Day 9: Shame Is Not a Teacher
Stop listening to that which does not make you better
We need to talk about shame. Because if you have been carrying it this long, and most people who drink the way we drank have been, it is probably one of the heaviest things in your bag right now.
Shame sounds like this.
I should have known better.
I should have stopped sooner.
Look at what I did to my family, my finances, my health, my reputation.
Look at the years I wasted.
Look at the person I was when I was drinking.
I am disgusting.
I am weak.
I am broken…
Sound familiar?
The problem with that conversation is it feels like accountability.
It feels like you are taking responsibility, being honest about what you did, and owning the consequences.
But shame and accountability are not the same thing; Accountability looks at what happened and says, “That was wrong, and I am going to do it differently.” Shame looks at what happened and says, “I am wrong. Fundamentally. At the core. Unfixably.”
Accountability moves you forward, while shame glues you to the floor.
It seems like it would be the opposite, but shame is one of the primary drivers of relapse in addicts. You wouldn’t think so, because feeling bad should lead to change, but let’s look deeper.
When that voice in your head starts screaming about how broken you are, about how you have already ruined everything, about how you will probably fail this too, drinking is the fastest way to shut the pain up and make that voice go away.
The shame fuels the drinking, the drinking fuels the shame, then the shame fuels the drinking again.
That cycle will kill you if you let it run long enough.
I know shame well.
I spent years believing that I was the sum of everything that had happened to me and everything I had done in response to it. The kid who watched his mother die, the troubled “stupid” student, the one who didn’t protect his siblings, the angry young man hating the world, the sensitive soul who cared too much about too many things, the party animal aka sloppy drunk, the list goes on…
Every label I had been handed or had handed myself piled up into a story about who I was, and for a long time, I believed that story completely.
What I did not understand then was the difference between what happened to me, and who I was. Events are not identity, and choices you made when you were running on pain and survival are not your character. The worst version of yourself that ever showed up to a party or event does not cancel out every other version of you that has ever existed.
You are not your drinking, but your drinking became you…
It turned me into a man where one drink became too many, and no amount after that was ever enough. Like a switch, when I had alcohol, it put me on a path to thinking “The next drink” would be the one that would bring me happiness, peace, make things funnier, I’d be more relaxed, and life would be better.
All I needed was “just one more…” and then I would reach that elusive place of peace; unfortunately, that chase led to blackouts or sleep.
You are a person who drank because something in you needed managing, and alcohol was the tool that was available. The moment you see the distinction between who you are and what forced you to become who you became, the shame starts to lose its grip.
This does not mean you do not own what you did.
If you hurt people, you own that; if you made choices that cost you and others, you own that, too, but you own it the way a builder owns a mistake in a structure. You find it, you fix it, you build better. You do not tear the whole building down and declare yourself unfit to build anything ever again.
Shame says you are the problem; Accountability says you have a problem and you are solving it. You are your problem, and the beauty within that is accepting that you are also your solution.
You are on Day 9 and solving it.
Your Day 9 Sober-Challenge
Write down one thing you have been carrying shame about that is connected to your drinking, then, underneath it, rewrite it through the lens of accountability rather than shame…
Shame version: “I am a terrible parent because I was drunk at my kid’s birthday party.”
Accountability version: “I showed up less than I wanted to at my kid’s birthday party. I am here now, doing the work so that does not happen again.”
Same Event - Different Story - Different Future
- Zac