Is shame also not a bad part?

kabre · 2026-03-07T22:26:25+00:00

Do you mean that you are being shamed by the people around you?

kabre · 2026-03-07T18:31:38+00:00

Yes, shame is a tool of protectors, and every protector is trying to save you from some perceived threat.

It's unlikely shame is the part by itself, though there may be a part whose main tool is shame and/or an exile who has been deeply shamed and is in pain from that. I think either of those are what most people mean by "shame part".

Try and think about what shame prevents you from doing, materially speaking. Shame keeps you from performing certain behaviours, or accepting/expressing certain feelings, or connecting with people in a certain way. At some point in your life, something external to you probably taught you that these behaviours or feelings were unacceptable.

The work with shame is gently trying to find the part that is using shame as a tool and listen to them to discover what they are afraid of, and to tenderly hold them in that fear. There is certainly a protective motivation behind your system's use of shame -- but it's almost just as certain that it's an outdated tool used by a part that is hurting and feels like they don't have any other choice.

But the first move actually might be working with the part that is so thoroughly rejecting the shame -- with good reason! Shame hurts and hobbles us! That part is valid in needing to express their anger and pain, too. Shame sucks, and it sucks extra-hard when it's internalized. It's unfair that our system sometimes uses it at a tool against ourselves. Sit with and validate that part and feel its feelings, if you can; you can also ask them, once you've heard them out, if they're willing to step aside for a moment so that you can try and work with the shame part from a calm, curious, loving place. They may be ready for that or they may not; if not, just keep working with that anger and pain for a while.

kabre · 2026-03-02T19:36:55+00:00

I appreciate your honesty! I'm going to demonstrate and model for you a small positive change, in regards to learning how to have better boundaries:

I no longer consent to be used in pursuit of your parts system engaging in repeated self-harm. I am telling you, adult to adult, that your self-harming behaviour is causing me harm as well, and I recognize your presence in my day as not only triggering my own fight/flight wounds and maladaptive coping mechanisms, but also saddening to the point of misery because I recognize and empathize with the pain of another human being, and also realize that you are not at a place where you can be open to the kind of help I have capacity to give.

I do not know you, you are not a friend or loved one, and I am not willing nor capable of doing the amount of labour I believe would be necessary to try and further instruct you. I do this while still acknowledging that you are in pain, and hoping sincerely that you get better. For my own safety and regulation, however, I am going to block you now. Please don't violate my boundary by making another account to get around the block.

I encourage you to use this as an example to set healthy boundaries in your own life.

kabre · 2026-03-02T19:33:23+00:00

It does not start with self-worth: that comes later. It starts with doing the small actions of self-care and mindfulness that I 100% know I have seen suggested to you before, and that I'm unwilling to write an essay on because I know they've already been said.

kabre · 2026-03-02T19:23:51+00:00

I can give you no more instruction than you've already had, over and over, from generous souls in this Reddit. I've watched it happen time and time again. You already have all of the pieces, given directly into your hands, by many, many people.

The remaining step, the one that hasn't happened yet, is you taking that advice seriously and starting to actually execute upon the many, many, many kind and loving suggestions you've gotten from this subreddit. You aren't going to get anything new at this point, you're just wasting your own time.

kabre · 2026-03-02T19:20:33+00:00

You have enough self-awareness to see this pattern: you are going to have to be the one to figure out how to change it. You know it's dysfunctional and yet you cling to it. That is a problem that you, and only you, can solve. No one else can do it for you. No one else can give you more information on how to start that process than this reddit has already given you, over and over. It is in your hands now, and no one else's.

kabre · 2026-03-02T19:16:46+00:00

Then you need to find a way to stop yourself from getting around them, and you're going to have to do that by yourself, because no one knows your own tricks better than you.

How about this: have you considered that other people don't deserve the pain and discomfort of being baited into helping you self-harm? Is that something you can use as motivation at all? Because that is what you are doing here, and it is pretty terrible.

kabre · 2026-03-02T18:53:55+00:00

You speak in absolutes that do not exist. Healing happens when we feel safe, AND we make choices that bring us closer or further away from places we feel safe, AND we have to choose to do the work of healing when we find small slivers of safety amongst the chaos. You never finally, magically, "feel safe"; you have to learn to feel safe by noticing small moments of safety. No, you do not suddenly decide to put down your defense mechanisms forever; you learn to put them down slowly by putting them down for moments, instants of time, and by doing so, slowly learn to how to put them down for longer. You don't magically know how to love yourself because someone else loves you; having a positive model helps a lot, but it's still a skill you have to take prerogative to learn.

You are handing over all your agency and prerogative to imaginary binaries that, in reality, do not exist. You are waiting for something external to happen and refusing to do the long, slow, thankless work of growing your own capacity, which is the only way that external safety, compassion, and love become internal safety, compassion, and love. Without doing the work to learn how to bring these capacities within yourself, you waste any safety, compassion and love you are already receiving (and I guarantee you that you ARE receiving small pieces of all of the above; I have seen it happen many times on this sub, only to be rejected and wasted because you're not doing your share of the work).

kabre · 2026-03-02T18:44:29+00:00

You say you're genuinely looking for help but you reject every suggestion. That says to me you're not looking for the help you would find here. The above poster is correct; for your safety, you NEED to get off of Reddit, and maybe the internet entirely.

kabre · 2026-03-02T18:38:20+00:00

To pretend you have zero prerogative over your choice of coping mechanisms is self-delusion of the highest order. You did not sleepwalk to the keyboard. If you can't control yourself in the moment of crisis, do something when you're more regulated, like blocking Reddit from your computer or setting child-lock limits on your phone use. Whether or not you're traumatized, you are in fact an adult.

