It's a Shame we're so Ashamed of our Shame

A woman is sitting across from me. Complex trauma, the kind that starts young and keeps going. After the childhood came the relationships that trampled her dignity. Then the addictions. Then the things she did in the middle of all that, things she regrets, things that still make her want to disappear when she says them out loud. It went from bad to worse too many times to count.

And now she's with a man who loves her.

He treats her with a tenderness she has no map for. She tells him what happened to her. She tells him what she did. Each time, she braces. Each time, he says some version of the same thing: I got it. That's the past. We're cleaning it up. We're starting over, you and I, and we're going to build something beautiful.

Then she comes back and says, I fell again.

And he says, I know. It's okay. Let's start over right now. I'm right here.

She tells me this and I'm sitting there thinking, what a beautiful mashal for us and HaShem. This bizarre and awesome shidduch.

And that's Yom Kippur. The anniversary of a love that can endure mistakes. Big ones. Think of the golden calf. The Jewish people had just been taken out of Egypt with endless wonders and miracles. They came to Har Sinai, which was held up as a chuppah while they received the kesuba, the 10 commandments. 40 days later that shameful calf. But on Yom Kippur HaShem said, “Now we start again. Our love is greater than the fall.”

So yes, it’s a bizarre match.

We say it out loud, over and over, in the vidui: אנו עזי פנים ואתה רחום וחנון. We are brazen and You are compassionate. We are stiff-necked and You are slow to anger. We are full of sin and You are full of mercy. And a few lines earlier, the part people skim past: אנו רעיתך ואתה דודנו. We are Your beloved and You are our Lover.

Imagine that shidduch. One side: flawed, stubborn, needy, keeps falling. Other side: patient, warm, endlessly willing to start again. What a match. What a perfect, ridiculous match.

We won the lottery! We get to be loved exactly as we are, treated as precious exactly as we are, by the One who designed us this way in the first place. He just wants connection. Wants us to appreciate His love and goodness and the abundance of blessings He brings into our lives. We should be dancing in the streets. (That's the next holiday. Hold that thought.)

So why do we dread it?

Because most of us only know two things to do with our shame. Hide it, or drown in it. Our shame gets in the way of showing up with an open and vulnerable heart. Like bad breath, it makes us not want to get close.

Toxic shame lives in the basement. Damp, no ventilation, something rotting in the corner that you can't quite look at. You don't go down there. You pretend the basement doesn't exist. Meanwhile the smell comes up through the floorboards and gets into every room of the house. It shows up as addiction, as manipulation, as control, as the need to make someone else small so you don't have to feel small yourself. The more you do to try to hide the shame, the more it grows. The more it impacts how you show up with others. Gershen Kaufman called shame the breaking of the interpersonal bridge, and that's exactly what unventilated shame does. It breaks bridges. We can't let ourselves really land with another when we are deeply steeped in toxic shame. Whatever you can't stand to look at in yourself, you may find a way to make someone else carry. Or just hide so that no one ever truly sees you. Either way it's a lonely loss.

Yom Kippur, done wrong, is a day of standing at the top of the basement stairs and screaming at yourself for the smell. Shaming yourself for the shame.

Shame is different from regret. Regret says there is something that needs attention. Something needs to change. If we pay attention to regret, we live good lives and can grow. Shame is a different animal. Shame is a verdict. A judgement of your very being, not a motivator. I have watched shame get in the way of change far more often than I've watched it produce any. You can't fix what you can't look at.

But what if we have the courage to look our shame in the face and see it for what it is?

The Torah doesn't think shame is the problem. The Torah thinks shame, held right, is actually a treasure.

(If the Torah sources speak to you, enjoy the next few paragraphs. If not, skip down to the more practical ideas about what to do with shame.)

The Gemara in Yoma says you don't appoint a leader over the community unless he has a קופה של שרצים hanging behind him, a box of creepy-crawlies. Rashi explains: so that if he ever gets too big for himself, they can say, turn around. Look what's behind you. The mess behind him is what makes him safe to follow. A person who carries their own shame honestly is a person who can be trusted with other people's.

