How Shame Protects Us and How Somatic Work Helps Us Heal

This article is for women who carry shame in their bodies and do not fully understand why it feels so persistent or overwhelming. Shame is often treated as something to eliminate or overcome, but from a somatic perspective it begins as a protective response. In this piece, I explore how shame functions in the nervous system, how it becomes internalized, and how trauma informed somatic awareness helps restore connection, safety, and the capacity to be seen again.

I had never thought of shame as a form of protection, but it can be. 

My mentor and Somatic Experiencing teacher, Luis Mojica, teaches that the posture of shame tells a story the body remembers well. The posture of shame: the curled in shoulders, head down, eyes averted, is meant to hide us and keep us hidden when something doesn’t feel safe.

From a nervous system perspective, shame is a freeze response. It helps us become less visible in the presence of a threat. When the threat passes and we have access to connection with someone safe enough to help us regulate, the posture of shame naturally softens and releases.

The difficulty begins when that freeze response does not resolve because there is no safe witness and when connection is absent. Instead of shame being a temporary strategy that helps us survive a moment, it becomes internalized and chronic. It stops being something the body does and becomes something we believe we are.

This is how shame turns into an identity. We stop hearing the body saying hide for now and start hearing I am unworthy of being seen, heard, or loved. The nervous system stays vigilant, protecting us from future exposure by keeping us small.

For many of us, this pattern began early. As children, we may have received subtle or direct messages that it was not safe to take up space. That our needs were inconvenient. That our expression was too much. Without consistent co regulation or repair, those moments lodged themselves into the body.

Shame became woven into our physiology.

My mentor often says that shame is the absence of connection in the presence of a threat, especially an ongoing one. Safety, by contrast, is not the absence of threat. It is the presence of connection.

That distinction came alive for me recently in a very ordinary way.

I performed at a local open mic and forgot the words to my second song. I tried again and the same thing happened. My body became flustered and overwhelmed, and I decided to end my set early and leave the stage.

Even though the room was kind and encouraging, my body did not register that immediately. I wanted the earth to swallow me. I felt exposed and foolish. Everyone told me it was not a big deal and they were right. I have seen musicians forget lyrics many times, including my favourite rockstar, Bryan Adams.

No one was shaming me that night.

And still, my body remembered shame.

What arose was not a story or a belief. It was sensation: heat, contraction and a full body sense of vulnerability without language attached to it. An old physiological memory surfaced, one that did not need explanation to be real.

Instead of trying to talk myself out of it, I stayed with my body. I went home, I curled into bed, I oriented to my space and I looked for places where I felt even small pockets of safety and comfort. It took hours that night and more time the next morning before my system settled again.

That experience clarified something important for me about shame.

Shame protects us initially, but it only resolves through connection. Without being witnessed with compassion, the body cannot disidentify from it. We do not metabolize the experience of being seen and surviving. We remain frozen in the posture of hiding.

When someone stays present with us, without minimizing or fixing, shame can soften. We remember that a mistake does not equal exile. That being visible does not automatically mean danger.

That is what my friends and partner offered me that night: they did not rush me or shame my shame. They simply stayed connected. Their presence helped my body complete an old unfinished response and restore my capacity to be seen again.