When shame keeps us stuck: self-compassion and change

In my work as a therapist, I often sit with people who are trying very hard to change. Sometimes the change is around food, weight loss, alcohol, exercise, anger, avoidance, procrastination, scrolling, relationships or the way they speak to themselves. The behaviour may be different, but the emotional pattern underneath can look very similar.

Many people arrive believing they need to be harder on themselves. They may feel that if they criticise themselves enough, shame themselves enough, or set strict enough rules, they will finally change. They may say things like, “I just need more discipline,” “I should know better,” or “I’m disgusting for doing this again.”

At first, shame can feel like motivation. It can create urgency. It can make someone promise themselves a fresh start. But what I often see is that shame does not create a safe place for lasting change. It creates pressure, and when the person inevitably struggles, the inner critic becomes louder.

This can become a painful cycle. A person sets an expectation, falls short, attacks themselves for falling short, feels worse, and then seeks comfort or escape in the very behaviour they were trying to change.

So the problem isn't always that the person doesn't care enough. Sometimes they care deeply, but the way they are trying to change is keeping them stuck.

The inner critic often makes things worse

The inner critic can sound convincing. It can present itself as the part of us that is trying to keep us disciplined, focused and accountable. It might say, “I’m only being honest,” or “If I’m not hard on myself, I’ll never change.” But in therapy, I often see how damaging this voice can become.

When someone is already tired, ashamed, stressed, or overwhelmed, the inner critic usually doesn't help them reflect. It pushes them further into threat. They may feel defeated before they have even had a chance to understand what happened.

Someone trying to lose weight, for example, may eat something outside of their plan and immediately feel they have failed. The inner critic steps in: “You’ve ruined it now. You always do this. What’s the point?” Then the person feels even worse. In that emotional state, food may become comfort, relief or a quick reward. It may become a way to soothe the shame that has just been triggered.

This same pattern can happen with drinking, scrolling, spending, anger, avoidance or overworking. The behaviour may not be helpful long term, but in the moment it is often doing something for the person. It may be numbing, soothing, distracting or giving a short sense of relief.

Research has linked shame with binge eating symptoms, and reviews suggest shame can become part of a cycle that keeps eating difficulties going (O’Loghlen et al., 2022). Self-criticism has also been identified as a process that can appear across a range of difficulties, including disordered eating (Forrester et al., 2017).

This matters because people often blame themselves for the behaviour, without understanding the emotional pain driving it.

Self-compassion is not making excuses

One of the biggest misunderstandings I hear around self-compassion is the fear that it means “letting yourself off.” Some people worry that if they stop attacking themselves, they will lose motivation. They fear that kindness will make them lazy, weak or less accountable. That is not how I understand self-compassion. Self-compassion is not saying, “It does not matter.” It is saying, “This does matter, and I am going to help myself face it without destroying myself.”

Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion challenges the idea that being kind to ourselves reduces motivation. Self-compassion can support people to take responsibility from a place of care rather than shame (Neff, 2023). Research has also found that self-compassion after failure can increase motivation to improve (Breines & Chen, 2012).

This is important in therapy because people often think they need punishment in order to change, but punishment can make people hide, avoid, give up or seek comfort. Compassion can help them stay present enough to understand what happened and take the next step.

Building an empowering inner voice

Paul Gilbert’s compassion-focused therapy was developed with a particular focus on shame and self-criticism. It recognises that for some people, compassion can feel difficult, unfamiliar or even unsafe at first (Gilbert, 2010).

I see this often. Some clients have spent years speaking to themselves harshly. Sometimes that voice came from earlier experiences of criticism, rejection, bullying, trauma, comparison or emotional neglect. Sometimes the person has learned that being hard on themselves is the only way to survive or keep going. So building a compassionate voice can take time.

In therapy, this is not about creating a soft or passive voice. It is about developing an empowering voice. A voice that is warm but honest. Firm but not cruel. Accountable but not attacking.

The inner critic might say, “You failed, so you may as well give up.” A compassionate voice might say, “That was a difficult moment. Let’s understand what happened and come back to what matters.” The inner critic might say, “You are weak.” A compassionate voice might say, “You are struggling, and struggling needs support, not attack.”

This kind of voice gives people more room to change. It does not remove responsibility. It makes responsibility feel possible.

