How to Deal With Shame: A Worksheet for the Shame Spiral
Shame is the feeling that something is wrong with you as a person, not only with something you did. This page covers how to deal with shame: how it differs from guilt, the four exits people take when it arrives, what the research links it to, and a worksheet that moves one shame moment back down to the level of behavior.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWRelated tools
Shame running underneath everything?
Therapists who work with shame and self-criticism can help you get at where it came from. Free to search our directory.
Therapists Who Work With Self-esteem
A worksheet is a start. These licensed therapists work with the same problem; every member is matched to the federal NPI Registry and board checks are dated on the profile.
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License verified, checked Oct 28, 2026
“Counselor by Day, EMS by Night: Specialized Care for First Responders, Trauma Survivors, and Victims Narcissistic Abuse Recovery”
Berthoud, Colorado Telehealth $50 to $125 per session
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License verified, checked Nov 4, 2026
“I work with parents feeling disconnected and overwhelmed by their newborn, grieving a loss, and children managing big feelings.”
San Antonio, Texas Telehealth and in person $135 per session, sliding scale
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Migdalis NievesLCSW-C, LICSW, LCSW
License verified, checked Sep 30, 2026
Richmond, Virginia Telehealth $150 to $175 per session
About this tool
Learning how to deal with shame starts with naming what shame actually is, because it gets confused with guilt constantly and the two need different responses. Shame is a feeling about the self: something is wrong with me, I am the problem, if people knew they would turn away. Guilt is a feeling about a behavior: I did something that hurt someone, and it needs fixing. The distinction belongs to the psychologists June Tangney and Ronda Dearing, whose 2002 book set out the research behind it, and it is the single most useful thing to know about either feeling.
The distinction has consequences. Guilt points at the deed and tends to generate repair: apologize, make good, do it differently next time. Shame points at the person and tends to generate concealment, because there is nothing to fix if the problem is who you are. Tangney and Dearing's work found that guilt-prone people were more likely to take responsibility and make amends, while shame-prone people were more likely to hide, blame others or become defensive. Both feelings are painful. Only one of them reliably leads anywhere useful.
Read the diagram as text
The same three things appear twice: a person, a square standing for what they did, and the person who was affected. On the first side the accented mark sits on the square, and a plain path runs from the person through the act and on to the other person. On the second side the same mark sits inside the person instead, the path toward the act is dashed and stops short of it, and an accented loop turns back on the person. The accent is the painful mark, and all that changes between the two sides is where it sits. Illustrative, not participant data.
Where the mark sits
Illustrative; no quantities are measured
The same event, the same person and the same other person on both sides; only the place of the mark changes.
Guilt: the mark sits on the behavior, outside the person: There is something to look at and repair, and the path carries on to the person who was affected
Shame: the mark sits on the person: There is nothing to fix, because the problem is held to be who they are, so the path turns back on itself and the act is left out of reach
The link between shame and depression is well documented. Sangmoon Kim, Ryan Thibodeau and Randall Jorgensen pooled 108 studies covering 22,411 participants in 2011 and found shame correlated with depressive symptoms at around r = .43, noticeably stronger than guilt at around r = .28. External shame, the sense of being seen badly by other people, was stronger still at around r = .56. These are correlations rather than proof of cause, and shame also shows up in anxiety, perfectionism, eating difficulties and addiction. What the numbers do support is that shame is not a minor feeling to be ridden out.
People rarely sit in shame. They exit it, and the exits are predictable. Donald Nathanson described four of them in 1992, arranged as a compass with shame at the center. Withdrawal is hiding: going quiet, calling off plans, leaving the room. Attack self is turning the feeling inward, either as self-criticism or as appeasing everyone in sight. Avoidance is anything that stops the feeling registering at all, from drinking to overworking to bravado. Attack other pushes it outward as anger or contempt, which is why shame and sudden rage sit so close together.
Two things keep shame in place. The first is secrecy. A feeling whose first instruction is do not let anyone see this is self-sealing, because the evidence that would contradict it never gets a chance to arrive. Brene Brown's interview research on women and shame, published in 2006, described secrecy, silence and judgment as the conditions shame needs to grow, and empathy from another person as what undoes it. The second is self-criticism, which holds the body in a threat state with no exit available, since the attacker and the attacked are the same person.
The moves that help are unglamorous. Name the feeling as shame rather than treating it as a fact about yourself, which is harder than it sounds and immediately changes what to do next. Move the problem from the level of self down to the level of behavior, because a behavior can be examined and repaired. Tell one person who has earned it, chosen for discretion rather than for being nearby. And build the other voice: self-compassion is consistently associated with lower distress in the research literature, and Paul Gilbert's compassion-focused work was designed for people whose self-criticism does not respond to reasoning.
Sometimes the shame is in proportion and reassurance is the wrong answer. If real harm was done, the feeling is doing its job, and the exit is repair: say it plainly to the person affected, without the long explanation that turns the conversation toward your own distress, change the behavior, and accept that forgiveness is theirs to give rather than yours to require. The worksheet below is built for that case too. Separating the deed from the verdict on your character is what makes repair possible, not what lets somebody off.
