When shame has been running your inner world for a long time, it’s very easy to swing between two ends:

trying to overhaul your life overnight with David Goggins-esque self-improvement and routines, and
reverting back into old patterns when it doesn’t work

So, even though you may have tried sticking to routines, or telling yourself positive affirmations, or even tried to pretend that shame wasn’t there, they can start to feel like yet another test you’re failing.

Affirmations often bounce off the surface, because the part of you that feels worthless doesn’t believe them. And pretending shame has gone tends to backfire. It usually comes back with a vengeance.

This blog isn’t about becoming a different person in 30 days, or 90 days, or whatever. It’s about small and realistic steps out of shame that respect how your nervous system, your history and your sense of self actually work.

What Does “Feeling Enough” Even Mean?

“Feeling enough” can sound vague, or like some woo wah state that certain people reach.

In practice, it actually looks quite mundane:

Not scanning around for what’s wrong with you.
Not needing to prove your worth in every interaction.
Having moments where “okay” really is enough - your work is okay, your body is okay, you are okay for today.

If “not good enough” is one side of the coin, perfectionism looks like the shiny, opposite side “if I can just be flawless, this feeling will stop.” The problem is that perfection is a kind of hellish oasis in a mirage, in the sense that it always seems just out of reach. Every time you get closer, the standard moves.

“Enough” is something different. It’s less about crossing a finish line and more about a different relationship with that harsh inner voice. Something closer to what psychologist Donald Winnicott called a “good enough” parent, although, only this time you’re learning how to be that for yourself. Not with possessive, smothering love, but with a basic stance of: “I’m allowed to exist. I’m allowed to rest. I’m allowed to make mistakes and still be looked at as fundamentally okay.”

This “enough” state is always in constant flow and not some zen enlightenment finish line. On some days, you’ll feel more grounded, and on other days the shame will shout louder again. But you can build more moments of “enough”, and slowly over time they start to add up.

Why Huge Change Plans Often Make Shame Worse

When people get serious about “working on themselves”, they often double down on the same strategies that kept them stuck in the first place. Here are a couple of examples:

Punishing yourself into action:
“I’ve been so lazy. I just need to stop being pathetic and sort my life out.”
Hype yourself up without really buying it:
“No more excuses. New me. This time I’ll actually stick to it.”

They can produce a short burst of effort. You might get a week of strict dieting, intense exercise, or immaculate productivity. But if the change doesn’t really line up with your deeper values or your actual capacity, you can expect backlash to come right around the corner. You’ll likely burn out, or you “fall off the wagon”, and shame gets fresh ammunition:

“See? You can’t even keep that up. You really are hopeless.”

This doesn’t mean we have to coddle every avoidance pattern and never challenge ourselves. There are times when it is important to face the thing you’ve been putting off.

But there’s a difference between driving yourself with contempt and finding motivation that comes from somewhere true and humane, so we need to learn how to work with your system rather than against it.

Step 1: Work With Your Nervous System (Ventral Vagal)

Shame very much resides in the body as well as the head. Common experiences include but are noway near limited to: tight chest, knotted stomach, foggy head, urge to disappear. Trauma and chronic shame leave an imprint not just on the mind but on the body and brain (Van der Kolk, 2015).

Polyvagal theory suggests that when your ventral vagal branch (part of the parasympathetic nervous system) is online, you’re more able to feel safe, connected and socially engaged. When it’s offline, you’re more likely to be in fight, flight or shutdown (Porges, 2017).

The antidote to shame is connection (to oneself as well as between people) and it is much easier to access when your body isn’t braced for attack.

You don’t need complicated techniques. A few simple practices, done in ways that feel tolerable, can help nudge your body towards a more connected state:

a) Hand on heart or stomach with a longer out-breath

Place a hand on your chest or stomach (or both).
Notice the contact. No need to breathe in any special way at first.
If it feels okay, start to let your exhale be a bit longer than your inhale – maybe in for 4, out for 6 or 8.

Slow, extended exhalation has been shown to stimulate the vagus nerve and support the body’s relaxation response.

Think of this less as a trick to “calm down” and more as sending a small signal to your system: “We’re not in danger right this second.”

b) The “Voo” sound

The “Voo” exercise comes from somatic and polyvagal-informed work. I covered this in my blog on Why Can’t I Relax.

Sit or stand in a comfortable position.
Take a breath in through your nose.
As you breathe out, make a low “vooooo” sound, letting the vibration resonate in your chest.
Repeat a few times, noticing any shifts (yawning, swallowing, slight heaviness).

This isn’t magic, but for some people, the vibration and the slow exhalation help bring them a notch closer to feeling present and connected, in other words, a bit more ventral vagal.

You don’t have to do these consistently every day for them to “count”. You might try them:

once before a difficult conversation, or
when you notice shame spiking after a memory or interaction, or
in the evening instead of going straight from scrolling to sleep.

Step 2: Boundaries That Treat You Like an Adult

One of the most powerful steps out of shame is setting proper boundaries with yourself and with others.

This might sound strange at first. For example, you’d expect reassurance to be the antidote to shame. However, the trouble is if reassurance always erases any consequence, it can feel oddly disrespectful. It’s like being treated as a fragile child rather than a capable adult.

In therapy, for example, if a client repeatedly misses sessions and I only ever say, “Oh, honestly, don’t worry about it,” I’m not really helping. I’m removing any sense that their time and my time matter and then there’s no structure for them to lean on.

A boundary might look a bit more like:

being clear about cancellation policies, or
naming the impact of repeated “no-shows”, or
holding the line while still caring about what sits underneath the behaviour.

