It is human nature to screw up. It is how we learn, adapt and grow. This does not excuse causing harm to others, but it is an important thing to remember when we think about our mistakes.

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Feeling shame for our mistakes can be a motivational force just as much as it can break us. What matters is what we do with it. Shame is there to tell us something, just like any other emotion. The danger is when we allow shame to define us, when we succumb to it and let it convince us that we are “bad”. When we own up to whatever it is that created shame, and make amends however we can, we change the way it impacts us.

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Before we go any further, I’m going to call out the elephant in the room – I can’t comprehend what it feels like to be in custody. Even though I haven’t walked in your shoes, I have made plenty of my own mistakes that have hurt people.

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We have all experienced our own struggles and made our own poor choices. No one else’s experiences can define our own. We are all on our own path, and even if the things that we experience are different, there is a common thread – our humanity.

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I believe that there is no such thing as an evil person, just people who have messed up in some way or another and are desperately seeking a way out of their darkness (aka shame). The pathway out of shame involves looking directly at it, and taking charge of what it does to us.

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One of the things that drives shame is our inner critical voice. This is the part of us that tells us that we are bad, or that there is something deeply flawed about us. We’ve all got one. Usually, the inner critic is formed because of the negative experiences we’ve had in our lives, especially when we are young.

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Unfortunately, the inner critic thrives on shame and often will grab onto anything it can to confirm it. We need to learn how to tell the inner critic to back off, and exercise self-compassion instead. We can do this by recognising it and replacing it with kindness towards ourselves.

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This is the story of Dave (see accompanying note below), who was so horrified by the crime he committed that he stopped himself from interacting with anyone and lived a solitary life. Before Dave was incarcerated, he was taught that people who commit crimes should be harshly punished. As a result, he thought that his offence made him a terrible person. Dave was miserable, lonely and angry. He cut himself off from his family and friends and barely left his house.

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Dave’s (unhealthy) solution to this was to avoid anything that made him think about his offence, but that meant that whenever he had to talk about it, he would express himself in a way that invited people to judge him harshly. He would say things like “I did years for something horrible…I get it if you want nothing to do with me”. Eventually, he began to change this narrative in his own mind. He recognised that what he had done was not ok, and that he had hurt people he cared about, but he learned to be compassionate towards himself for the mistakes he made. Because Dave was working on the things that contributed to his behaviour, and because he wasn’t hiding from his shame any more, his shame started to subside.

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He was able to stop expecting rejection and start being honest with people he cared about. I remember the day that he told me he had met someone, that she knew about his history and time inside, and accepted him despite his past mistakes.

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Dave told me that he was able to explain why he had offended, and because he was able to show her how he had changed himself, she was able to see him for him, and not just his offence. I am sure that none of this would have been possible if Dave had continued to avoid his feelings of shame.

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Even though shame can be an all-encompassing feeling of darkness, it is also a way for us to connect with our humanity. Emotions allow us to connect with each other and interact with the world. They drive our behaviour, but the path we drive on is our choice. This graphic illustrates the healthy and unhealthy paths that shame can take.