This Journal is about how shame comes into our lives, what it does to us, and what we can do to start healing it.
I am reprinting an article by Makai Elias Calles who is a health reporter for The Epoch Times and is host of The Upgrade show. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences and a Master of Arts in Humanities. He has conducted biomedical research at the University of Maryland, collaborated on data analytics projects with NASA, and served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies.
There is an interview in the article which Calles conducts with health practitioner Will Cole. Unfortunately, I have not mastered how to insert video into these Journal posts. However, if you have a subscription to The Epoch Times you can see the interview and the original article.
Makai has an impressive archives of very timely and highly informative articles and interviews. I hope you can see the list and dive into his offering.
Thw article and interview below are most valuable to consider in your healing and human body spiritual journey.
You Can’t Heal a Body You Hate
Shame devastates mental and physical health through self-blame, stress, and chronic inflammation—a phenomenon Will Cole, a leading functional medicine expert, calls “shameflammation.”
Shame Is Unlike Any Other Negative Emotion
Feelings of regulated shame can foster accountability and moral reasoning. However, unregulated or toxic forms of shame can lead to social withdrawal, negative self-identity, and mental illness.
Unlike feelings of guilt, which focus on behavior—“I did something bad”—shame strikes at identity—“I am bad.” Shame is the feeling of being exposed as fundamentally inadequate—not just failing but being revealed as a failure.
Why would shame trigger such powerful reactions?
Our bodies treat threats to how others perceive us as distinct from other forms of stress.
In one common protocol, participants delivered a speech and performed mental arithmetic aloud before stone-faced evaluators who offered no encouragement and demanded that they restart whenever they made a mistake. Sound stressful? Well, it is. Under these conditions, cortisol responses were nearly three times as large as in equally difficult tasks without social evaluation.
Shame doesn’t just activate the stress system. It also causes substantial inflammation.
In a separate study, participants were asked to write about experiences that triggered self-blame. The researchers measured inflammatory markers before and after. Those in the self-blame condition showed significant elevations in tumor necrosis factor receptor activity. This inflammatory protein is linked to autoimmune conditions and chronic disease. Notably, only shame predicted the inflammatory spikes. Guilt—although often a close cousin to shame—showed no correlation. Neither did general negative emotion.
How Shame Gets Under the Skin
The roots of shame often trace back to childhood. Cole explained that in his practice, every patient fills out an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) questionnaire, which evaluates exposure to abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction.
When shame‑laden memories and unresolved trauma keep triggering the body’s stress response, cortisol eventually becomes less effective at shutting down inflammation, a phenomenon known as glucocorticoid resistance. As a result, the immune system is no longer properly regulated and instead stays on high alert, driving chronic inflammation even when there is no infection to fight.
“The higher your ACE score, the more likely you are to have autoimmune problems, metabolic problems, fertility issues, and of course, mental health issues,” Cole said.
Cole used a metaphor: “Your genetics determine the size of your [health] bucket. Your environment determines what fills it. For many people today, the bucket is overflowing, there’s no wiggle room left.”
Once shame enters the picture, it creates a vicious negative cycle. Shame leads to poor choices such as comfort eating and toxic relationships, which, in turn, generate more shame, which amplifies stress, feeding more inflammation.
The Wellness Trap
The shame barrier creates a paradox Cole sees constantly. People do everything “right”—they eat the most nutrient-dense foods under the sun, savor their kombucha, take all the right peptides and stem cells—but are still chronically ill.
“I see people stuck in that frenetic fight or flight,” he said.
The problem is that many people approach wellness as a form of self-punishment—an anxious, persistent doing that keeps the nervous system in a state of high alert. That’s not healing; the pursuit of wellness itself becomes another stressor.
Therefore, Cole observes his patients’ lab work and looks for “check engine lights”: high inflammation, hormonal imbalance, gut dysbiosis. He then links those biomarkers to each patient’s history.
“Is it an environmental toxin?“ he asked. ”A virus? It could be. But we can’t ignore someone’s relationships, their work environment, and their past.”
The missing piece might not be another supplement or biohack. It might be the shame humming quietly in the background.
“What are we feeding our head and our heart on a daily basis?” he asked. “These things matter. They’re information for our biochemistry, just like anything else.”
Balancing Shame With Responsibility
Breaking out of the shameflammation cycle requires, as Cole described it, “balancing grace with truth.” Although you shouldn’t stay stuck in patterns that harm you, beating yourself up doesn’t work, either.
There is a fine line between self-blame and responsibility.
Self-blame is shame pointed inward, and it paralyzes. Self-blame says: “I ate the cake because I have no willpower. I’m disgusting.” It conflates behavior with identity, triggering the same shame response the research describes: cortisol, inflammation, and the urge to withdraw. Because you’ve framed the problem as you, not something you did, there’s nothing actionable to fix—you just feel bad about who you are.
