The Beast of Shame, its Unruly Kingdom & How We Help Those Lost in its Conniving Grip

An essay on being laid off from The Dogist and seven tried and true strategies to help friends who are struggling with shame and mental illness.

It has officially been a month since I was laid off from The Dogist. The month felt like a fever dream – blurry, chaotic, a tangled mess of unfinished ideas, unrelenting self-doubt and shame, so much shame. My mind, a frenetic free-for-all of questions, whirred continuously like cars speeding unchecked on The Autobahn all month long. 

Is this my fault? What did I do wrong? What brought us here?

How could I believe that this was “our” year? How could I think that we were finally at a good place and then land here?

And how did it happen so fast? How did five years of relentless hard work and self-sacrifice just disappear? 

What am I missing? What conversations were had behind closed doors that might offer an explanation?

And how will I ever trust myself again if I could be so unaware of such impending change? Yes – how will I ever trust myself again?

The more that I asked these questions, the more I spiraled and the more I spiraled, the more I disappeared from my life. The past month passed that way – lost to the frenetic free-for-all. My days were spent wracking my mind and its memories over and over again for clues – artifacts – signs – anything I’d missed. And soon enough, since I was so consumed by this need to find an answer, I stopped responding to emails and then texts and then even to knocks at my own door. 

I’ve weathered seasons of self-doubt before but what used to ground me in those times – the routine and structure that I had scrupulously built over the course of five years – had completely fallen out from beneath me in a matter of moments and without it, I felt like I had nothing to hold onto. Untethered, at a loss for how to begin again, I chaotically tried to stay moving – to do something each day – to get out of bed and live. But my mind was relentless and it spewed lie after lie about how my job at The Dogist was all that made me worthy of my existence – all that I had to offer – and that this unexpected lay off was a declaration of my own failure and lack of belonging within my community. 

This lie snowballed and soon enough, I only felt safe with two humans – my husband and dear friend and plunge companion, Jules. The darkness of my mind and its distortions consumed me and my relationships and just like that, I was lost to the land of shame.

I’ve talked about shame before – about its conniving ways and inherent ability to lie with conviction. Shame is an unseemly beast that must be tamed for if it is not tethered and caged, fact-checked and proven evil and inaccurate, it grows into an entire landscape – a world of deceit and doom and the work to travel beyond it, to believe beyond it – even think beyond it grows exponentially. In those times, when the beast moves into the very place we live – and becomes the air we breathe and the ground beneath us – we evolve into a reflection of that twisted habitat and disappear from the rest of the world. No text, note, email, or sentiment is seemingly strong enough to not be converted into a message of shame within that ghastly realm. And so, even as friend after friend and family member after family member try to reach out – to offer a helping hand – to do the exact thing we need – to show up and love us, exactly as we are, in our darkness – we disappear.

For years, since I was a very young girl, I have disappeared into these hellscapes of shame during difficult times. I never mean to – to be lured into deception by the beast – to fall prey to its lies and end up in its twisted kingdom, consumed with self-hatred and suffering. It’s taken me years to realize and truly understand that our worlds are what our minds make of them and when I fall prey to shame, my mind is quick in abandoning me and my community for darker pastures. 

This past month, I had enumerable friends and family members reach out. Whether over Instagram, email, text or the phone, my community showed up for me in numbers approaching the hundreds.  Kind message after kind message poured in. It was a volume of love I could have never even fathomed a few years ago. And yet, no matter how loving the note, kind the message, or sincere the offer to help was, my mind heard nothing but shame. My mind – lost in the hellscape of shame – translated every single message into a declaration of my failure, into proof that they didn’t believe I could survive this layoff, and into further reason to hide from both them and myself.

And then, a few days ago, a community member whom I do not know personally submitted this question for this very column:

My friend who is struggling with mental illness is ghosting me. Did I do something wrong? Do I keep reaching out or is giving them space the right approach? Any advice or ideas would be so appreciated.

Reading it, a pang in my chest rose. Although I was not the actual friend that was mentioned, I was the very person of which she spoke. I was the ghoster – the one who met messages of love and support with silence. The message snapped me out of my shame spiral and I planned to spend the next week responding to 241 texts and 137 emails that say my shame got the better of me but I am so grateful that they reached out.

But not everyone has spent 20 years in therapy breaking down the gates of shame. Not everyone can flip their perspective on a dime and so today, I want to offer some ideas for how to reach out and support friends when they are in it like I was. Of course, I don’t presume to know why this very person disappeared and why others will as well. I also fully acknowledge that what I have seen work for myself and others might not work for you. However, anything is better than nothing and together, we will find our way through.

So, from a human showing up in the hard truth that shame sometimes swallows me whole too, I offer this — seven tried and true strategies to help a loved one who is struggling with shame and mental illness.