It took me a long time to realize that social anxiety was part of a multilayered system.
For years, I thought social anxiety was my biggest enemy. No matter how much I chipped away at it, it refused to loosen its grip on me.
Just when I had it figured out in one area of my life, it popped up in another! I was playing a forever game of whack-a-mole.
Whack-a-mole is a game in which you hold a hammer and whack the mole that pops its head out. Then another one pops out, and you just have to keep going.
I could have unplugged the game and walked away, but I didn’t know better. Whenever a mole popped up—WACK—I hit it harder, determined to win a game that wasn’t designed to end.
But I finally understand why it’s not enough to focus solely on social anxiety (or on hitting the mole’s head to keep with the analogy).
It might make it dizzy and silent, but it will resurface eventually.
And so now, looking back, I understand why those moles kept popping up no matter how hard I hit them on the head. Don’t get me wrong—the work I did to hammer them away was tremendous. I built some serious muscle and stamina to play the game.
And I think I helped hundreds of people successfully play the whack-a-mole game, too.
But while I focused on maximizing the impact and cracking their heads (evil, I know), I failed to see how strong the mechanics underneath were.
The system powering these moles was built from something indestructible.
Vibranium-level steel. There was no breaking it—not by force alone.
If we were to take out the moles and go through the multilayered system powering the moles, we’d run into something more sinister, lurking at a much deeper depth than I could have imagined.
Beneath the game, beneath the layers, we’d find something deeper.
A dark mole, bigger than the rest. Watching. Instructing. Making sure its foot soldiers never stopped.
That dark mole? Toxic shame.
Think of toxic shame as social anxiety’s sponsor.
If social anxiety, people-pleasing, and perfectionism were running for office, guess who their biggest campaign donor would be? Toxic shame.
It funds their every move, ensures their success, and keeps them in power by funneling negative energy and dark thoughts. Sound familiar?
Ha-ha, you wasted all those years hacking away at social anxiety when all this time I was the one causing all the problems in your life! Suckaaaaa
When I came face to face with toxic shame, I recognized how pure it was and understood how, through sheer stubbornness, it carries the weight of all the layers.
No matter how much you break through the layers, toxic shame will keep them alive and in place unless you aim directly for it. And we've seen this repeatedly in any movie, right?
Any cartoon, any superhero Avengers-type style, where you must hit an enemy at its core to destroy an enemy.
But to find its heart, you need the blueprint.
You need to know the exact spot where you should shoot it. Even if you know where that spot is, it doesn't mean you can get to it.
It doesn't mean you have the skills to dismantle or shoot it.
If you've never shot a bow and arrow, there's no way you'll find the heart under the shield, under the armor.
You're going to need help.
You're going to need resources.
You're going to need to plan.
You’ll have to be in position.
So there are a lot of things that have to happen. You can aim all you want, but if your shot falls short, you won't do any damage.
My goal with this podcast and newsletter moving forward is to give you the tools you need to position yourself to aim at the toxic shame (at the dark mole) and hit the target.
Personally I firmly believe our shame directly results from the environment, society, and culture we’ve spent most of our lives.
Although these are ever-changing and ever-evolving, the changes are so gradual that we might not even notice them within our lifetime.
And that’s a shame.
Because who knows how well we would have thrived in another time and place had we been given the opportunity? Maybe if we were born in the next generation or the previous one.
Yet, even this thought experiment fails to account for the fact that shame has always been present and will always be present, no matter the timeline. No matter when or where you’re born. You’d experience a different type of shame, but a shame nonetheless.
Shame breeds everywhere—no matter the environment, society, or culture we’re born into. By the time we’re old enough to understand what we’re dealing with, the damage to our person is so extensive that it will take a herculean effort to undo.
I strongly recommend therapy for this situation (if you have the opportunity and the financial resources).
Therapy is really the place where you get to explore the big bang of your toxic shame.
But even if you can't go to therapy, all you can hope for (to be a functioning human being) is to minimize the number of times you reach down to call on this toxic shame.
The problem is that you keep calling toxic shame at all hours of the day. Every day.
I don’t think I need to tell you that’s unhealthy and it will fuck with your life. After all, it’s called toxic for a reason. It will affect your relationships, career, decisions, and personal growth.
By now, you’re probably like, ok, Rox, you’re scaring the crap out of me with this toxic shame nonsense, but I still don’t get it. What IS it?
Think of toxic shame as a container labeled “Rotten at the core” housed deep within you.
Inside this container are your most vulnerable beliefs about yourself—insecurities so dark you don’t dare utter them out loud or even acknowledge them yourself.
You keep them tucked away, but they’re always too close for comfort, ready to be weaponized against you.
Some days, the container is locked tight, and you almost forget it’s there. Other days, it spills open at the worst possible moment…when you’re about to speak in a meeting, when someone praises you, when you try to set a boundary. And suddenly, the rotten mess inside is smeared all over your mind, whispering: ‘You’re not good enough. You never were.’
Toxic shame is the belief that there’s something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you unworthy of love, friendships, success, a good life, etc.
Here are some ways it can manifest in your life:
- Avoiding checking your bank account because it triggers shame
- Struggling to share opinions, fearing they’re not “good enough.”
- Pushing yourself to exhaustion to prove your worth
- Avoiding therapy or help because you believe you should "fix yourself" alone
- Struggling to make choices out of fear of making the “wrong” one
Do any of these check a box for you?
The list is as long as your container is deep. You don’t have to reach too far into it to come into contact with toxic shame. Unfortunately, no lid’s tight enough to keep the container contained.
So what’s a girl to do?
The goal is to drill down to the big bang of your shame. That’s how you begin deconstructing it.
That’s how you call it out of existence. That’s how you dismantle the container and throw it out with the trash. Never to be seen or heard from again.
It’s not a task for the faint of heart.
You have to go where you least want to go. The places you've locked away, hoping they’d stay buried forever. Because that’s where shame lives.
- You’ll have to face your inner child
- You’ll have to face your parents
- You’ll have to face everyone who’s ever hurt you, made you doubt yourself, and made you feel small
- You’ll have to retrieve memories you’ve long forgotten or wanted to forget about
- You’ll have to be honest about what happened in your life
All within the confines of your mind, of course.
You’ll have to assess where your thoughts, beliefs, and values originated. It’s the only way to expose what’s in the container so that you can face it head-on.
You can have a conversation with each part of yourself that comes up.
For example, if you’re unable to bear children (because you’re infertile), and you’re part of a society or familial environment where that’s seen as the only priority in a woman’s life, you might feel shame about it.
On the other hand, if you’re choosing not to have children in a society that praises people who do and condemns those who don’t, you might also feel shame about it.
And if you hack your way deep enough into your soul, you might hit the rock of toxic shame that will remind you of how broken and utterly useless you are as a human being for either not wanting to reproduce or that you cannot.
Which then begs the question, who put that thought in you in the first place? Who dared to connect your worth as a human being to that of bearing children?
Your family? Your church/religion? Society? The neighbour?
That’s how you mend the damaged parts inside of you. When you finally remove the whispers, the stares, and the advice of others, you’ll find yourself in a room with just your voice in it.
Free of shame. Full of recognition.
And for the first time, you’ll hear yourself say: “I was never broken. I was always worthy. They just made sure I’d never realize it. But I do now. And they can’t take it back.”
Welcome to the You’re Worth Knowing newsletter, where we will tackle all this.