Responsibility rings a different tune: “I ate the cake. I was stressed and exhausted. What can I do differently next time?” The behavior is acknowledged, but it’s separate from your worth as a person. That separation is what allows you to actually change, rather than spiral into the shame that keeps you stuck.
“It’s really a conversation around discernment,” Cole said. “What are the things that love your body back, and what loves your soul back—and the things that don’t?”
Practically, you can start by developing self-compassion.
It certainly did. Participants who scored higher in self-compassion showed markedly lower inflammatory responses than their more self-critical peers. The effect held even after controlling for self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and how distressed participants felt during the task. How you view and relate to yourself under pressure significantly shapes how your body responds.
So what does self-compassion actually look like? Psychologist Kristin Neff, who developed the scale used in the study, identified three core components:
1. Self-Kindness Over Self-Judgment
Instead of attacking yourself for a mistake, you might comfort yourself: “I’m going to be understanding and patient toward myself, even when I don’t like what I did.”
2. Common Humanity Over Isolation
Instead of feeling like you’re the only one who fails, you might say: “Struggling is part of being human. I’m not alone in this.”
3. Mindfulness Over Over-Identification
Instead of spiraling into everything that’s wrong, you might ask: “This is painful, but can I take a balanced view of the situation?”
These are not just empty affirmations but rather a reframe that, according to research, changes how your body processes stress. The goal is not to let you off the hook, but rather to shift away from the self-criticism that breeds shame and illness.
You can’t heal a body you hate, but you can learn to stop hating it.”
Crestone and Beyond
In July, 2017, I posted a Journal writing on Adverse Childhood Events, also known as ACEs. The article above duly notes the influence of ACEs in our lives. My Journal writing goes into considerable more detail, and so, you have this reference if you want to explore more about ACEs.
Other related Journal writings on this website are Stress and Shadow Fear, Part I, Part II, Part III.
The shadow emotional states which arise from our unresolved life traumas are listed here in an ordering from low frequency to higher frequency:
- shame…..humiliation
- guilt…..blame
- apathy…..despair
- grief…..regret
- fear…..anxiety
- desire…..craving
- anger…..hate
- pride…..scorn
Shame and guilt are the lowest emotional states. These 2 states are ones that engender the simmering life processes of elimination (shame) and destruction (guilt).
Higher emotional states can be reached via lifelong healing of the cellular and psychic memories imposed by ACEs and the practice of life skills in the face of challenge.
The higher emotional states are here:
- Courage…affirmation and empowerment
- Neutrality…trust and release
- Willingness…optimism and intention
- Acceptance…forgiveness and transcendence
- Reason…understanding and abstraction
- Love…reverence and revelation
- Joy…serenity and transfiguration
- Enlightenment…Ineffable and pure consciousness
These 17 distinct emotional states states listed above are from Power vs. Force, The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. (2002) are seen on pg. 68 and 69 of that text.
Forgiveness is the only way we heal.
All traumas and transgressions and felt shame and guilt have to be healed out of the flesh.
This process should be embraced as a spiritual process.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Additional Reading
- Early-Life Stress Leaves a Lasting Mark on the Brain…posted here on 10-20-26. “Early-life stress changed how brain cells responded to future challenges in mice, suggesting that adversity during development can leave lasting effects that become apparent when stress returns later in life…Researchers found that 75% of the stress-related changes in proteins that help control access to DNA were associated with genes being more open, active or ready for future use…Mice whose brains were primed during development showed stronger responses to adult stress, including altered gene activity, more easily activated dopamine neurons and behavioral signs of greater stress sensitivity…The affected brain cells weren’t constantly overactive, showing that early adversity didn’t simply lock the brain into a permanent stress response; the heightened reaction emerged when another stressor occurred…Your past doesn’t determine your future response to stress; reducing chronic stress, protecting your sleep, allowing time for recovery and maintaining supportive relationships give you practical ways to better handle the pressures you face today.”
- Stress Alters Metabolic Hormone with Health Consequences, Study Shows…posted here on 10-23-26. “Research from Columbia University shows that psychological stress changes a key metabolic hormone, linking emotional strain directly to energy production and overall health…People with healthy mitochondria experience a drop in this hormone under stress, while those with mitochondrial dysfunction show an increase — suggesting how cellular energy capacity shapes stress resilience…Chronic stress overstimulates classic stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, disrupting blood sugar control, promoting fat storage, and exhausting your mitochondria — the engines that power every cell…Loneliness, childhood neglect, and relationship loss were linked to higher levels of this hormone, while strong social ties were linked to lower levels, suggesting that emotional well-being and physical metabolism are connected…Restoring mitochondrial balance through nutrition, regular movement, deep sleep, and meaningful connection helps calm stress chemistry, boost energy, and slow biological aging.”