Chronic shame operates as a hidden force in many of our lives. It’s a deeply held, ill-defined, and often disguised conviction that something is intrinsically wrong with us. When it breaks into consciousness, we experience it as an assault, but most of the time, we twist ourselves around it without realising what we’re doing.

This sense of inadequacy distorts how we relate to ourselves, to other people, and to the wider world. It gives rise to a persistent feeling of not being good enough. It may also create an embodied belief that we don’t really deserve success, respect, or love. It can leave us wary of being seen and acutely alert to the risk of rejection.

Over time, this sense of inadequacy becomes so bound up with our identity that we mistake it for who we are.

A note on terminology: there’s no single agreed-upon term for this enduring and harmful form of shame. In contemporary popular writing, toxic shame is a common term, while academics speak of shame-proneness, dispositional shame, characterological shame, internal shame, or being shame-based. I use chronic shame because it speaks to our experience without carrying a moral charge.