5 Ways To Overcome The Shame Of A Difficult Past

Discover five empowering strategies to rise above the shadows of your challenging history and embrace a brighter future. Leave shame behind and reclaim your life.

Shame, in some respects, can be a useful emotion. While most agree that shaming others is unhealthy, sometimes it’s necessary. For example, if someone mistreats their friend, realizing such mistreatment may give them negative feelings – IE, shame. This shame can then be used to fuel corrective action.

Some cultures are still susceptible to the concept of shame, to the point that we, from our Western perspective, might view it as archaic. For example, the incredible story of Romeo and Juliet and the star-crossed lover’s tragic romance would have been fruitful and comfortable if the shameful connection between two at-odds families hadn’t led to much difficulty.

So, if shaming is so unhealthy, why do we do it? Thankfully, there’s an active movement against shaming people for issues they’re dealing with or may not relate to who they are. For the most part, we try to avoid judging others and recognize that as a virtue.

However, that doesn’t always stop us from shaming ourselves. Shame will always be most potent in those who feel it about themselves, and sometimes, our past actions can make this emotion feel logical and necessary. That being said, shame is only helpful if it’s proportional and can be used to move forward, having learned a lesson. Wallowing in shame doesn’t make you better; it can simply incapacitate you. 

So, how can you overcome the shame of a problematic past if you’re trying to improve? What if you’ve had a strict upbringing, suffered with addiction, or gave in to lousy character traits that you’re now working on? Forgiving yourself and learning to move forward is a healthy approach; you shouldn’t feel incompatible with it.

In this post, we’ll discuss the full breadth of this journey and how to implement it:

Take Positive Steps Towards Helping Others

When you feel shame due to a complicated past, it’s easy to think you’re irredeemable or that your evil actions may have outweighed themselves compared to any do-gooding you could do. Of course, that’s not the case at all. Moreover, you don’t have to concern yourself with a “karmic balance” or whatever other spiritual concern you may have to start doing good. You start doing good.

This can help override your feelings of being nothing but a wrong person because you’ll actively see yourself doing good day after day. Now, it’s essential to take charitable actions that have weight and aren’t done just for yourself but to centralize others.

Perhaps you’ll volunteer at a charity drive, join a group to clear litter from your local park, or even fundraise a run for charity at the local half-marathon event in your city. For many people with self-esteem issues, one of the best things they can do is get out there and look after themselves, be that exercising, eating well, making good life choices, and working on projects that sustain them. Then, no matter how they feel about themselves, they are actively showing that they deserve to care for who they are by doing so each day.

Thidochology of do-gooding can benefit such people and you, too. The internal positive feelings you get from helping others can help you see that there’s more to you than you think. It also allows you to focus on the present instead of the past.

Ultimately, You Have To Forgive Yourself

Depending on your actions, not everyone will forgive you. Sometimes, that’s okay. We cannot expect them to accept our apologies or even want to speak to us. We need to give them that respect and move on.

That being said, you do have to live with yourself. This means that you ultimately have to forgive yourself, not because you think your actions were okay, but because there’s no real value in criticizing who you are to the core each day. It would prevent you from doing any good or learning to be better.

A wise man once said that holding onto hate is like drinking poison and hoping the other person is harmed by it. As you can see, treating yourself in this light is irrational and prevents you from improving the situation. As hard as it can be, you must forgive yourself, opening up the future you need to move on and improve.

Tomorrow Is Always A New Day

We tend to think of ourselves as “set people” who have pretty much defined our personalities by the time we reach adulthood. Of course, that’s not the case. Your life story is only over when it’s over, and it’s essential to recognize that.

In other words, if you’re forty now and look back on the last ten years with a sense of shame or upset, that was only ten years out of your life. The rest of the time, you might be someone different. Moreover, learning from mistakes actively defines you as someone who didn’t live with those mistakes forever.

Tomorrow is a fresh new day, and we’re all developing ourselves as time passes. We’re people in motion, with new experiences and decisions to make. In other words, don’t lock yourself into only a portion of your life. Your feeling such a way about it now means you’re different from who you were, which can be something to celebrate.

You Most Likely Weren’t An Evil Villain

When we begin to feel remorse, it’s easy to think that everything we’ve ever done has been wrong or incorrect in some way. Of course, there are certainly some actions that we would consider unacceptable and many that we would consider beyond apology.

Unless you’re guilty, the criminal system might have dealt with you already (or will). If that’s the case, admitting your acts can be essential to resolving and accepting the consequences. However, as you may expect, you’re unlikely to be an evil villain.

For example, perhaps you had addiction issues born from trauma, and a VA alcohol rehab is what you need to move forward with recovery, and you can now look at the past issues in a different light. In this case, you were trying to deal with complex personal problems and made terrible decisions because of it. Does that make you evil? No. Perhaps you had a bad relationship with a married partner, and you wish it didn’t affect your children quite so much during a messy divorce. Does that make you evil or unable to fix those relationships? No. Perhaps you turned away everyone who tried to help you, and now you feel terrible about it. Does that mean you deserve never to have a friend again? No.

While refusing to look at a complicated past isn’t healthy, you don’t have to make yourself an irredeemable figure because of it. There’s a difference between feeling upset at your past actions and trying to ruin any future you have because of them. Remember – you most likely weren’t an evil villain.

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

Michel de Montaigne

You Can Learn From Your Journey

Negative experiences aren’t dead time in that they have nothing to offer. You can learn from them and use them to become a better person, with first-hand knowledge that teaches you how bad experiences and bad decisions can affect people. There’s no better teacher than experience and time; you can use that energy to fuel your tomorrow.

For example, past alcoholics may decide to steer away from venues where alcohol is readily available and instead cultivate a life where engaging in hobbies outside of that exposure is critical. They know that if they indulge in that kind of lifestyle, it may never end until a painful recovery is needed again. That’s a lesson I learned with experience and kept diligently.

The same goes for anything else – from getting involved too quickly in a new relationship, making poor financial decisions, and letting anger get the better. Perhaps you might head to therapy and realize that because you hadn’t addressed trauma from difficult life experiences, the effects were showing up in your personal life and causing you pain and trauma. These measures are difficult to deal with but necessary to focus on. If you take what you’ve learned, you’ll realize that despite a complicated past, you’ve become wiser.

With this advice, you’ll see that overcoming the shame of a problematic past is possible and necessary. Please think of the utility of shame and whether it has any functional utility in your life. Work to be your best self and to make yourself proud again. Try every day anew and learn from your mistakes. All of that can lead you to become twice the person you were and exactly the person you could be.