Your Shame Story: Dr. Zoe Shaw on Why We All Have One and What We Can Do About It

“Everyone has a shame story.”

That’s from this week’s guest, Dr. Zoe Shaw. And she’s right. Shame isn’t reserved for the dramatic or the scandalous. It’s universal. It goes back to the garden. It hides deep. And it quietly shapes far more of our behavior than we’d like to admit.

Dr. Zoe is a licensed psychotherapist, speaker, and author of Stronger in the Difficult Places: Heal Your Relationship with Yourself by Untangling Complex Shame. Her story has been featured on the OWN Network, and her clinical work focuses on helping people untangle complex shame, break cycles of codependency, and build emotionally healthy relationships rooted in truth instead of hiding.

In this episode, we unpack what shame really is, how it forms, and why so many Christians confuse shame with holiness. Zoe shares her story of becoming pregnant at 15, being sent away to give birth in secret, and returning home carrying layers of hidden shame that shaped decades of overachievement, people-pleasing, and self-protection.

And if you’ve spent any time in recovery, you know this pattern. Shame doesn’t make you better. It makes you hide. It drives behavior underground. It convinces you that if people really knew you, they wouldn’t love you—and maybe that God wouldn’t either.

Zoe explains the difference between guilt and shame, simple shame and complex shame, and why guilt can lead to repentance, but shame leads to isolation. We talk about how complex shame snowballs over time, how overachievement can become a coping strategy, and why external validation doesn’t always dissolve what’s happening internally.

We also talk about faith. About bringing your real self—not just your cleaned-up self—to Christ. Because the gospel tells us we are loved despite our flaws and invites us out of hiding. We wrestle with forgiveness—not as minimizing what happened—but as “giving up all hope of a better past.” We talk about codependency, about trying to fix others in order to feel worthy ourselves. And we explore what Zoe calls the “maintenance phase” of healing, where shame still shows up but no longer gets to run the show.

If everyone has a shame story, the real question becomes: What are you doing with yours? Are you hiding it? Managing it? Overachieving around it?

Or are you bringing it into the light—where Christ has been inviting you the whole time?

Looking for a one-stop recovery resource? Learn more about the Tyndale Life Recovery Bible here.

We Explore:

—The difference between guilt, simple shame, complex shame, and toxic shame
—Why shame drives behavior underground instead of transforming it
—How complex shame builds in layers over time
—The connection between shame and overachievement, self-harm, and addiction patterns
—What it means to “deconstruct the blame”
—Forgiveness as giving up hope of a different past
—The link between shame and codependency
—Why fixing others won’t fix you
—Healthy vulnerability versus oversharing
—What the maintenance phase of healing actually looks like

Get Zoe's new book: Stronger in the Difficult Places
Follow Zoe on Instagram
Watch Zoe's story on OWN
Follow me: @jonseidl
Order my new book, Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic
Get the Tyndale Life Recovery Bible: https://hubs.la/Q041HjWm0

Support the Show: https://www.jonseidl.com/

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