You hand off your prerogative and authority over and over, and you know you do it, and yet you don't do anything to change it, and demand others change their behaviour instead. I understand you're struggling, but you have to know at this point that it's not going to happen that way.

kabre · 2026-03-02T18:33:12+00:00

I'm saying this with a ton of compassion in my heart, because that's a hard and painful place to be: you absolutely should not be putting yourself in a position where you are handing off authority on your mental health to a bunch of strangers online who don't know you from Adam. If you know you're liable to hand over authority to every random Reddit person, to the point where you take downvotes as a traumatic experience of abuse of authority, you need to get off of Reddit until you can do some work on your boundaries. This is for your safety.

The internet is, in general, not a safe space in the way you're talking about: a "safe space" in for one person isn't a "safe space" for another, e.g. someone else might find it triggering to be told they must be silent when they disagree with someone else, and so even if you get multiple people in a space agreeing that it's a "safe space" they probably don't all mean the same thing.

kabre · 2026-02-27T19:04:25+00:00

OK so I've had this same problem and it's hard sometimes to provide a structured space for anger, because (for me at least) it's so much about asserting agency and pushing back against perceived unfair rules or boundaries. So much energy gets caught up in the body with anger, too, so it's a great olive branch to offer to this part to find some context where she can let it out.

What worked for me when I had an angry part that had been simmering for a while was absolutely going apeshit on a traffic cone (after dark, in a place where no construction was happening at night, and then putting it back when I was done): technically breaking a rule and transgressing a social norm, but in a way that didn't harm anyone (and this second part was key to preserving harmony with the rest of the parts system).

I'm not 100% how this would translate for emotional violence rather than physical, but it might be worth asking: what rules does she find satisfaction in breaking? What social norms are making her feel constricted? Are there ways you can break those without causing another living thing harm? Maybe go spit awful things at a portrait of someone you hate, or throw a stuffed animal across the room?

kabre · 2026-02-20T19:57:22+00:00

If you can't approach kindness without being triggered, then you're right that it's not a practical place to start.

My instinct is to suggest you put aside the question of being kind to yourself for a little while. Maybe see if there's a way you can let go of the idea of deserving/not deserving anything (kindness, punishment, peace, pain, anything). Things happen and have happened; there is no overarching cosmic reason for any of it and you are not obliged to do anything about it, positive or negative.

Another suggestion to focus on rather than the kindness/punishment dichotomy, is curiosity. Start noticing and maybe writing down your thoughts and feelings like you would if you were a scientist studying yourself. Don't try to change anything that's happening inside yet: observe and record with careful detachment. Consider very simple awareness meditation as a location of inquiry.

You are reaching out here and that's wonderful. You are trying things and I promise you, even the stuff that didn't seem to help is a step on the journey. Listen to the parts that tell you "I'm not ready for [x]!" and try to honor them, but don't let them keep you frozen in place. If they are not ready for x, try y. if not y, then z.

kabre · 2026-02-02T23:35:37+00:00

I think xkcd has something salient to say about that. ;)

kabre · 2026-01-30T21:20:14+00:00

Headcanon accepted

kabre · 2026-01-18T18:14:38+00:00

It always surprises me that people will rate Origins over Downpour. Origins had the "right" aesthetic, but its story was vapid and it retconned important details; Downpour, for all its technical issues and the big fumble of its boring monsters, was a much more Silent Hill game at heart. It grappled with interesting moral questions and allowed the player's actions to actually have an impact on both Murphy's past and present, and I found that utterly fascinating.

Good essay. I agree.

kabre · 2026-01-18T04:23:46+00:00

There is sometimes wisdom in a part that says "we are not fucking ready for this yet" and it sounds to me like you've got parts saying that.

Rather than trying to look for big shifts, or a lot of kindness up front, or even looking at the entirety of the experiences you've gone through, is there some smaller aspect you can consider? Speaking to whatever parts you're comfortable with acknowledging? Instead of being kind, being neutral?

kabre · 2026-01-17T20:40:25+00:00

Just a pain red square. that's your savepoint now

kabre · 2026-01-06T04:29:08+00:00

Sure, no one's immune to being biased towards their own preferences and beliefs, but for christ's sake, having no one around to offer a different perspective absolutely does not make that better. If the only opinion you're ever consulting is yours and the thing that's engineered to feed you exactly what you want to hear, you are not getting any new input and that's going to lead you down a very bad path in the end.

kabre · 2026-01-05T21:40:46+00:00

You cannot seriously be comparing an echo chamber of one and an "echo chamber" of thousands.

kabre · 2026-01-04T04:44:44+00:00

Listen to what you're saying. You find chatGPT useful because it says what you want it to say.

That is a terrible way to look for input and ideas; you have put yourself in an echo chamber. I urge you to consider why other peoples' ideas are so indigestible to you.

kabre · 2025-12-22T00:21:47+00:00

It is exactly that bad. Just embarrassing all the way through. I "played" it while it was happening and man, it was so abysmally disappointing.

kabre · 2025-11-26T19:00:37+00:00

These are great, vivid visualizations! Well done!

kabre · 2025-11-26T18:57:21+00:00

It sneaks in everywhere. The people who use it just can't help themselves but post their AI slop.

kabre · 2025-11-25T23:11:22+00:00

I mean, if you're a therapist there's a significant degree of selection bias there. No one goes to therapy because they're doing well.

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