Pirkei Avos: בושת פנים לגן עדן. Shame-faced to Gan Eden. Holding our shame with gentle grace takes us to good places. It allows for vulnerability. It allows for humility. Vulnerability and humility are an awesome recipe for deep and meaningful relationships.

The Gemara in Yevamos says there are three signs of this nation: we are merciful, we are bashful, and we do kindness. The kindness we inherited from Avraham Avinu. The bashfulness we picked up at Har Sinai, where the Torah says HaShem came so that His awe would be on our faces, and Chazal say that awe on the face is bushah. Shame is our family trait. It's proof of where we come from.

And when the very first people felt the very first shame, after the very first sin, what happened? HaShem called out, ayeka, where are you? And they hid in the trees. That's the original move. HaShem asks, “What happened?” The shame gets turned to blame and thrown at someone else like a hot potato.

“That woman You gave me, it was her idea!” Her fault. Your fault. I can’t face my shame.

“Nu, Chavaleh, what’s the deal?”

“That snake you put in the garden…” Snake’s fault. Hmmm…

Feel the shame, hide. Blame. And what did HaShem do? He made them clothes. His response to their shame was tenderness and covering. Rebbe Nachman brings the Gemara in Brachos: one who does an aveirah and is ashamed of it is forgiven for all of his sins. The shame itself is the teshuva. The hiding is the only part that needs fixing. HaShem stepped towards humanity with kindness. But they weren’t yet able to own their shame. We’ve been spending the rest of history dealing with that. We’re still trying to clean up the mess. Maybe the first step is learning to just be with the shame. Not hide it. Not shove it on someone else. Just let it sit there where we can take a good look.

Reb Nosson, in Likutei Halachos, in the laws of tefillin writes that HaShem created man with wondrous wisdom, so that from our substance and our waste comes such stench, such a foul smell, in order that a person should understand and see his own lowliness. He brings the pasuk from Yechezkel where HaShem rebukes Chiram, the king of Tzor, who had decided he was a god: מלאכת תפיך ונקביך בך ביום הבראך כוננו. Your drums and your holes were set in you the day you were made. Rashi spells it out: I gave you all this honor, and I knew you'd get arrogant, so I built into you drums and holes that let out wind with the sound of a song. Basically, let's say it straight. Those bathroom noises? You were supposed to learn something from that. HaShem could have designed a digestive system that was silent and odorless. He didn't. We gurgle, we rumble, we smell, and that was on purpose to teach us humility.

We even make a bracha on our lacks. After we eat: בורא נפשות רבות וחסרונן, על כל מה שבראת להחיות בהם נפש כל חי. He created us with lack, and the bracha says why. להחיות. To give life. The chayus comes in exactly where the lack is. The place in which we are not complete is the doorway. That's where He gets in.

And the innards show up one more time, in the haftarah we read on Rosh Hashanah. Ephraim says, בושתי וגם נכלמתי, I am ashamed and humiliated. And HaShem answers: הבן יקיר לי אפרים... על כן המו מעי לו, רחם ארחמנו. Is Ephraim not My precious son? My insides churn for him. I will surely have mercy on him. We are ashamed, we bring our shame to HaShem and He is compassionate.

Reb Nosson goes even further, in Likutei Halachos, Hilchos Taanis. He says the whole advantage of a human being over an angel is that we're down here. In the lowly world.

He brings the Gemara in Shabbos about the day Moshe went up to get the Torah. The angels objected. Leave it up here with us, they said. And Moshe answered them: Did you go down to Egypt? Were you slaves to Pharaoh? Do you live among the nations? Do you have business dealings? Jealousy? Do you have a yetzer hara? Then what do you need Torah for? And the angels immediately backed down.

Reb Nosson asks the obvious question. What were the angels thinking? They know there's no mitzvah they can do. His answer: they thought Torah was wisdom, and wisdom you can have even if you can't live it. Moshe corrected them. Torah is eitzah. תרי"ג עטין דאורייתא, six hundred and thirteen pieces of advice. Advice is for people in trouble. Torah was written for, in his words, "this miserable, hunted person" suffering the bitterness of galus in body and soul. The angels don't need it because nothing is wrong with them. We get it because of our imperfections.

