I made a big mistake in my business recently. My professionalism and credibility were called into question. As integrity is one of my core values, this was incredibly painful.
I don’t make mistakes often. But I am human. I juggle enormous complexity – professionally and personally and sometimes things go wrong. That’s reality.
What shocked me wasn’t so much the mistake itself, it was my internal response.
I corrected the error quickly. But internally, I unravelled. For four days, I could not regulate my emotional or nervous system. I went through the motions of my work, because that’s what you do, but I felt disconnected from my core. Like I’d stepped outside myself.
On the fourth morning, still in that fog, I went to the gym. I put on the ‘Successful Mind’ podcast by David Neagle. I don’t often listen to him. His style can feel quite masculine, quite abrasive and sometimes that grates against me. But that morning, it landed differently. It felt like someone reminding me who I am.
And suddenly I could see it clearly.
I had fallen into shame.
I know shame well. It has been a companion since childhood. It is also central to the work I do with men in prison. I teach this. I understand it. I actively work on myself.
And yet, it still had the power to plunge me into the abyss.
That’s the thing about shame. It is not logical. It is not proportionate. It does not respond to your qualifications or your insight.
Shame is different from guilt. Guilt says, ‘I did something bad’. Shame says, ‘I am fundamentally bad’.
Guilt can be reparative and moves us to correct and repair. Shame attacks identity. It tells you that you are fundamentally flawed, exposed and unworthy. I had believed I had moved beyond that old narrative. But clearly, the neural pathway is still there, ready to be activated under enough threat.
Shame is embodied. It is not just a thought; it sinks into the chest, tightens the throat, drops the gaze, collapses posture. It pulls us away from connection. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. To be excluded from the group once meant death. Shame evolved to keep us within the boundaries of the tribe.
It is deeply linked to threat-based survival responses – Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn. For me, it was a kind of freeze-withdrawal. Functioning, but internally shut down.
When I work with men stuck in shame, I often describe it as a bog. The more you thrash around trying to get out, the deeper you sink. It becomes sticky and debilitating. And paradoxically, it can become a defence because if I am ‘just bad’, I don’t have to examine the complexity of what actually happened.
But I was reminded that morning that shame can’t survive exposure to compassion and truth. The mistake was real and I repaired it. But the complete identity attack was not truth. It was an old survival script.
What brought me back was not positive thinking. It was remembering my values and that integrity is not never falling short. It is how you respond when you do.
If getting stuck in shame is something you recognise, please know that the intensity of your shame does not equal the truth about who you are.
You may need help to step out of the bog. Sometimes we cannot pull ourselves out alone. That is not weakness. That is nervous system reality. Shame thrives in silence and isolation. It loosens its grip in safe relationships.
And if you are someone who leads, supports others or carries responsibility, the fall can feel even further.
You are allowed to be imperfect and still be credible.
You are allowed to repair and still be powerful.
You are allowed to fall into the bog and climb back out.
And if you need someone to stand on solid ground and offer a hand while you find your footing again, that is work I understand deeply.