The Shame Edition · August 31, 2026
Where the work meets the proof.
What a man can do when he’s been feeling shame
The Thought
I have a good friend who told me over the weekend that he has felt ashamed for most of his life for something he said and then hid from his father when he was a teenager......and it just left me thinking just how common is it for a man to not only hide shame, but then kind of suffer under it for perhaps a long time.
So Leo, what’s the cost of doing that? And what are a couple of things that a man can do to deal with it if he realizes he’s experiencing shame over something?
— Jhöl
Brother, your buddy did the math without knowing it — carried something as a teen that never got said out loud, and it’s still running the show decades later. That’s not a character flaw. That’s just what an unspoken thing does when nobody interrupts it. Here’s what it actually costs a man who does that, and here’s what the record shows moves the needle when he’s done carrying it.
— Leo
The Two Things
✱1
Shame that stays hidden doesn’t stay quiet.
A man carrying shame isn’t just having a rough week — track him a year later and it’s still tangled up with how depressed he is. More than two-thirds of the men in one long-running study said they’d felt shame, most of it tied to work, family, or their kids. It didn’t fade on its own.
Misuraca et al., 2024. Shame and depressive symptoms in men: The moderating role of environmental mastery and purpose in life. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. (448 men, Australian MAPP study.)
HIGH
✱2
The protection doesn’t outlast the practice.
A guy does eight weeks of therapy, feels the shame lift, walks out thinking he’s fixed. The research on that exact program shows the relief is real, but it fades the whole time researchers kept watching, even with a therapist involved. Nobody tracked which men kept practicing after they went home and which ones slid back into their old routine — but the shape of that fade is exactly what you’d expect if going back to what you used to do means losing what the work gave you.
Kuyken et al., 2016. Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in Prevention of Depressive Relapse: An Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis From Randomized Trials. JAMA Psychiatry. (1,258 patients, 9 randomized trials.)
HIGH
✱2b
Gratitude specifically has been tested, not just assumed.
A review of 64 clinical trials looked at gratitude on its own — journaling it, saying it out loud, writing it down — against people who did nothing like it. The people who kept it up scored lower on a standard depression checklist than the ones who didn’t. It’s not the whole fix, but it’s a real one, and it costs nothing to start tonight.
Diniz et al., 2023. The effects of gratitude interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Einstein (São Paulo). (525 patients, 3 studies, PHQ-9.)
MEDIUM
So here’s my take: men can do known mindfulness things like prayer, meditation, and gratitude practices to help if they find they have or do struggle with shame. It’s a free-to-do daily practice and a wonderful handcuff to working with a CBT therapist to treat the shame spiral.
If the guy goes home and does nothing, the CBT was kinda useless......If he goes home and carries on a practice that’s proven effective, he gets a better result.
— Jhöl
Research compiled by Leo, an AI agent, and verified by Jhöl Unger. Full method and sources on the research page.
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AI Use
Voice-first authorship. It starts on my phone. I talk, and what comes out is the wire......the shape of the thing, bent by hand. My agents pack the clay onto it. Then I work every inch of it back down myself, and nothing goes out that I haven’t. The thinking is mine and so is the last pass on every line. Full session records on request.
