In DBT, there is a skill called opposite action. Opposite action helps us move away from behaviors that reinforce painful emotions and keep us stuck. When we feel angry, we may want to lash out or hurt someone, so instead we step away or respond gently. When we feel jealousy, we practice gratitude for what we do have.
When we feel shame, the opposite action is often to tell a trusted person what happened.
As we discuss repeatedly at The Gatehouse, shame thrives in the dark and in isolation. The longer we hide our shame, the heavier it becomes. It can feel like trying to stay afloat in a room slowly filling with water — eventually we become exhausted from carrying it alone. Speaking about shame can be a release valve. It creates room to breathe again.
That does not make sharing any less frightening. Shame convinces us that if people truly knew us, we would be rejected or abandoned. The response is often not condemnation, but care, honesty, and understanding — from someone who can hold it safely. (Past experiences and the threat of telling all play roles in the shame narrative that develops over time, and it affects the ability to trust. This is why care is involved in choosing the right person to tell. Not necessarily the person you are closest to or love the most, but the person you feel can hold your shame responsibly.)
When these conversations are handled with care, they can become moments of powerful transformation for survivors. The relief does not come from pretending the pain never existed or that actions no longer matter. The relief comes from discovering that honesty does not automatically lead to abandonment. Shame loses some of its power when someone is met with compassion instead of rejection. That can create hope.
The shame survivors carry is not truly theirs. Rather, they often internalize messages from abusers, family systems, or society and begin to believe that what happened to them says something about who they are. This can sound like: “Why didn’t I do anything? Why didn’t I tell someone sooner?”
But children do not yet have a fully developed sense of identity, agency, or values. A child who has been taught to trust adults, whose boundaries may already have been ignored in small ways — being told to eat everything on your plate, wear this, don’t cry — cannot reasonably be expected to respond with clarity or self-protection in abusive situations. The shame survivors carry is often the result of trying to apply adult expectations to childhood experiences.
Shame can also appear when we fear rejection, hold ourselves to impossible standards, or mistake embarrassment and anxiety for evidence that we are “bad.” In a society that often sees people in black-and-white terms, it can feel terrifying to admit mistakes or vulnerabilities. This is where dialectical thinking becomes difficult — especially when shame pushes us toward all-or-nothing conclusions.
For many survivors, shame creates a black-and-white belief system: if something shameful happened to me, then I must be shameful. Healing often involves learning to hold more than one truth at the same time — that someone can carry pain, regret, fear, or shame and still be worthy of care, dignity, and connection. Self-compassion creates space for these truths to exist together without one erasing the other.