For you, small boundary steps in everyday life could include:

deciding what time you’ll stop working in the evening, and actually closing the laptop, or
saying “I can’t do that this week” instead of automatically saying yes, or
noticing where you over-give and experimenting with doing slightly less, rather than collapsing into doing nothing.

Boundaries can feel confronting at first, especially if you’ve spent years people-pleasing or avoiding conflict. But over time they carry a very different message to shame “My needs and limits matter. I’m not here just to be useful.”

Step 3: Changing the Question in Your Head

Shame has a field day with the question “What’s wrong with me?”

It’s a closed question. Whatever your mind answers will confirm the shame.

A powerful step is to start introducing different questions. One that many people find helpful is “What happened to me?”

It has become a popular reframe in trauma work and in books like The Body Keeps the Score, which emphasise that trauma is not just the event itself but the imprint it leaves on your body and mind.

“Where did I learn to speak to myself like this?”
“What was going on around me when I first felt this way?”
“Whose voice does this remind me of?”

It’s an unshaming move because it recognises there were conditions, relationships and histories that shaped you.

There is a slight caveat, though. If “what happened to me” only ever turns into a script about how ruined you are by the past, it can slide into a state of stuck victimhood. The point isn’t to dwell in every injustice forever, but to understand the context enough so that new choices become possible.

Other small inner-voice shifts you could experiment with:

When you catch yourself saying, “I’m disgusting / pathetic / useless,” pausing to ask, “Would I talk like this to a close friend?”
When you mess something up, adding one extra line: “This is unpleasant and it’s also part of being human.”
Choosing one interaction a day where you consciously resist adding the usual layer of self-attack afterwards

You don’t have to monitor every thought because that would be exhausting. I like to think of it more as widening the range of responses available in your own head.

Step 4: Moving Your Body (Without Turning It Into Punishment)

Modern life has a way of sedating us via long hours at desks, watching TV, doom scrolling and collapsing into bed. If trauma and shame are carried in the body, as many somatic and neuroscience-informed writers suggest, then it makes sense that movement can be part of loosening their grip.

The key is how you use movement.

If exercise becomes “I have to obliterate myself at the gym to be acceptable,” or “If I miss a day, I’m disgusting,” then shame has simply found a new costume.

Small, sustainable movement might look like:

a 10–15 minute walk without turning it into a productivity contest, or
stretching while listening to music you actually like, or
a form of movement you enjoyed as a child like dancing, swimming, kicking a ball, or messing about in the garden

It’s less about burning calories and more about giving your body a chance to feel alive on its own terms.

Adding, Not Just Taking Away

People often feel they “should” reduce screen time. I won’t deny there are enormous benefits in reducing screen time for some. For others, screens are a genuine coping mechanism. Ripping away a coping tool without anything to replace it can provoke a backlash.

Instead of making “less phone” the main goal, you could experiment with adding more of something that nourishes you.

One old technology worth reclaiming is books. Reading has been a human pastime for centuries for a reason. Even 10 minutes with a book before bed instead of endless scrolling is a small act of turning towards your own mind in a different way.

Step 5: Watch Out for the Perfectionist Healing Plan

An ironic hazard with a blog like this is that shame will try to turn it into another test:

“Real progress means doing all X steps every day.”
“If I can’t stick to these small steps, I really am beyond help.”

Which is exactly the kind of thinking we’re trying to move away from.

A more realistic stance might be:

“I’m going to pick one or two things from this list and experiment this week.”
“If it doesn’t work or I forget, that’s not evidence that I’m hopeless. It’s information about what my system can handle right now.”

One of my trainers used to say, as I mentioned in my previous blog, “Working slowly is working quickly.” In shame work, rushing is often a surefire way to grind to a halt or not start at all. Going at a pace your system can genuinely tolerate is usually the most direct route.

It’s also worth saying: small steps are not a substitute for deeper work. They’re more like foundations. They can make it easier to enter therapy, to talk honestly in relationships, and to look at the past without completely flooding.

You’re Not a Hopeless Case

If shame has been chewing away at you for years it can be easy to feel like you’re some special category of broken, and that these things might work for other people, but not you.

You’re not a hopeless case.

You may have been living with a nervous system trained to expect exile. Nietzsche pointed out that, for most of human history, being thrown out of the tribe was about as bad as it got. Our brains still behave as though social rejection is life-threatening and shame taps into that ancient fear.

The culture we live in doesn’t necessarily help. We’re sold perfection on every front: body, career, relationships, mental health. But “perfect” is a myth. It will never arrive. Chasing “perfect” is a good way to miss the real, messy, human life that’s available now.

You don’t have to become a different person to be worth care. You don’t have to have your life in order first. You don’t have to resolve all your history before you’re allowed help.

Treat all these steps as small. A different question in your head. A longer out-breath. A firmer boundary. A bit of movement. A few pages of a book. One more honest moment with someone you trust.

They don’t look particularly impressive on social media and won’t necessarily go viral, but I can tell you that they do work well.

If you recognise yourself in what you’ve just read and want somewhere to explore it in more depth, you don’t have to do that alone.

I offer online hypno-psychotherapeutic counselling for people who are tired of living under the weight of shame, self-criticism and “never enough”.

You can:

Learn more about how I work

Book a Free Discovery Call

You’re allowed to take this at your own pace. One small step is still a step.

References

Porges, S. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). W. W. Norton & Company.

Van der Kolk, B. (2015). The body keeps the score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma. London: Penguin Books.

Small (But Big) Steps Out of Shame: Practical Ways to Start Feeling Like You Are “Good Enough”

What Does “Feeling Enough” Even Mean?

Why Huge Change Plans Often Make Shame Worse

Step 1: Work With Your Nervous System (Ventral Vagal)