Shame Is Anger Turned Inward

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:34:08 GMT

Where shame really comes from

Shame is formed when the people around us, often our caregivers in early childhood, don't meet our needs, or even worse, betray us or override our boundaries. This happens to some extent for everyone, but for some of us it happens to a much greater extent.

Here's where it gets interesting. As children, we are fully dependent on our caregivers for our survival, so we will do anything to keep them close. In healthy child-parent relationships, a child is allowed to be angry, and the parent does not abandon them for it. But in more unhealthy relationships, anger from the child is punished and probably threatened with physical or emotional abandonment. So the child has no other option than to turn their anger inward, toward themselves, instead of acknowledging that someone else hurt them.

How internalized shame is born

When our needs aren't met, or worse things happen, the caregiver both fails to attune to us and doesn't allow us to be upset with them for it. So the child is bound to keep relating to someone who doesn't meet their needs for their own survival. Silent anger builds up and can't be expressed outward, so it ends up directed inward, because it needs to go somewhere. This is how internalized shame is born: "Something must be fundamentally wrong with me, my needs don't matter, I don't matter, I'm weak and incapable." All of these words come from shame.

How this shows up as adults

If you don't work on healing this, you'll probably keep attracting people from this shame: people who can't handle your no, who don't genuinely respect your needs and boundaries, and who are manipulative. There is still a little voice inside that says, "I'm destined to be in a relationship where I need a person who doesn't truly meet me, for my own safety." That's where betrayal trauma comes into play: the person who was meant to keep you safe was actually the person who hurt you. So love, safety, and being disrespected are no longer separate things. Being safe and loved starts to mean you're also disrespected at the same time.

What healing this looks like

I've been through this process myself, and there is a lot of grief involved. As children, we start seeing ourselves as the problem, because in this way we are still in control and can do something about it, like becoming sweeter or nicer to our parents. Acknowledging that they weren't meeting our needs was impossible, because we needed them for our safety. But that is exactly what we need to start doing as adults.

Now that we don't need our caregivers for our survival anymore, we can start grieving how lonely, unseen, and unsafe we've felt in certain moments. Part of this healing also includes allowing the anger to return to where it belongs: the outside, to the people who betrayed us. This doesn't have to involve screaming and shouting at them. We can simply do this within ourselves, through healing work.

A practical tip

"Shame cannot survive being spoken." I love this quote. Another thing I practice when I feel shame coming up is to actively speak on it. Shame wants to create more shame by turning even more inward and isolating. So when we feel shame arising and give it words, something instantly starts to transform. Just make sure you do this with people who won't judge or shame you for it, because that will probably only reinforce it.

You're allowed to grieve the childhood you didn't get, so you can build the adulthood you deserve.

The Healer Syndrome: Healing the World to Finally Feel Loved

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:34:08 GMT

The healer syndrome: how we try to heal the pain of the world to finally get the love we missed

Many healers in this world try to compensate for their own sense of unworthiness, and for never having felt truly supported, by carrying the pain of the world on their shoulders. Always being there for others, always being the strong one, bringing in the advice and the care. It can look so generous from the outside.

But it's not as innocent as it looks, because in a way, they are compensating for their own lack of worth and their own feeling of loneliness. And that's not genuine care. No one is perfect here, and there isn't anyone to blame. But this dynamic often keeps us stuck in a victim-saviour pattern in energy healing relationships. Both people are just trying to get their unmet needs met through each other. The therapist becomes the saviour and finally feels seen. The client finally feels held and met.

Something interesting happens when this bubble bursts, though. Often the therapist in this dynamic is extremely sensitive to any criticism and becomes the victim the moment they receive it. Then the client turns into the saviour, trying to make the therapist feel good again, and there we go: codependency at its finest.

Recognizing the victim-saviour pattern in energy healing work

This is, of course, the unhealthy version of the dynamic. If both people can look honestly at their own patterns, it becomes a completely different story. I'm sharing this to show you the dynamic I have been in with multiple healers in my own life. I wanted to be saved. They wanted to save. We temporarily felt good, until we didn't, and the bubble burst, and we were both confronted with our pain again.

This is part of why it took me years to acknowledge that offering healing sessions is part of my path. Because I became aware of this dynamic, and in my early days I had also taken part in the other side of it myself (we always hold both sides of a dynamic at some point), I really took my time with calling myself a "healer." I wanted to make sure this calling would still exist after healing the big chunks of my own unworthiness and grief.

What makes the difference in energy healing that comes from the heart

Does this intention come from an unmet need, or from my heart? If we really listen, we can notice whether a desire comes from an unmet need or from love. An unmet need often carries a certain intensity and fear, where a heart's calling is usually much softer. After doing a lot of healing on this subject, and letting myself truly be held, I got curious whether I still had the intention to give healing sessions at all. For a while I didn't, and I fully accepted that. I didn't need to anymore. Until people kept coming to me, asking if I could give them a session. It felt like a natural gesture I could offer. From there my practice started expanding again, but this time from a completely relaxed and loving state of being.

Am I wanting to fix someone to feel good about myself? Or do I simply meet them as a human being and trust the process? This is the question every healer should ask themselves. We can be good healers when we stop trying to heal anything. How could we ever think we know better than the intelligence that runs this whole healing process? If you've learned a powerful technique like VortexHealing, that's wonderful, don't hold it back from the world either. But let the healing do the healing. You're not responsible for the pain of the world. You don't need to prove anything. When you trust the process to be exactly right, the person in front of you is already whole, and healing will happen in its own way, with or without your presence.

If this resonates and you're curious what a session held from this space feels like, you're welcome to book a free 20-minute intake call .

Healing Insights by Liza du Plessis