Shame, Silence, and the Stories We Never Told
There are things we carry that we never had the chance to say out loud. Painful moments that were too big, too complicated, or too unsafe to speak about. In therapy, I often meet clients who feel stuck, not because they don’t want to heal, but because their deepest hurts were stored in silence.
They didn’t have the language, the safety, or the permission to say:
“That wasn’t fair.”
“I was scared.”
“I needed you and you weren’t there.”
“I was just a kid.”
So instead, they developed a kind of emotional muteness. They got good at pretending everything was fine. They learned to overfunction, stay silent, and absorb the blame. They built lives around performing competence on the outside while feeling defective or ashamed on the inside. And over time, they forgot the original story. They just knew something always felt off.
This is the long shadow of shame. It thrives in silence. It tells us that we’re the problem, not that we had a problem. It convinces us that if anyone knew the whole truth, they’d leave or we’re too much, too broken, too different. So we manage. We overachieve. We get nice degrees, stable jobs, loyal partners. But still, the old story sits there, waiting.
The Stories We Were Never Allowed to Tell
In a recent session, a client worked through a powerful exercise called “What I Never Learned to Say.” It’s a prompt I often use with clients who were forced into adult roles too soon—those who became caretakers for their parents, who never had the freedom to name what hurt.
She wrote things she’d wanted to say to her parents as a child:
“It’s not my job to fix this.”
“I feel alone and scared.”
“I’m miserable and no one sees it.”
As she read them aloud, her voice shook. But as the tears came, so did relief. For the first time, someone bore witness to her truth. No one interrupted. No one minimized. No one said she was being dramatic. And in that quiet space, something shifted. The shame that had wrapped itself around those unspoken truths began to loosen.
Shame Is an Inherited Emotion
Many of the stories we carry in silence aren’t just ours, they’re passed down. We inherit shame from parents who never processed their own. From families that taught us it was dangerous to feel. From cultures that stigmatized vulnerability. We may be praised for being strong, self-sufficient, “the rock.” But that praise comes with a price: the expectation to carry on without complaint.
But we’re not meant to carry everything alone. Especially not the kind of pain that was never ours to begin with.
Naming It Isn’t Weakness—It’s Repair
Therapy is often the first place where people feel safe enough to explore what they were never able to say. They learn that naming what happened isn’t an act of rebellion or blame, it’s an act of self-respect. It’s a way of putting the pain somewhere, rather than letting it fester inside.
For some, it’s saying:
“That wasn’t love—it was control.”
“I did the best I could with what I had.”
“I was never supposed to raise my parent.”
These realizations are not just cathartic, they’re foundational to healing. They allow us to reclaim a more accurate story of who we are and what we survived.
The Role of Compassionate Witnessing
One of the most transformative elements of therapy is having someone witness your pain without trying to fix it or minimize it. To have someone say, “That makes sense,” or, “I can see how much that hurt.” This witnessing begins to undo shame’s grip. It rewrites the old belief that “I’m too much” into something more true: “That was too much for a child to carry.”
Whether through narrative therapy, Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), or emotionally-focused approaches like RLT (Relational Life Therapy), the act of telling your untold story—of finally being heard—is a profound step toward integration.
Making Space for Your Own Voice
If you’ve been carrying a story in silence, know this: you don’t need to keep holding it alone. There’s no expiration date on speaking your truth. You don’t have to have the perfect words. You just need a starting place.
Try journaling what you never got to say to someone. Or saying it aloud to yourself in the mirror. Or telling a therapist who will hold space for the whole messy, beautiful, painful story.
Because you’re not broken—you’ve just been carrying too much, for too long, in too much silence.
And healing begins the moment you let your voice be heard.
