Why “Sitting With Shame” Often Makes It Worse
Emma Lyons Shame isn’t personal or emotional. It’s ancestral, systemic, and fractal, and treating it like just another feeling to be processed can often strengthen the very pattern you’re trying to undo.
We’re often advised to “sit with shame” as if it were a difficult but necessary emotion to metabolize.
For many people, that advice backfires.
Shame isn’t personal. It’s systemic, ancestral, and fractal – moving through families, cultures, and institutions. When it’s internalized and treated as something that belongs to you, it tends to deepen rather than dissolve.
In this short video, I explain why staying with shame can strengthen self-attack, how shame keeps the cycle running when it’s misframed as personal growth, and what it means to interrupt shame instead of identifying with it.
If this work resonates with you, check out my other articles that go deeper into these topics. You’re welcome to subscribe and support it by becoming a paid subscriber. It helps me continue exploring and sharing this work.
