If Punishing Yourself Worked, You’d Have Healed By Now

If punishing yourself worked, you’d have healed by now. That’s a line I said in a class recently, and I can’t stop coming back to it. Most of us have been taught that when we’re not getting what we want in life, the fix is to punish ourselves. We just don’t call it that. We call it “holding myself accountable,” or “making sure I don’t make the same mistake twice,” or needing a system and a list and someone to keep us on track. It hides in all these reasonable-sounding places, and underneath it is the same quiet belief: that there’s something about me I need to fix.

In this episode I talk about where that belief comes from, how far back it goes, and why it was never yours to carry in the first place. I share how “making a mess” got baked into my identity as a kid, and how so many of us walk around with a version of that: the hot mess, the scattered one, the one who’s bad with money or bad with love. And I get honest about what actually happens when we beat ourselves up for it. We shrink. We get smaller and less visible and less willing to go build the life we actually want. You can’t make big waves with your wings when you’ve convinced yourself you’re the size of a fly.

I also tell you about throwing my hip out this week training for a figure skating competition, and the exact moment my brain tried to turn it into proof that I should have known better. Having your own back isn’t something you master once. It’s a practice you come back to, one moment at a time.

Key Takeaways:

1. If punishing yourself actually worked, you’d already be healed. You’ve tried it for years, and it keeps doing the opposite of what you hoped.
2. “Holding yourself accountable” is often self-punishment in disguise. It hides in the lists, the systems, and the “hot mess” identity we carry around.
3. The stories about who you are (scattered, clumsy, bad with money, bad with love) were baked in during childhood. They were never the truth about you.
4. Beating yourself up makes you shrink. You get smaller, less visible, and less able to create what you actually want.
5. Radical acceptance of a messy life beats chasing a perfect one. Show me a person and I’ll show you a messy life. Perfection is a setup, not a standard.
6. Real change comes from learning to have your own back: regulating your nervous system, growing your capacity for big emotion, shifting your perspective, and setting boundaries, again and again over time.

Come to my free class: I’m running a free class called The Anti-Hero on Monday, August 24th at 12:00 PM Pacific. It’s all about shame, and about learning to have your own back in a way you’ve probably never heard before. Come find out what it feels like to stop being the woman who’s always punishing herself, and imagine who you get to be on the other side of that.

Save your seat: amandahess.ca/shame1

You are not the only one. I promise you that.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. amandahess.ca/shame1