The Relief That Kept Me Stuck
There’s a moment I didn’t recognise for a long time because, on the surface, it didn’t feel painful.
It felt relieving.
It usually came in a relationship after something subtle but destabilising, a shift in tone, a missed moment, a sense that connection had thinned just enough for my body to notice. I would feel that familiar disorientation begin, the quiet panic that comes when there’s a break in connection, when I don’t quite know where I stand.
My chest would tighten, my energy would speed up and I’d feel the urge to reach, explain, smooth things over.
And then the shame sentence would arrive.
'I’m asking for too much.'
'I shouldn’t need this.'
'This is on me.'
And the relief was immediate.
The uncertainty collapsed.
My nervous system settled.
The question of whether my needs mattered was answered quickly and decisively.
I knew what to do again.
Go quiet.
Soften.
Whilst over riding the ache in my body and telling myself to be understanding.
In that moment, self-blame felt like steadier ground.
Because as long as I assumed I was the problem, I didn’t have to stay with the loneliness that was surfacing inside the relationship. I didn’t have to feel the grief of not being met, or the fear of what it might mean if I named what I needed and nothing changed.
Shame resolved the moment for me.
It gave me certainty when I couldn’t tolerate not knowing.
It gave me a role when I felt unmoored.
It gave me a way to stay connected without risking rupture.
And it worked - in the short term.
The relationship stayed intact.
Nothing exploded.
I told myself I was being mature, gracious, calm.
But the relief always came with a cost I couldn’t see at first.
Each time I used shame to steady myself, I disappeared a little more. I stopped trusting the signals in my body. I stopped bringing my needs into the space between us. I learned how to shelve them quietly, how to carry the relationship by myself, how to stay easy to be with even as I grew more exhausted and alone.
Over time, that relief became automatic.
The fastest way out of uncertainty.
The quickest way back to calm.
And the most familiar way to maintain connection.
And slowly, intimacy began to hollow out.
Because intimacy can’t deepen when self-erasure becomes the price of staying connected.
This is the part I’m grieving now.
Not just the relationships themselves, but how often I used shame to protect myself from the vulnerability of being seen. How often I chose the relief of self-blame over the risk of staying present with what my body already knew.
If you recognise this it’s because you’re deeply relational, your nervous system is attuned and you learned early that connection mattered, even if it meant leaving yourself.
And the work, for people like us, isn’t more insight.
It’s learning how to stay when the relief of shame is offered, and choosing, instead, to belong to ourselves.
