Shame is one of the most powerful forces in human behaviour. It doesn’t only make us feel bad. It organises entire patterns of relating – e.g. how close we allow ourselves to get to others, how we handle conflict, how we receive feedback, and how comfortable it feels to be seen.

Many of us don’t realise we’re dealing with shame (our own or someone else’s). We just feel confused by someone’s reactions. We notice that conversations derail quickly into argument or confrontation. We sense we’re walking on eggshells and feel responsible for keeping the peace. We try to be careful with our words, yet somehow everything still feels emotionally charged, unpredictable, or “too much.”

These are often signs that shame is at play. One or two of them on their own doesn’t always mean shame, but when several show up consistently, it’s often a sign that shame is shaping the dynamic

What Shame Actually Is

Shame develops early, usually long before we have language for it. It forms when a child’s natural expressions of emotion or need are met with punishment, ridicule, dismissal, or indifference. Or from other relational experiences such as emotional neglect, inconsistent care-giving, perfectionistic environments, parentification, chronic covert or ‘invisible’ invalidation. Over time, the child learns a simple rule:

“If I show who I am, I will be hurt, ignored, shamed, criticsed or abandoned. Therefore, who I am must be wrong. I am unloveable. I must hide.”

This is not a conscious belief, it’s a deep, embodied conclusion – it lives in behaviour and nervous system, not necessarily in literal thoughts. From this conclusion arise two very different (again, mostly unconscious) survival strategies:

Collapse: “I am unlovable, so I will make myself small.”
Compensation: “I am unlovable, so I will cover it with strength, certainty, or superiority.”

Both strategies come from the same wound – a deep belief that we are unloveable as we are, and that if we are truly seen, in all our emotions, needs and desires, we will be rejected. So in an attempt to belong, to be accepted, to be loved, we hide our true nature in whatever way we can. Both strategies also serve to temporarily regulate an unbearable internal state. We don’t choose these strategies, instead, they arise automatically based on context and our own individual relational history.

1. Shame Avoided Through Collapse (Inferiority)

A person who collapses under shame tries to survive by shrinking. The logic is simple: “If I make myself less of a problem, maybe I’ll be accepted and allowed to stay.” Collapse can look considerate and respectful, but it’s often driven by shame and fear. It’s an attempt to avoid rejection and abandonment by disappearing.

Collapse often shows up as:

• Over-apologising: Reacting to small relational ruptures as if they are catastrophes. For example, you raise a minor concern and they immediately say: “I’m so sorry, I know I’m difficult. I’ll do better, I promise.”

• Withdrawal: Pulling away after conflict or perceived disapproval. For example, they don’t reply for days because they feel too embarrassed to face you.

• Minimising their needs: Saying “it’s fine” even when it isn’t. For example: “Don’t worry about me. Honestly, it’s nothing.”

• Taking too much responsibility: Assuming blame for dynamics they didn’t create. For example: “I should have handled it better. It’s my fault you’re upset.”

• Self-attack disguised as honesty: Turning shame inward to avoid being exposed outwardly. For example: “I’m just a terrible person. You don’t deserve someone like me.”

2. Shame Avoided Through Compensation (Grandiosity)

Compensation looks like the opposite of collapse, but it comes from the same place. The person isn’t actually feeling superior – they’re (often completely unconsciously) protecting themselves from feeling defective. Compensation is an attempt to avoid rejection and abandonment by becoming bigger, certain, untouchable. The logic here is: “If I stay above you, I won’t be seen as inferior, you can’t reject me and I won’t have to feel inferior.”

Compensation often looks like:

• Defensiveness: Reacting to feedback as if it’s an attack. For example, you gently say, “Could you text if you’ll be late?” and they snap: “Why do you have to be so controlling.”

• Rigid certainty: Needing to be right because being wrong triggers the wound of shame and feeling inadequate. For example: “No, that’s not what happened. You’re misremembering.”

• Hyper-rationalising: Using intellect to avoid emotional vulnerability. For example, you express a feeling and they respond with a detailed explanation of why your interpretation is illogical or wrong.

• Subtle contempt: Eye-rolling, sarcasm, intellectual superiority – all to elevate themselves by putting someone else down. For example: “Well, some of us don’t overreact like that.”

• Emotional distancing: Becoming cold, flat, or unreachable when conversation turns to areas that are ‘shame-adjacent’ or might trigger a shame land-mine. For example, you share something vulnerable, and they suddenly become detached, as if unaffected.

• Blame-shifting: Flipping the responsibility back onto you to avoid acknowledging the consequences or impact of their own behaviour. For example: “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t started things in the first place.”

• Inability to apologise: For example: by saying “I’m not apologising for something I didn’t do.” or “it’s your fault not mine” or even simply avoiding or deflecting the topic altogether, because saying “I was wrong. I made a mistake” feels like stepping into an abyss of shame – it sits right next to that core belief of “I’m unloveable. There’s something wrong with me.”

Both Strategies Come From the Same Wound

People often assume collapse and grandiosity belong to different personality types. But they’re two sides of the same strategy. Someone may collapse with one person and compensate with another. They may crumble in a work appraisal but become defensive in a romantic argument. They may swing between both in the same conversation.

The common thread is this: Shame is running the show, not malice, not indifference, not lack of care – just a deep feeling of inadequacy and an equally deep fear of being rejected and abandoned.

How Shame Affects Relationships

When someone is ‘shame-bound’ (i.e. much of their behaviour is constrained by the constant need to avoid triggering feelings of shame), relational closeness becomes complicated. You may find yourself:

walking on eggshells
doubting your own reality
suppressing your needs
taking responsibility for their reactions
managing the emotional climate to keep things “stable”
feeling unseen or alone even when they’re physically present

This isn’t because your needs are unreasonable. It’s because shame makes intimacy feel dangerous and the other person may constantly avoid relational intimacy and vulnerability, even unintentionally, as an ongoing, unconscious way to avoid triggering their deeply buried beliefs and feelings of inadequacy and unlovability.

What Helps

If you’re in a relationship (whether a romantic relationship, a friendship, family relationship or other) with someone whose shame-avoidance strategies dominate:

Stay grounded in your own experience.
State your needs clearly, without collapsing or over-explaining.
Don’t take responsibility for someone else’s emotional regulation.
Look for willingness, not perfection. Someone aware of their shame-protectors can learn new patterns. Someone unwilling to reflect will repeat the same cycle.

And remember: Boundaries and clarity are not punishments. Expressing emotions, needs, desires, and beliefs does not make you the problem. Shame thrives in silence and avoidance. Healing begins with a willingess to face the truth – whether that’s the truth of our own feelings or needs, or the reality of a situation.

Understanding someone else’s shame can help you see the pattern more clearly, but it does not make you responsible for carrying their emotional load or compensating for it.

And sometimes the most profound healing begins when we recognise our own shame-based behaviours – the ways we avoid discomfort, collapse or overcompensate, or protect ourselves in ways that quietly harm connection. Facing these patterns with honesty and compassion is what opens the door to healthier, more grounded, more intimate relationships with others and with ourselves.