Shame and the Silent Weight Women Carry

Shame is one of the most powerful and corrosive emotions we carry.

We’ve discussed it many times on the Therapy Works podcast, I’ve felt it and I work with clients whose lives have been stalled by it.

Shame is a feeling—that there is something fundamentally wrong with us, we are unworthy, broken. And for many women, shame doesn’t arrive in loud moments. It weaves itself into the fabric of our everyday lives—quietly, invisibly, relentlessly.

From the earliest years, many girls are taught—often without a word spoken—to make themselves small. To smile even when they feel rage. To say yes when every part of them wants to say no. To put others’ needs before their own. This early conditioning becomes the bedrock on which so much shame is built.

As Brené Brown says so eloquently, women are still expected to “stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest.” There’s something profoundly insidious in those words. They are the rules of a game we never agreed to play, yet often feel we are losing.

Shame can be gendered. I have sat with women who carry it in their bodies like a secret language. It shows up in the way they tug at their sleeves, lower their eyes, or speak of themselves with quiet disdain. The pressure to be good, to be enough, to be perfect—can be crushing.

Body image is one of the most common battlegrounds. We live in a world that tells women their worth is tied to how they look. I’ve worked with women whose entire sense of self has been shaped by the bathroom scales. Who feel unlovable because they don’t fit a size. Who speak of their bodies with a hatred they’d never direct toward anyone else.

And then there’s sexuality—another source of deep, often unspoken shame. Some carry shame for wanting too much; others for not wanting at all. Some for what they’ve done; others for what was done to them. Our culture still struggles to let women own their desire without judgment, without implication.

Motherhood is another tender place. I’ve seen the pain in women who feel they don’t mother the “right” way, or who carry shame for not wanting children at all. There’s a cruel mythology around maternal instinct—that it should come naturally, effortlessly and when it doesn’t, the shame can be profound.

In professional life, women often internalise failure more deeply than men. They apologise before they speak. They downplay their achievements. They feel shame not only for mistakes but for ambition itself. I’ve listened to brilliant women describe themselves as frauds, convinced they’re only one misstep away from being found out.

And then, there is trauma. For many women, abuse—whether emotional, physical or sexual—plants a seed of shame so deep it becomes part of their identity. “It was my fault.” “I let it happen.” “I deserved it.” These are the lies shame tells, and they are devastatingly convincing.

I want every woman reading this to know: Shame thrives in secrecy and silence. It cannot survive empathy. When we speak the unspeakable, when we find the courage to share our stories, when we are met with kindness instead of judgment—that is where healing begins.

We need to tell the truth about women’s experiences. The truth about the roles we are forced to play, the standards we are told to meet, the pain we are asked to hide. We need to create spaces where women can show up as they are—not as they’re expected to be.

And we need to remind each other, over and over again, that our worth is not conditional. Not on our bodies, not on our jobs, not on our families. We are not broken. We are not too much.

We are enough.

We are, each of us, whole.