How Shame Replicates Itself
The day a shattered door showed me how healing changes everyone around us.
This week, a landscaper shattered my storm door.
Literally.
I spontaneously hired him that morning.
After a week of intermittent storms, my front yard had become nearly unrecognizable beneath a jungle of weeds, and my usual landscaper had become increasingly unreliable. So when a landscaper left a card on my door, I called.
He showed up the same day.
He was reasonable and polite. And we could actually understand each other. My usual landscaper and I spoke in awkward body language and broken English.
As he started working outside, I sat upstairs doing what many aspiring TEDx speakers do: binge-watching TED Talks.
I was preparing for a talk of my own. Then I heard a strange sound.
It sounded like tiny pellets hitting glass. I paused for a moment, then went back to watching. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.
I walked downstairs and opened the front door.
And the moment I pulled the handle, the outer storm door shattered into a thousand tiny glass pebbles at my feet.
My jaw dropped. His face turned white. For a moment, we both just stared.
The culprit?
Rocks from my xeriscaped yard launched from the weed trimmer straight into the door.
At first, he started excusing what happened. “So many rocks!”
At first, I started explaining why I didn’t understand how it happened since my usual landscaper has done this job a million times and didn’t shatter my storm door.
The conversation was beginning to head in a direction I didn’t like.
Then something happened. I looked at him. Really looked at him.
And what I saw wasn’t someone trying to get away with something. I saw someone who felt terrible.
I saw guilt.
I saw shame.
I saw someone replaying the mistake in his mind before I even had the chance to.
And suddenly, something inside me softened.
Not because the door wasn’t broken.
It was.
Not because there wasn’t a cost.
There would be.
But because in that moment, I realized I had a choice. A choice I hadn’t always made.
When Mistakes Are Mistaken For Identity
For most of my life, mistakes felt dangerous.
As a child, I became highly attuned to disapproval.
In a look. A sigh. A tone of voice. A raised eyebrow.
Even when nobody said anything, I often knew. Or at least I thought I knew.
Growing up, I developed the belief that mistakes weren’t simply things that happened. Mistakes meant something about me and about my worth and about whether I was good enough.
Years later, I would learn that many people with ADHD carry an invisible burden of shame because they spend years receiving messages that their struggles are character flaws rather than neurological differences.
You forgot.
Again.
You lost it.
Again.
You were late.
Again.
You made another careless mistake.
Again.
Over time, those experiences can become a story.
Not:
“I made a mistake.”
But:
“I am the mistake.”
And that story is expensive because it becomes a story about identity.
When Shame Leaks
The thing nobody talks about is that shame rarely stays contained nor does it just live inside us.
The disappointment, impatience, and resentment we perceive from others for our shortcomings get ingrained into our identity. And it leaks.
Into our relationships.
Into our leadership.
Into our parenting.
Into our friendships.
Into the way we respond when someone else messes up.
For years, I thought I was an incredibly compassionate and empathetic person. And in many ways, I was. But if I’m being honest, there were times I had less patience than I realized.
As a teacher.
As a doctor.
Even as a dog owner.
The irony was painful. I desperately wanted grace. Yet sometimes I struggled to extend it.
Why?
Because somewhere deep down, mistakes still felt unacceptable.
Not just for me. For everyone.
That’s what shame does. It replicates itself.
Not always intentionally or dramatically but often through expectations, impatience, or judgment.
Hurt people hurt people.
When Grace Becomes Available
Then something changed.
Long before my ADHD diagnosis, I began questioning old narratives.
I started noticing how harshly I spoke to myself.
And slowly, I started responding differently to my own mistakes. And trust me, with certain characteristics of ADHD being lack of spatial awareness, procrastination, and executive functioning challenges, there were many mistakes and faux pas.
When I dropped something, I stopped turning it into a character indictment.
When I forgot something, I stopped making it evidence that I was broken.
When I made a mistake, I started reminding myself:
You’re human. Life goes on.
And the strange thing is this: the more compassion I extended to myself, the more compassion I found available for others.
Not because I became a better person but because I became a freer one.
The landscaper spent the rest of the afternoon apologizing and refused to take payment.
He called his brother-in-law to try to fix the door.
They fixed my fence that fell down months before.
He promised to return the next morning to place plywood on the door until the new glass pane arrived.
He kept trying to make things right.
At one point, I practically had to beg him to accept payment for the work he had done.
What struck me was how deeply he cared. And somewhere along the way, I realized something.
A few years ago, this interaction might have ended very differently and not because I was inherently mean. But because I was wounded.
Shame often teaches us to treat mistakes as emergencies. The path of healing taught me something else.
Mistakes are part of being human.
Accountability matters.
Responsibility matters.
But compassion matters too.
The Space Between
Viktor Frankl famously wrote:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”
That day, my emerging transformation was evident in the space between what happened and what I chose to do next.
In that moment, an old story could have taken over.
A story that once said: Someone is at fault. Someone should pay. Someone should feel bad. Because that is how I perceived my mistakes my whole life.
Instead, a different story emerged.
A story with just a little more grace.
A little more understanding.
A little more humanity.
The door shattered. But so did something else.
An old belief that mistakes must always be met with shame.
And at the end of the day, the interaction didn’t end with an argument.
It ended with a hug.
At one point, I reached out to his sweaty body that had been working for hours in 90 degree Texas heat, and embraced the landscaper into one of the biggest hugs I’ve given this year.
Maybe that’s what healing really looks like.
Not eliminating mistakes.
Just creating a little more space between stimulus and response. And filling that space with grace.
The stories we tell ourselves never stay only with us.
They shape how we show up for our children, our partners, our friends, our coworkers, and even strangers.
This week, notice the story you’re carrying.
Is it creating more shame? Or more grace?
The answer may change more than your life. It may change someone else’s too.
Wherever life takes you, you’re allowed to meet it at your own pace.
Dr. Natacha
Founder, MindBodyHeal
In coming to your realization about old narratives bleeding into new situations, you found grace. In finding grace, you were able to forgive yourself and beyond. You then offered grace and forgiveness to this new landscaper. Ending the day in a hug. Beautiful!
Perfect timing on reading this one. I appreciate your analysis of shame. I appreciate your finding of GRACE. Now my problem is that my similar "someone really f**ked up" situation involves a young white (most likely Trump supporting) male at my local AT&T. He has totally mismanaged my transfer of cell phone and internet services from another company. And along the way to straightening out all of the unfortunate events of the last 6 weeks (including finding out that my new phone had never actually been ordered), I discovered this particular brick storefront is a FRANCHISE not corporate AT&T. The only two corporate ones in my state are each a minimum of an hour's drive away from me.
Corporate workers are on salary; the franchisees must turn their jobs into a livable wage with commissions. And that's why there was a sleazy used car dealership feeling to the entire experience. This young Trumper had tried to scam me with additional charges that doubled the quoted amount of my bill.
There is no higher up to complain to; he is the manager at the franchise site. This is what life has become in rural white AmeriKKKa, where a person of color has no choices on going to someone else when services are botched up.
So wish me well with finding my grace and getting resolution... AND MY NEW PHONE