How To Stop Being Ashamed

Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. This applies in spades to our self esteem and is the reason we so often feel ashamed of ourselves. The reasons can be many fold – you could be depressed, you might not like what you see when you look in the mirror, you may speak before you think and be ashamed of what you’ve said after the event. These are amongst the many reasons so many people feel ashamed of themselves, either sometimes or all the time.

That’s the bad news. But the good news is that it’s possible to turn that around and start feeling less ashamed and more proud of yourself.

Ways to stop being ashamed

Firstly, take a bit of time to check whether your feelings of shame manifest all the time or only at certain times or in certain places. This is worth doing with either an honest friend or, if you want to keep things totally impartial, maybe a counsellor. Make sure that you set aside enough time to get to the root of your issues and don’t be surprised if it takes more than one attempt to get rid of your shame.

Next up, take the time to go through and list out all the good things about you. The things that you’re proud of. Everyone has these but we tend to push them to one side in favor of feeling down and morose. So take out a pen and pad or (so long as you’re not going to get distracted) open up a new document in Word and start writing away. Go at it for at least 10 minutes writing anything and everything positive about yourself that comes into your head, no matter how daft it may seem at the time. It’s important not to edit this process – just let the words flow onto the screen or the paper. You can go back and edit out any negative thoughts that creep in but most people are pleasantly surprised at the result of this process. So don’t just put this aside as one of those “good idea to do some day” ideas!

Another way to help tune your mind away from feeling ashamed is to use hypnosis. This can be as simple as getting a hypnosis download and playing it to yourself a few times. What you’ll notice is that the suggestions in the hypnosis track start to work their way into the way that you think about yourself and you’ll find yourself feeling less ashamed about whatever it was that was causing your feeling of shame in the first place.