Looking underneath the behaviour

In therapy, your therapist will be less interested in judging the behaviour and more interested in understanding what the behaviour is doing for the person.

If someone is emotionally eating, what is the food helping them not feel? If someone is drinking, what are they trying to quieten? If someone is scrolling for hours, what are they trying to avoid? If someone keeps procrastinating, what fear is sitting underneath the task? If someone keeps becoming angry, what hurt or vulnerability might be hidden beneath that anger? This does not mean the behaviour is ignored. It means we approach it with curiosity rather than shame.

For many people, the behaviour they are trying to change began as a way to cope. It may have helped them survive stress, loneliness, rejection, overwhelm, boredom, grief or shame. The problem is that a coping strategy that once helped can later start to hurt.

That is where change becomes more compassionate and more honest. We can say, “This behaviour makes sense,” while also saying, “It may not be helping you anymore.”

Self-compassion in weight management has shown promising links with improvements in eating behaviours, physical activity behaviours and some weight-related outcomes, although more research is still needed (Brenton-Peters et al., 2021). Compassion-based interventions have also been explored for body weight shame, with findings suggesting they may help reduce shame and improve compassion (Carter et al., 2023).

This fits what I often see clinically: people do not usually change well when they hate themselves. They change more sustainably when they feel safe enough to be honest.

What happens when people fall short

Setbacks are often where the real work begins. Many people can stay motivated when things are going well. The harder part is what happens when they miss the gym, eat differently than planned, drink again, lose their temper, avoid something important, or fall back into an old pattern.

The inner critic often treats this as proof of failure. But in therapy, a setback can become information. It may show that the expectation was too high. It may show that the person was exhausted, unsupported, lonely, overwhelmed or trying to change too many things at once. It may show that the behaviour is still meeting an emotional need that has not yet been understood.

This is the difference between shame and reflection. Shame says, “This proves I am useless.” Reflection says, “Something happened here. Let’s understand it.”

When people can stay with themselves after a setback, they are less likely to abandon the whole process. They can repair sooner. They can return to the next helpful action without needing to punish themselves first. That is where real change often becomes possible.

Therapy and the journey of change

Therapy can be a place to understand the cycle between shame, the inner critic and the behaviour someone is trying to change. It can help a person notice how they speak to themselves, where that voice came from, and what happens inside them when they fall short. It can also help them build a different relationship with themselves, one that includes honesty, care and responsibility.

For many people, this is not easy. A compassionate voice can feel unnatural at first. Some people distrust it. Some feel embarrassed by it. Some worry that if they stop attacking themselves, everything will fall apart. But self-compassion is not giving up. It is learning how to stay with yourself while you do difficult things.

It is learning to say, “I am struggling, and I still deserve support.” It is learning to say, “I can take responsibility without attacking myself.” It is learning to say, “This behaviour makes sense in the context of my pain, but I can still choose to change it.”

The journey of self-compassion is not about becoming perfect. It is not about never slipping. It is not about pretending that harmful behaviours do not matter. It is about learning to stand beside yourself while you change. Shame may get someone started, but compassion helps them stay.

References

Breines, J. G., & Chen, S. (2012). Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1133–1143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212445599

Brenton-Peters, J., Consedine, N. S., Boggiss, A., Wallace-Boyd, K., Roy, R., & Serlachius, A. (2021). Self-compassion in weight management: A systematic review. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 150, 110617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2021.110617

Carter, A., Gilbert, P., & Kirby, J. N. (2023). A systematic review of compassion-based interventions for individuals struggling with body weight shame. Psychology & Health, 38(1), 94–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2021.1955118

Forrester, R. L., Slater, H., Jomar, K., Mitzman, S., & Taylor, P. J. (2017). Self-criticism as a transdiagnostic process in nonsuicidal self-injury and disordered eating: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 47(4), 387–399. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12293

Gilbert, P. (2010). An introduction to compassion focused therapy in cognitive behavior therapy. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 3(2), 97–112. https://doi.org/10.1521/ijct.2010.3.2.97

Neff, K. D. (2023). Self-compassion: Theory, method, research, and intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 193–218. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031047

O’Loghlen, E., Grant, S., & Galligan, R. (2022). Shame and binge eating pathology: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 29(1), 147–163. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2615