Unmasking Shame: How to Release Its Grip and Unlock Your Full Self, Part 1
- Natalie Seibel, LPC, LMHC
- Jul 21, 2025
- 8 min read
Shame is insidious. I believe this is the main source of human suffering without even knowing it. It whispers thoughts, beliefs, and stories that influence your behavior for the sole purpose of protection and self-preservation. But when shame remains out of awareness, it keeps you from moving towards your goals, dreams, and desires.
Shame is best friends with the Ego. Together, they do their best to keep you alive. Shame is not trying to ruin your life. On the contrary, it works hard to keep you from experiencing anything that could be painful, both physically and emotionally.
However, your brain and nervous system don’t know the difference between physical and emotional pain. If you take a moment to tune in to your body and connect with a memory of the last time you felt stress, notice how your body feels. I imagine you might experience tension or tightness, maybe even an upset stomach. None of it feels good, so why wouldn’t you avoid it?
In my work as a therapist over the past 16 years, I’ve observed five key ways we respond to shame:
Procrastination
Perfectionism
People Pleasing
Control
Doubt
Over the course of five blog posts I will explore these responses one by one. I’ll share how each is directly connected to shame and provide practical strategies to assist you in getting unstuck. By the end of the series, you may end up with a long list of tools or you may find yourself gravitating to just one. No matter the case, my desire is to help you better understand shame and its function, and to offer ways to support yourself by navigating the moments when shame shows up.
Shame as Procrastination
You probably know this one really well. It’s the laundry you haven’t put away, the dishwasher you haven’t unloaded, the assignment you haven’t started/completed, the bill you haven’t looked at. It’s the voice you hear in your head that tells you, “I’ll do it later.”
That same voice is going to show up later and say, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do it? I should be better at this.” Not super elevating and supportive, right? As a result, you may find yourself procrastinating even more. This is the shame-procrastination cycle.
Understanding the Cycle
Human experience and behavior follow a particular pattern. You are introduced to a prompting event (can be internal or external) and your system starts working immediately to determine how to best interact and respond. The prompt filters through your body and your mind. Your mind figures what to think and your body figures out how to feel, then together they figure out what to do.
Shame is the emotion that influences your thoughts, which in turn influences your behavior. Procrastination is the resulting behavior. And shame will keep you in procrastination because whatever it is keeping you from doing has been assessed as a threat that will lead to an experience of pain.
As part of human behavior, you don’t typically engage in things that feel bad, or if you do you tend to hesitate and resist. Things like conflict and arguments, the credit card bill, making a mistake, getting it “wrong,” putting yourself out there, asking for help; all the adulting tasks. When you perceive something as feeling bad, you gravitate towards avoiding thinking or feeling about it, which then leads to avoiding taking action on the thing.
The Origins of Procrastination
Much of this stems from the rules you were taught in childhood, often framed as what you "should," “need to,” or “have to” do and the consequences you learned would follow if you disobeyed. Maybe some of this sounds familiar: “You need to clean your room, you have to do your homework, you should eat your vegetables, you have to do X before you can Z.”
As you read those commands and reflect on your own childhood experiences, if you focus on the sensation that shows up in your body you might notice pressure. If that pressure feels “too much,” shame goes on alert that something is wrong and tells you “nope, I can’t.”
A lot of the time, pressure isn’t safe; bad things can happen under pressure. When you avoid (aka procrastinate), what happens to the feeling of pressure? Spoiler alert: it goes away! It's a brilliant protection mechanism when you see the purpose.
When the Self-Protection of Procrastination Goes too Far
Although shame offers this brilliant protective function, do you really believe your purpose in this life is to be protected by shame to the extent that you’re held back from your goals, dreams, and desires?
Remember shame (when outside of awareness) is insidious and will convince you of reasons that appear very logical. And if that doesn’t work, it will attack your belief in you.
The great thing about all of this is that you get to decide what is true for you.
Think of shame as a back seat driver, one you love very much. Shame is along for the ride, but not the one driving. You get to decide how you want to interact with it. The goal here is not to eliminate shame. Sometimes we do need protection, and shame serves that function.
Plus, it’s not possible to eliminate any of our emotions. The goal is to learn ways to work with it so you can make aligned decisions even when it is yapping at you.
Disrupting the Cycle
I suspect you've learned to cope with uncomfortable feelings and thoughts by pushing them aside. Your usual approach to procrastination has likely been to simply power through it. But if you're honest with yourself, does that strategy consistently work? In my professional experience, it rarely does.
