incredibly powerful. It has the ability to make us very small and very stuck, but it is not permanent. It can be a transition state and it's kind of anti-venom, so to speak, is most definitely curiosity, compassion, and community.

That's when it really loses its grip. If you are experiencing shame, you don't have to carry it forever. If you need advice or support, please check out the details on screen or in the show notes. You might also like to know that I do still offer one to one therapy and have some limited availability at times too. So if you would like me to be your therapist, please do get in touch. If you are an aspiring psychologist, I also run the Aspiring Psychologist membership, and if you're ready for something a little bit more intensive, the Ready to Rise programme, come and grab your free Psychology Success guide on my website, www aspiring psychologist.co.uk. If you haven't already watched episode one on Shame, please do so. It will come up on the screen very shortly. Thank you so much for being part of my world. If you've liked this content, please like and subscribe for more. Please drop me a comment to let me know what you found helpful and what content you would find helpful in future, too. If you're listening on Spotify, you can also drop me a question or answer or comment there too.

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