Reb Nosson ends that piece with Dovid HaMelech crying out, עד אנה אשית עצות בנפשי, how long must I keep advising my own soul? A king who spent his whole life trying to figure out what to do next and had to scream to HaShem for it. And this is the man whose words are in nearly every prayer we say. So much of what we'll say on Yom Kippur was written by someone who had a basement, knew it, and sang from inside it. חטאתי נגדי תמיד, my sin is always in front of me. He didn't hide it. He put it to music.

And where did Dovid come from? From Yehuda and Tamar. From the most humiliating story in Bereishis. Yehuda is about to have his daughter-in-law burned, and she sends him his own signet, his cord and his staff. He could have said nothing. Instead, in front of everyone: צדקה ממני. She's more right than I am. The Gemara says Yehuda sanctified HaShem's name in public with those two words. And out of that admission came Peretz, and out of Peretz came Dovid, and out of Dovid comes Mashiach. The whole line of Jewish kingship runs through a man saying his shame out loud instead of burying it. This is the box of sheratzim behind the throne of Dovid. The kingship needed it.

So we were designed with a basement. On Purpose. It give us humility, let's the chayus in, and if used well can connect us to ourselves, others and our Creator.

The question is whether it has a light switch. Does it have ventilation. Can we own it with grace? Can we be like Yehuda and Dovid HaMelech, and leverage the power of our shame and imperfection to reach our greatest potential?

Brené Brown's research keeps landing on the same finding: shame can't survive being spoken to someone who responds with empathy. It needs secrecy, silence and judgment to grow. Take away those three and it just can't.

That's what the man in my office is doing for that woman, out of his abundant love. Every time she brings something up from the basement and he doesn't flinch, the basement gets a little more air.

And that's what we're being offered on Yom Kippur. Someone who already knows everything down there, and says: I know. It's okay. Let's start over right now. I'm right here.

More than that. Once a year He sends in a cleaning crew. A whole team, top to bottom. You walk through the basement and point: that, and that, and the thing in the corner, I regretted it halfway through doing it, I'm ready to face it and release it. They take it out. And in its place they leave merits. Eternal merits and blessings, in exchange for nothing more than your willingness to let the stink go.

When Moshiach comes we'll be looking for a few more ounces of shame to do teshuva for. They'll weigh it like gold. בימים ההם ובעת ההיא נאם ה', יבוקש את עון ישראל ואיננו, ואת חטאת יהודה ולא תמצאינה. The growth, healing and benefits we can access when we bring our shame into relationship with HKBH are more than we can fully fathom. For now we can take it on faith.

The basement stays. It's built in, part of being a Divine soul shtupped into the ‘meat suit’ of a human body. It will fill up again, because that's what basements do. And buildings with basements and foundations are better places to inhabit anyway. What we get is a chance to empty it now and then. Both things are true at once. It's the place where the yucky stuff goes, and it's the place that gets cleaned out. That's okay. That's not a flaw, it's the design.

Here's the thing about that basement. In my childhood home in Philadelphia, on Emlen Street, the furnace lived in the basement. Cumbersome old thing, took up most of the front room, and it had a funny smell. But that furnace kept a drafty old stone and wood house warm and livable through the winters. The smell was the price of the heat. Shame is like that. It's the motor down there that keeps us trying to be good, trying to be useful, trying to make our fragile human existence into something worthwhile. The smell is a little embarrassing. The warmth is the whole reason the house is livable. (And checking in on it every now and then, staying in relationship with it, not letting it fall into disrepair, is what keeps it from burning the house down.)

Held this way, shame is a healthy inhibition, a set of guardrails that keeps us aligned with our integrity. It anticipates the impact of what we're about to do and steers us off the road before we land ourselves in the big regrets.

So give your shame some props. It makes you do chessed, speak less lashon hara, stick to your diet, not yell at your crazy annoying neighbor. Accomplish at work, do something meaningful in the world.