Trying to shame yourself for feeling shame only deepens it, and attempting to avoid avoidance just perpetuates it. Procrastination is essentially avoidance, and avoidance is a powerful ally for shame. Shame, that nagging feeling telling you you're not good enough and unlovable due to your procrastination, excels at trapping you in this cycle. The good news? You absolutely have the power to break free.
So, we are going to do things differently in this blog post to disrupt this cycle. We are going to go through instead of over, under, or around; lean in instead of pull back; be curious instead of judgmental.
I find validation, compassion, curiosity, and determination with self to be the best tools.
Procrastination & Overwhelm: Understanding the Emotional Link
Let’s start by understanding the emotions that arise in relationship to procrastination. More often than not the emotion most associated with procrastination is overwhelm. If overwhelm could talk, it would say “it’s too much and I can’t.” You can see how this leads to procrastination, yes? What you may not see is that “I can’t” is directly tied to shame. You will say “I can’t” when you believe your ability and skill set is not good enough. You believe you are not good enough.
When you address overwhelm, you are able to take aligned action towards your goals. Let’s explore how to do that.
A 6-step strategy I have found to be helpful:
Acknowledge and validate yourself. Ask yourself what you’re thinking and feeling (emotionally and physically). Give yourself permission to recognize what appears to be too much is legitimately too much. It is okay that you don’t want to either do or feel whatever has come up.
Contemplate with curiosity. What is challenging about the task or situation? Maybe the too muchness of it is related to the effort you think it will take. Or it could be that it’s not really a priority for you, but you think it “should” be.
Stay present. Sit with the experience of validating your thoughts and feelings for 2-4 deep belly breaths.
Start small. Ask yourself, “What is one thing that I can do?”
Brainstorm. Note down what comes up. Determine if any of the ideas are something you are willing to do.
Take action. From a place of empowerment, make a decision and engage in the identified action that feels most aligned.
Ready to Practice?
Imagine there’s something you’ve said you would do and have not yet done it. Maybe days, weeks, months, or even years have gone by from the time you first proclaimed your intention until now.
As you think about doing the thing right now, notice the emotional and physical responses in your body, along with any thoughts that come up. Was the feeling of overwhelm, too much, and “I can’t” included? If not, that’s okay. Please still follow along because chances are it shows up in another area of your life. Let’s begin:
Acknowledge and validate yourself. “What is showing up in my thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations? Yeah, that is too much. I can see why I’d feel overwhelmed and not want to do it. That makes a lot of sense.”
Contemplate with curiosity. “I wonder what about it has me believe it’s too much. What story am I telling myself about the situation or task? Is this about the task itself or the anticipated outcome? Is it about me and my beliefs about my ability?”
Stay present. While taking deep breaths, continue to validate the thoughts and feelings through the contemplations. “Of course I’m avoiding. The way I’m looking at it is a lot. The feelings are uncomfortable and I don’t like feeling this way.”
Start small. “If I didn’t expect myself to complete what I see is too much, what is one thing I can do?”
Brainstorm. Break the task down into something smaller. “I can start on or focus on the next single step.”
Take action. From a more grounded and clear place, “I am choosing _____.”
(Plot twist: At this stage of the process, you get to choose to continue to procrastinate if that feels most aligned. I would encourage you, as a way to reduce shame, to own the choice. This might sound like “I know I could take action by doing _____, however I am choosing to continue to procrastinate.”)
In a bite size version – “Shame, I hear you and it makes a lot of sense why you would think/feel ____. I wonder what you are most worried about possibly happening... Yes, that is a lot and procrastinating makes sense. What is one thing you/we can do?... Out of all the ideas you/we came up with, I feel really good about taking action with ____."
At the end of the day, your Ego wants to keep you safe and it has created smart strategies to protect you. Procrastination is one of them. Left unchecked, shame can steer you down a path you may not actually want to go. Being hard on yourself for being hard on yourself keeps the shame and procrastination cycle going. Try the process above with a focus on curiosity and compassion rather than judgement and criticism. See how it feels in your body and what you notice about your actions over a period of several days or a few weeks. And if you notice you’re forgetting to practice, see if you can bring some gentle curiosity to that too, otherwise you might find yourself confronting a different face of shame known as perfectionism.
I’ll explore this facet of shame in Part 2 of this blog series, so stay tuned.
To learn more about Natalie, visit her bio here.
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