Read the article about shame and men and I need to process this somewhere.
I have been carrying shame about losing my job 18 months ago. I got another job — a better one, actually. But I still havent told some of my friends I was let go. I just said I “decided to move on.” My wife knows the truth and shes been great about it, but I physically cannot make myself tell my buddies.
The article talked about how shame for men is tied to status and competence. Losing your job isnt just losing income — its losing your identity as someone who has their shit together. And I think thats whats happening. I cant separate “I lost a job” from “I am a failure.”
Anyone else carry stuff like this? How do you let it go?
The distinction between shame and guilt from that article stuck with me. Guilt is “I did something bad.” Shame is “I AM bad.” They feel similar but guilt can actually motivate you to fix things. Shame just… paralyzes.
I carried shame about my drinking for years. Even after I got sober I was still ashamed of the person I was during that time. What finally helped was telling one person the full ugly truth and having them not run away. That cracked it open.
Maybe start with the friend you trust most. You dont have to tell everyone. Just one person who already knows youre not perfect and still shows up.
Brene Brown gets cited a lot and I know some guys roll their eyes at her stuff. But her research on shame resilience is solid. The core finding: shame cannot survive being spoken. The moment you say it out loud to someone safe, it loses most of its power.
For men specifically — our shame triggers are almost always about being percieved as weak, incompetent, or not in control. Job loss hits all three at once. No wonder it sticks.
The coaching move I use with guys: reframe the story. “I got fired” becomes “I survived a professional setback and landed somewhere better.” Same facts. Different narrative. Different relationship to the experience.
Blue collar perspective here. In my world shame is about different things — not making enough money, not being able to fix something, asking for help. When I got hurt on the job and couldnt work for 6 months, I felt like less of a man. My wife was the breadwinner and I couldnt even look my father-in-law in the eye.
What helped? Time. And finding guys going through the same thing. Turns out shame thrives in isolation. Hard to feel like a freak when 5 other guys in the room are nodding along to your story.
Thanks everyone. This thread alone is kind of proving the point — saying it out loud (even anonymously online) already makes it feel smaller. Maybe I will tell one friend this week. The one who got divorced last year and was honest about it. If he can be real about that I can be real about this.
The shame around asking for help is SO deeply ingrained. I literally had a panic attack in the parking lot before my first therapy appointment because I felt like such a failure for needing it. 8 months later its the best decision I ever made but god that first step was brutal.
For me it goes back to childhood. My dad never once said he was struggling with anything. Just powered through everything. So I internalized that asking for help = weakness. Took me till 38 to realize thats not strength, thats just suffering in silence. Still working on unlearning it tbh
same here. my therapist calls it toxic self-reliance and that phrase alone kind of broke my brain. like wait, being TOO self-reliant can be a problem? yeah turns out it can when you literally cant ask your wife for emotional support without feeling defective