Shame that follows abuse, assault, or years of being blamed for other people's behavior sits in a different category, and the usual advice does not fit it well. In those cases the shame was installed rather than earned, the feeling is often wordless and physical rather than a sentence you can argue with, and writing out the worst moment alone can leave a person worse off than before they started. That is the point where a worksheet should stop and a therapist should begin, ideally one who works with trauma. The exercise below deliberately asks for a moderate example rather than the heaviest one.
Use the worksheet on one specific moment: what happened, the story it told you about yourself, the same event described at the level of behavior, what you would say to a friend sitting in it, and one small step out of secrecy. Nothing here produces a score, and no answer is graded. Where guilt is the stronger of the two feelings, the Self-Forgiveness Worksheet works the repair side more thoroughly, and the Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) guide covers the model most of these moves come from. The sheet is our own design, informed by this research rather than taken from any published questionnaire.
References
- Tangney JP, Dearing RL. Shame and Guilt. Guilford Press; 2002.
- Nathanson DL. Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self. W. W. Norton; 1992.
- Kim S, Thibodeau R, Jorgensen RS. Shame, guilt, and depressive symptoms: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin. 2011;137(1):68-96. doi:10.1037/a0021466
- Elison J, Lennon R, Pulos S. Investigating the compass of shame: the development of the Compass of Shame Scale. Social Behavior and Personality. 2006;34(3):221-238.
- Brown B. Shame resilience theory: a grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society. 2006;87(1):43-52. doi:10.1606/1044-3894.3483
- Gilbert P. The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy. British Journal of Clinical Psychology. 2014;53(1):6-41. doi:10.1111/bjc.12043
- MacBeth A, Gumley A. Exploring compassion: a meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review. 2012;32(6):545-552. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2012.06.003
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). How to Deal With Shame. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tools/shame
How to Deal With Shame FAQ
How do I deal with shame in the moment?
In the moment, dealing with shame means doing something other than the exit your body is reaching for. Name it silently as shame rather than as a fact: this is the feeling, not the verdict. Then move the problem down a level by asking what was actually done or not done, which is a question with an answer. Keep your body still and your breathing slow enough to stay in the room, because withdrawal and attack both tend to add a second thing to feel ashamed about. Afterwards, tell one person. The relief usually arrives in the telling rather than in the thinking.
What is the difference between shame and guilt?
Shame is about the self and guilt is about the behavior. Guilt says I did something bad; shame says I am something bad. June Tangney and Ronda Dearing documented the difference and its consequences: guilt tends to produce apology, repair and changed behavior, while shame tends to produce hiding, defensiveness or blame, because a global verdict on a person offers nothing to act on. The practical use of the distinction is directional. If the feeling is guilt, go toward repair. If it is shame, the first job is to translate it back into behavior, which is what makes repair available again.
Why does shame make me want to hide?
Hiding is one of four predictable responses to shame that Donald Nathanson mapped in 1992 as a compass: withdrawal, attack self, avoidance and attack other. Withdrawal is the most literal of the four, and it makes sense if you consider what shame signals, which is the risk of being rejected by a group you need. Going quiet, leaving early or calling off plans lowers that exposure immediately. The cost is that it also removes any chance of learning that the verdict was wrong, which is why concealment keeps shame alive long after the event that triggered it.
Is it possible to overcome shame for good?
Overcoming shame is better understood as changing its grip than as removing the feeling. Shame is a normal human emotion with a social function, and a person who never felt it at all would be harder to live with, not easier. What does change is how often it fires, how long it lasts, and what it makes you do. People who work on it tend to report the same shift: the feeling still arrives, but it no longer settles into a conclusion about who they are, and the exits lose their pull. Long-standing shame usually shifts in therapy rather than through self-help alone.
Should I tell someone what I am ashamed of?
Telling one person is one of the few moves that reliably weakens shame, but the choice of person does most of the work. Brene Brown's research described empathy from another human being as what undoes shame, and also described what happens when disclosure lands badly, which is worse than silence. So choose for discretion and a history of kindness rather than for who is available, start with a smaller piece rather than the heaviest one, and say plainly what you want from the conversation. A therapist is the right first audience when the material is too heavy to risk with anyone else.
Is shame after abuse something a therapist should handle?
Yes. Shame that follows abuse or assault is in a different category from shame about something you did, and it responds poorly to the usual self-help moves. The shame was installed by someone else's behavior rather than earned, it is often physical and wordless rather than a sentence that can be argued with, and working through the worst memories alone on paper can leave a person more distressed and less able to function. A licensed therapist who works with trauma can pace that work and keep it safe. Exercises like the one here are useful alongside treatment rather than instead of it.
Is anything I write on this worksheet saved?
No. Everything typed into this shame worksheet stays in your browser. Nothing is uploaded to us and nothing is stored on our side, and the PDF is generated on your own device, so the only copy is the one you save or print. That matters more here than on most worksheets, because what people write about shame is exactly what they would not want kept anywhere. It also means that closing the tab deletes the entries, so download the PDF if you want to keep it, and consider where it goes once it is on your device.