Name: Nietzsche - Overcome Shame, Become Who You Are
Uploaded: 2022-02-23T18:01:20.000Z
Duration: 10 min 7 s
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In /The Joyous Science/, Nietzsche writes, “Whom do you call bad?

Those who always want to put others to shame.

So according to Nietzsche, someone who's truly free is free of shame, and he thinks

Why is it important to be free of shame, and why is it bad to shame others?

That's what I wanna explore in this essay, and I wanna start with a question: what does

In /The Joyous Science/, Nietzsche says, “What does your conscience say?

This is an important idea in Nietzsche's work, and not only is it one that I agree

with, but it's the starting point for this essay: everyone has a true self which they

must become, and it's possible for us to fail to become our true selves.

Think of yourself like the seed of an oak tree.

As the seed, you contain the entire, full expression of the oak tree within you, but

if the conditions aren't right, if the soil isn't good, if you don't have enough sunlight,

rain, or nutrients, you can fail to become a fully grown oak tree.

And so freedom is the freedom to become what you are, to become the fullest expression

of yourself, and with that idea in mind, we can turn back to shame.

Because it can prevent you from fully becoming who you are.

And to explain how, let's look deeper into shame.

The shameful mind says, “who I am is not who I should be.”

It has an image of what it means to be a man, or a woman, or a father, or a wife.

And the shameful mind compares itself to this ideal image and finds itself inadequate.

And this measurement, this realization that /who I am is not who I should be/, leads to

But where did this ideal image come from?

When you were a baby, did you have ideas about what you /should/ do?

A pure mind says, “this is what I want to do.”

A conditioned mind says, “this is what I should do.”

So when you live according to a should, you aren't being yourself.

You're being who your society wants you to be, and you're trying to live according

And if you understand that, you understand why Nietzsche thinks shame is bad.

To shame others is to reject who they are.

To shame others is to make people be who you want them to be and not allow them to be themselves.

And when you submit to the shame of others, you reject your true self.

And what happens when we reject our true selves?

In John Bradshaw's, /Healing the Shame that Binds You/, he says that, in order to escape

our shame, we often end up creating false personalities.

As a little boy, Timmy was highly sensitive, artistic, and intuitive.

He would cry whenever he watched a sad movie or listened to a sad song.

He would spend his time painting rather than playing sports.

And he was very attentive to how others felt.

And honestly, these were Timmy's strengths, and he would have made a great artist one

But Timmy's mother always compared Timmy to his brother.

She would say, “you should be more athletic and outgoing like your brother.

Your brother is a real man, and you should be like that.

You're just a skinny, little, girly boy.”

And Timmy's mother would constantly put him down and shame him for who he was.

And so Timmy began to think, /who I am is not who I should be.

There's something fundamentally wrong with me./ And so to escape his shame, he abandoned

his true-self—the artistic, sensitive, and intuitive self—and adopted a false personality.

He began to imitate his brother's actions.

He started going to the gym, playing football, and in general, being a complete bro.

He began to play this masculine role and wear this masculine mask to protect himself from

But to play this role effectively, he himself had to believe that it wasn't a role.

So he had to convince himself of his persona before he could convince others of his persona,

and by doing so, he had to cut off contact with his real, authentic self.

And because he was playing a role, because those behaviours were not authentic for him,

because his life became about outer appearances rather than inner development, he became a

He felt more isolated and alienated from others.

He felt lonely in the presence of others, because they were never really seeing his

Thankfully, at some point, Timmy realizes that he's stuck in toxic relationships.

The people around him, his mother especially, wanna control his life, and so far, he has

He's living the life they want him to live, rather than the life he wants to live.

But finally, he see's the futility of this lifestyle.

By living how his mother and brother believe he should, he maintains his relationship with

But what's the point of maintaining these relationships?

He's not getting anything out of it, and in fact, he's shrinking as a person.

He realizes that these aren't real relationships.

He has no real intimacy with these people: they don't even know who he really is.

And because they don't know who he really is, he feels lonely in their presence: there's

His relationship with them is based on power, not love.

And seeing the futility of this entire act, seeing the futility of playing a role, he

He finds people who accept him for who he is and lives according to what he wants.