If you were in a blissed-out nirvana, would you seriously bother? If everything was totally good and chill, you'd just meditate and look at the sky all day long. You wouldn't make a living, couldn't show up for your kids or clients. Take it to the extreme, and a world without shame would look like that brief time when the Chachamim got rid of the yetzer hara, and even chickens couldn't be bothered to lay eggs (Yoma 69b). So give your shame some props for making you as awesome as you are. The occasional whiff of stench from the basement keeps us on our toes. In short, You feel like you're not enough? You're not. You were made that way, on purpose, so you'd have a reason to show up and grow. But that's ok, 'cause it's true of all of us!

Think about who you actually like being around. Not the person with the spotless basement, or the one who acts like they don't have one. Those people are exhausting. You can't relax near someone who's working that hard to seem fine. The people we love are the ones who can laugh at their own mess, who say "yeah, that was me, I blew it" without falling apart about it. Their basement has a door that opens. That's what makes them safe. That's what makes them fun. Nobody wants to sit in a perfectly clean room with someone pretending the house has no downstairs.

Okay, so I'm feeling shame right now. What do I do?

Here's the map as I see it now.

Step one. Pause. Breathe. Notice it. Shame goes toxic when it's locked in the basement, so the first act of ventilation is just noticing. Let yourself feel it. Don't run. Don't scroll. Don't turn the shame into blame and throw it at someone else. Slow down and feel it.

Step two. Turn. Before you sort anything out, before you know whether you did something wrong, turn toward HaShem and say Hineni. I'm here. I'm stuck. Help me. This is the tikkun for the trees in Gan Eden. He asks ayeka and we answer hineni, Avraham's word, the word of someone who stays present with what is. You can be in your shame and in relationship at the same time. That's the whole trick. Be with your basement. Turn on the light. Sit with what's there.

Step three. Discern. Does this shame have an action directive? Is there something I'm doing that it wants me to stop? Something I'm not doing that it wants me to start? And is the change it's asking for aligned with my values and inside the boundaries of my integrity? The path splits here. And a warning: toxic shame answers every one of those questions with yes, always, everything. You are always defective. You do everything wrong. If you can't tell whether the shame is pointing at something real or just at the fact that you exist, that's the shame talking. Ask someone you trust.

If yes, the shame is asking for a real change. Then the question is: how can I make that change possible? This splits again.

If I hurt a person I care about: take ownership. Make repair. Reattune. Something like: I feel really sorry about this. I think I hurt you. That wasn't my intention, and I want to make it right. And if repair isn't possible, if the person is gone or it isn't safe, that one goes to the next branch.

If it's between me and HaShem: teshuva has three parts. Vidui, say it out loud. Charata, regret it. Kabbalah al ha'atid, take on to do better. Teshuva is a mitzvah, and mitzvos are done with joy. Take accountability, ask for help, start over. That's what the cleaning crew is for.

If no, the shame is asking for something impossible. It wants me to be less human. It wants me not to have vulnerabilities, never to feel pain or loneliness. It wishes that being human didn't hurt so badly. There's nothing to fix here, because there's nothing broken.

That kind of shame needs presence and love. And it helps to understand where it comes from, because this shame is usually not random.

Start by scanning. Shame doesn't always announce what set it off. Sometimes there was a rejection, a disappointment, a moment of not being met or wanted the way you'd hoped, too subtle for the thinking brain to catch but big enough to move your whole emotional weather. So scan back. Was there a letdown? A door that didn't open the way you reached for it? Naming it, that was rejection, that was disappointment, takes it out of "something is wrong with me" and puts it back into "something happened to me." Same feeling, completely different meaning.

Then understand where it comes from. A lot of us built this shame young, in homes where we weren't met or understood or held the way we needed. And believing it was our own fault was the smart move. As a kid, believing it was your fault felt safer than seeing that the people you needed couldn't show up. If it's my fault, I can fix it. That kept you reaching. Where did you learn that being the problem was your best shot at staying connected? Hold that kid gently. You were good enough the whole time. You just couldn't let yourself see it, because seeing it would have meant seeing that being good enough wasn't going to get you what you needed. So you kept the shame instead. It was safer.

