This morning at 6 a.m., my 94-year-old mother-in-law was awakened from her sleep by a phone call.
Not the kind of waking where you slowly come back to yourself. This was abrupt—her heart already ahead of her thoughts, her body responding before her mind had fully arrived.
A man was on the line. His voice sounded certain. Professional. He told her he was calling to help fix her computer. Something had gone wrong on the internet. There was a problem. A risk. Her computer was vulnerable.
And he could fix it—for free.
Still groggy, still orienting herself to the day, she listened. When someone speaks with confidence—especially when you’re half asleep—your body tends to cooperate before your reasoning does.
She answered honestly.
“Well, my son-in-law usually takes care of my computer when I need help.”
“Yes,” he replied immediately. “But this is also a service we offer. Completely free of charge.”
Then the tone shifted. Subtly, but unmistakably. He began to emphasize urgency. This wasn’t something that could wait. If it wasn’t handled right away, things could get worse.
The implication was clear: something you care about is at risk.
Fear has a way of narrowing the moment. It speeds things up. It bypasses reflection. The body moves into problem-solving mode long before the mind asks whether the problem is real.
And then he asked which bank she used.
Taken off guard—still waking, still trying to understand what was happening—she told him.
Almost immediately, something inside her tightened. A quiet alarm. A sense of unease she couldn’t yet name. Her body knew before she did.
When she questioned him, the line went dead.
Following The Call
Several hours later, she called me. Her voice was trembling. She was almost in tears.
“I know I should have called you sooner,” she said. “But I felt so ashamed… and scared. I know I shouldn’t have told him my bank.”
I asked gently whether she had shared anything else—numbers, accounts, passwords. She hadn’t. Nothing beyond the name of the bank.
I reassured her that we’d contact the bank and that there was a very low likelihood that simply naming it had compromised anything.
But what stayed with me wasn’t the practical resolution.
It was what came after.
She had been targeted. Her sense of safety had been breached. Fear had entered her morning without permission.
And yet she was the one carrying shame.
As I sat with it later, what struck me was how quickly we move toward shame when we are the ones who have been violated.
She was not the one who should have felt ashamed. The shame belonged entirely to the person on the other end of the phone. And yet, almost reflexively, she turned it inward.
Whether it’s being duped by a scam, abused by a partner, sexually assaulted, or robbed, it is so easy to move toward shame.
And then shame convinces us not to tell.
To keep things locked up inside.
Not to reach out.
Not to name what happened.
That silence becomes the ideal incubator for trauma.
Why Do We Move So Quickly To Shame When Someone Violates Us?
Because shame offers the illusion of control at the exact moment we feel powerless.
When something violating happens—whether it’s a scam, abuse, assault, or betrayal—our nervous system doesn’t ask philosophical questions. It asks one urgent question: How do I make sure this never happens again?
Shame rushes in with an answer.
It tells us:
I should have known better.
I missed something.
This is on me.
On a biological level, this makes sense. Humans are wired for attachment and belonging. Threats to safety are also threats to connection. And shame—painful as it is—feels preferable to chaos.
If the violation was my fault, then maybe I can fix myself and stay safe.
As shame researcher Brené Brown defines it, shame is the intensely painful belief that “I am bad”—not that something bad happened.
Shame collapses a complex event into a single, devastating conclusion about the self.
And tragically, it often feels more tolerable than admitting, “I was vulnerable, and someone exploited that.”
Shame and Trauma: What Happens When Silence Takes Over?
Trauma isn’t just what happens to us.
It’s what happens inside us when we’re left alone with what happened.
When shame enters the picture, it shuts down the very processes that allow experiences to be integrated and healed. Instead of telling the story in a safe, regulated space, we replay it privately—fragmented, distorted, and self-blaming.
Neuroscience and trauma research show that unprocessed experiences remain “unfiled” in the nervous system. They don’t move into narrative memory; they stay in the body as sensation, vigilance, anxiety, or collapse.
Shame accelerates this by saying:
Don’t tell anyone.
You’ll be judged.
You’ll look foolish.
This proves something about you.
Without a safe, trustworthy witness, the nervous system never receives the signal that the danger has passed. The body stays on alert. The story stays frozen. The self stays alone.
Shame doesn’t just hurt.
It interrupts healing.
What Could We Do Instead When Shame Starts Creeping In?
We don’t eliminate shame by arguing with it.
We disarm it by changing our response.
Here are three practices that reliably interrupt shame’s grip:
Name the experience, not the verdict
There is a world of difference between “I feel ashamed” and “I am shameful.”
Naming the feeling creates distance. It turns shame from a conclusion into a signal—something happening in us, not about us.
Return responsibility to where it belongs
This is not about denial or minimizing. It’s about accuracy.
Ask gently but firmly: Who violated trust here? Who caused harm?
Shame thrives on misplaced responsibility. Clarity restores moral order.
Bring the story into safe relationship
Healing happens when an experience is spoken in the presence of someone who can hold it without judgment, fixing, or minimizing.
This could be a trusted friend, a therapist, a partner, or a guide—someone regulated enough to stay with the story until the body learns, “I’m not alone anymore.”
At LifeApp, we often say that love is caring for the well-being and security of others as much as our own. Living love well begins right here—with how we treat ourselves when we’re most tempted to turn against ourselves.
Shame says: “Withdraw. Hide. Carry this alone.”
Love says: “You don’t have to.”
And that shift—from isolation to connection—is where healing quietly begins.
Until next week,
Jonathan Penner | Co-Founder & Executive Director of LifeApp
Resources To Dig Deeper
Book
I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t)
This book is a deep dive into how shame rushes in after we feel exposed—especially when something goes wrong—and how it pushes us into hiding. Drawing on years of research and hundreds of interviews, Brown shows how perfectionism and “keeping it together” become armor that protects us from judgment but also cuts us off from connection. If your takeaway from the story is that silence becomes an incubator for trauma, this book puts language and research behind that truth—and offers a practical path forward: replacing secrecy with empathy, self-contempt with compassion, and isolation with the courage to be seen.
-Brené Brown
Video
“Shame Is Lethal”
In this conversation, shame researcher Brené Brown describes shame as the intensely painful belief that we are unworthy of love and belonging. She explains that while painful events may trigger shame in an instant, it often grows quietly over time through messages we absorb about ourselves. What makes shame so damaging, she says, is not just the original wound but the secrecy that follows. Shame thrives in silence, judgment, and isolation—it expands when we keep our stories hidden. But it cannot survive empathy. When we speak our experience to someone safe and are met with understanding rather than contempt, the power of shame begins to dissolve.
-SuperSoul Sunday | Oprah Winfrey Network (4:25)
Music
Wonderfully Made
When the song speaks of being “knit together,” it reaches for a truth older than belief systems. Before we were hurt, before we learned to doubt or diminish ourselves, there was an original coherence to who we are. Some hear that as a Creator’s design, others as nature, love, or the deep intelligence of life itself. Either way, the message is clear: shame didn’t come with us into the world. It was learned. And what began with intention and care was never meant to be lived with self-contempt.
-Ellie Holcomb (5:20)