Shame Has Been in the Room This Whole Time

We spent an entire series talking about toxic relationship patterns. About power and control, chosen family, money, sex, community, and what healthy actually looks and feels like. And underneath almost every single conversation was the same thing, whether we named it directly or not.

Shame.

It is not a buzzword. It is not a social media concept. It is a clinical reality that shapes how we love, how we spend, how we show up in community, and how we relate to our own bodies. And for queer folks who have been told from very early on that who they are is the problem, it runs deep.

Shame Is Not Guilt

This distinction matters and I want to name it clearly. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad. Guilt, when it is healthy, can actually move us toward repair. It has energy in it, a desire to fix something, to make it right.

Shame does the opposite. It moves us away. It makes us hide. It finds its way into everything and shapes it, like a machine that takes in whatever material is available and presses it out in the same form, over and over.

The other thing worth naming is whose shame it actually is. A lot of the shame we carry was handed to us, built during pivotal moments when we were young and did not have the tools to examine it. It got installed as fact. Not as a voice, not as an opinion, but as a reflex. And it has been running quietly in the background ever since.

Reflection: Think about a moment recently when you pulled back from something, a conversation, a connection, an opportunity. Was that a real choice, or was it a reflex? And if it was a reflex, where do you think it came from?

The Places We Do Not Expect It

We talked a lot in this series about shame in relationships and in sexuality. But one of the things that landed hardest was how much shame shows up in finances. In the queer folks who spend to overperform, to signal belonging in spaces that have historically excluded them. In the queer folks who hoard out of a fear that security is always one event away from being taken. In the ones who avoid their bank account entirely because what is in there feels like a verdict on their worth.

None of those are irrational responses. All of them make perfect sense when you understand the history behind them. A community told for decades it had no future worth planning for. People who watched family members die while the government looked away. People who could not marry legally until ten years ago. The financial patterns that came out of that are not character flaws. They are survival responses. And they become something you can work with once you understand what is underneath them.

Shame also shows up in generosity in ways that are easy to miss. There is the person who will help a near-stranger move apartments but would never ask for help carrying groceries. Who insists on picking up the check but deflects the moment someone tries to care for them. It looks like warmth from the outside. From the inside it is a way of keeping the score uneven so no one ever has leverage over you. So you never owe anyone anything. So you never have to be a burden.

The cost of that is that you never really get to be known. Because being known requires being received. And if you cannot let people give to you, there is a ceiling on how close anyone can get.

Reflection: Is there a way that shame shows up in how you handle money or how you give and receive care? What would it mean to let someone take care of you this week, even in a small way?

What Resentment Is Actually About

This one stopped me when Allison named it. Resentment does not come from anger. It comes from envy. When you are furious that your partner is relaxing while you do everything, part of what is underneath that is: I wish I could let myself do that. And the shame that says you are not allowed to rest, to receive, to take up space, is the thing that makes that impossible.

We do not fix that by making the other person stop relaxing. We fix it by getting curious about what we will not let ourselves have, and why.

Reflection: Is there something someone in your life does freely that quietly irritates you? What would it mean to ask for that same thing for yourself?

What Actually Helps

Two things keep coming up when we talk about moving through shame rather than around it.

The first is slowing down enough to get curious. Not to fix it, not to explain it away, but to ask: is this actually mine? What is it trying to protect me from? Is there a different way to get that same protection that costs me less?

The second is practicing being uncomfortable. Not in a punishing way. But deliberately putting yourself in situations that feel exposing and staying there long enough to learn that you survived it. That feeling is not a sign to retreat. It is the actual work. Therapy is not about feeling great all the time. It is about expanding your emotional bandwidth so you can be in all of it and still stay grounded in yourself.

Reflection: What is one thing you have been avoiding because it feels too exposing? What would one small step toward it look like?

You Do Not Have to Carry This Alone

At Open Space Therapy Collective, we offer LGBTQ+ therapy for queer folks who are doing exactly this work—getting curious about the shame that has been running the show and building something more intentional in its place. If you are ready to start, book a free 15-minute intro call and let's figure out what is possible together.

Written by Renae Johnson, LPCC, ATR-BC (they/them)