For a lot of us, and honestly for a lot of women, this shame wears a particular outfit. If I were just thinner. If I were prettier, smaller, less. Then they'd like me, then I'd land better in the world. Sometimes that was even true in the family you grew up in, which is what makes it stick. But it's the same old bargain in a new costume, the belief that there's a version of me I could shrink into that would finally be worthy. That belief is toxic, and it's at the root of a lot of eating disorders and a lot of other pain. The body becomes the place we fight a war that was never really about the body.

So meet it gently. Don't believe it, don't argue with it. Say: of course you feel this way, you weren't met the way you needed. Understanding loosens shame. More shame just digs it in.

And find the nekuda tova. Rebbe Nachman teaches that you look for the one good point, in yourself, in others, in the day. This isn't about arguing the shame away. The shame can stay. Let it have its seat at the table, a real seat, an honored one, because it's real and it deserves to be felt. But it doesn't get the whole table. So even while it sits there, call to mind one place where your beauty comes through. Some moment, some corner of yourself where you feel precious, or connected, or true. You don't have to feel it strongly. You just have to remember it exists. The shame is real, and it isn't all of you.

Sometimes the body needs tending more than the mind needs convincing. When the shame is about being a soul in a limited body, one of the gentlest answers is to do a small kindness for the body itself. Smooth on some face cream. A scent you love. A warm cup of tea, a hot bath. You're not fixing the body, you're tending it, letting it be a slightly more beautiful home for the soul it houses. Or just touch. Take one hand and slowly stroke the other. Let the body know: I'm here. I feel you. You can land now, you're safe. Shame pulls us up and out, into the head, into the story of what's wrong with us. Touch brings us back down into the body that's actually here, actually breathing, actually okay in this moment.

And this kind of shame was made in relationship, so it usually needs relationship to heal. It got built when someone couldn't meet you, so it tends not to dissolve alone in your own head, no matter how well you understand it. The understanding is the beginning. The healing comes through being met, slowly, by someone safe, a friend, a good therapist, a partner who keeps showing up. And sometimes you bring it straight to HaShem and get the gentle hug that says: this is exactly how I created you. With love. It's ok.

And sometimes the way out is to reach past yourself. Shame shrinks the world down to you, your defectiveness, your pit, as if you're the only one in it. You're not. There are people all around you who would light up at a kind word, a challah dropped off before Shabbos, a phone call for no reason. You don't have to have your shame sorted to show up for someone. You don't even have to put it down. You just reach, and for a minute it stops being the center of everything. Connection was the thing you needed anyway. Sometimes you get it fastest by giving it.

And if you caught it too late? You didn't pause, you scrolled or ate or snapped at someone, and now there's fresh shame about that. That's just step one again. Pause, breathe, notice this new shame. The map has no entry requirement. Wherever you catch yourself, that's the start. I fell again. Okay. Let's start over right now.

So it's a shame that we're ashamed of our shame. We could spend our whole lives trying to escape it. Trying to prove something to ourselves or others. Or just not being able to inhabit the whole of who we are. In the end we all get buried together with our creepy crawlies. So why not make friends now?

Instead of being ashamed of our shame, we jump into the game with our shame. We show up with love, with presence, with acceptance, with curiosity. If the shame comes with regret, if it's asking for change, we sweat a little and grow. And the rest, the gurgly things we'll never fix, we accept and even love, because that's what being human is.

That's the whole avodah of these days. In Gan Eden, HaShem called out ayeka, where are you, and the first humans heard it and hid. That's the reflex. Shame shows up and we duck behind a tree.

This year, when we hear ayeka, we can do the other thing. We can know exactly what's in our basement, every last box of it, and still step out into the open and say the bravest word a person can say to the One who already knows.

Hineni. Here I am.

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For more about teshuva, vidui and getting up from hard places, check out this post about tightrope school.