How Do You Let Go of Shame From Your Past?
Faith & Focus Friday
How Do You Let Go of Shame From Your Past?
I thought I was just afraid to post. I was really carrying an old belief God was asking me to put down.
After years of trying, I finally started posting. Then I checked the views. Almost no one was watching.
And a quiet voice said the thing I had been afraid of for years. You tried again, and it went nowhere again. Maybe you are the problem.
That voice was shame. And shame is almost never about the thing that just happened. It is about an old belief the failure left behind, still smoldering under the surface, waiting for a new moment to flare back up. I call that an ember.
You let go of shame by dealing with the ember underneath, not the failure on top. Here is the pattern I saw, the one that kept me small for years, and the faith-led way out.
Why does one old failure still have this much power?
Because the fire you feel today is old. It only looks new.
I learned this the hard way. A season came where everything felt like it was on fire at once. A hard business stretch. Fear about money. Doubt about whether I should even be trying. It felt brand new, like this problem had just landed on me.
It had not. The fear, the anxiety, and the doubt had been burning quietly for years. Out of sight. Never named. The fire looked new. The embers were old.
The fire is not the danger. The ember is.
You can stamp out today’s fear a hundred times, and it keeps coming back, because the coal underneath never went out.
Why was I so afraid of a channel when I felt sure everywhere else?
That was not my first try. It was more like my tenth.
I have been trying to start a YouTube channel since 2012. Back then I had one called Lipstick Unplugged, where I interviewed people. I was even in Marie Forleo’s B-School. But I am an extrovert, and a full day of interviews left me spent. I also started to wonder if I even wanted to be a business coach. So I stopped.
I kept coming back anyway. In 2023 I paid for Video Ranking Academy from Think Media, a course I still recommend. Then last November, after praying about it, I paid $6,000 for another YouTube course called Content Growth Engine. It was a 6-month program. By March I still had not posted a single video.
I was researching scripts, titles, and thumbnails. I had hired an editor and a scriptwriter. And it all felt fake, because I just wanted to get on and teach, not read a script. Finally a coach told me the thing I needed to hear: pick a topic you like and post something every day. No script. So I picked storytelling, the no-script way I teach it, and I started posting.
Then I checked the views. A handful. Almost no one.
Here is the part that should not make sense. I am not new at business. I have built business after business for years. That same season, I used my own tools, my 6P and my Six-Second Pitch, to build and launch a real business of my own, and it worked. I was confident there. I was ready and willing to teach it, because I had done it before.
But I was not confident about this. Not about putting my content on full display for the whole world, while only a handful of people watched. A channel was new. I did not know how to build one. I knew it could take years. So the same woman who felt sure in business felt exposed and small the moment the camera was on. The ember was never about the videos. It was about being seen trying, and looking like I failed.
How does one failure become “I am a failure”?
A week before I recorded this, I sat down with God and asked Him a question I had carried for a long time. Why does fear, anxiety, and doubt last so long? Why does it become part of who a person thinks they are?
Fear, anxiety, and doubt are meant to be short. When they last for years, something else is going on underneath.
And then I saw a word: EMBERS. It did not come all at once. The first letter seemed to say emotion. The M looked like memories. Then it went muddled, and I could not make out the middle. But the end was clear. It ended in shame. I sat with God and worked out the rest myself, letter by letter.
Here is what it looked like in me. A handful of views brought up an emotion, disappointment. That turned into a memory, years of trying to start a channel and stopping. The memory hardened into a belief: I tried, it went nowhere, so I am a failure on camera. The belief became my ego, an “I am” statement: I am not good on camera. That fed regret, all the years of trying and stopping and coming back. And regret finished in shame: hiding instead of posting.
I have taught this out loud since, to rooms of people. Every time, someone realizes their fear is not new. It is an old ember they never named.
The Hidden Ember
How fear, anxiety, and doubt harden into shame
Emotion
Something happens. You feel fear or rejection.
Memory
The moment ends, but you keep replaying it.
Belief
“I failed” becomes “I always fail.”
Ego
The belief becomes an “I am” statement.
Regret
You start living backward.
Shame
The event stops being what you did and becomes who you are.
That is the slide from a feeling to a self.
What you revisit becomes what you believe.
Why can’t you just talk yourself out of it?
Because by the time it reaches belief, it has moved into your body.
This is not only a faith idea. Researchers who study this say the same thing. Negative core beliefs thrive in your gut and instincts. That is why you cannot talk yourself out of them. Your mind starts scanning every new situation for proof the belief is true, and it keeps finding it, because that is what it is looking for.
The Bible showed this from the very start. The first thing shame did to Adam and Eve was make them hide. That is what an ember does. It does not just make you feel bad. It makes you go quiet. It keeps your voice out of the world. Fear of being seen is the #1 thing keeping people invisible, and shame is the fuel.
But here is the truth the ember is hiding from you. You are not what happened to you. You are who God says you are. Romans 8:1 says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. The shame that is still shouting after you have been forgiven is not coming from God.
For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
2 Timothy 1:7, ESV
Why would God care about something as small as running out of wine?
Because shame is a big deal to Him. It always has been.
Think about Jesus’s first public miracle. Not a healing. Not raising the dead. He turned water into wine at a wedding. For a long time that seemed almost small to me. Why would that be the first thing He chose to show the world?
Then I looked closer. In that time, running out of wine at a wedding was public shame. It said you did not prepare. It said maybe you could not afford it. The guests would have judged the family, and the family would have felt unworthy of their own guests, on a day that was supposed to be a blessing.
No one even asked Jesus to fix it directly. He saw their heart, and He stepped in. He solved it quietly, and creatively. He protected two people from carrying shame into their marriage over something as small as grapes and wine.
That is when it hit me. Shame keeps us small. It keeps us from putting our work out there. It keeps us from getting close to God, because we would rather hide than be seen. And God cares about that. He can turn water into wine in our lives, our health, and our business too. We just have to trust that He is standing right next to us, instead of hiding the thing we are ashamed of.
Shame does not come from God. But it can keep us from God. Hold onto that. We will come back to it.
How do you put the ember out?
You do 3 things. You name it, you audit it, and you surrender it.
The Ember, 3 steps
How to put out an old ember of shame
Name it
Ask what emotion, memory, and belief are behind it. Stop at the belief.
Audit it
Go deeper in your journal until you hear what God would say instead.
Surrender it
Hand the old belief to God. The answer is not to try harder.
1. Name it (the fast Ember Check). The next time fear or doubt flares up, stop and ask 3 questions: What emotion am I feeling? What memory is it attached to? What belief is feeding it?
Stop at belief. That is where the ember lives, and that is where you can act. Naming it takes the mask off. You cannot surrender what you will not name.
Name the ember before it names you.
2. Audit it (the deeper Ember Audit). When you have more than a minute, and especially when the feeling starts to make you feel sick, go deeper with your journal. Walk the whole chain. What emotion keeps showing up? What memory does it connect to? What belief did I form? How has that belief shaped how I see myself? What regret keeps feeding it? Where is the shame? And then the question that changes everything: what would God say instead?
I do this inside my TGIFF™ ritual with God. I bring my journal. I have done it in church. My free Clarity Pages have two sides for exactly this. The left side is a checklist, for when you are in full panic and need to slow down. The right side is an open dot grid, for when you are calm enough to connect the dots and just talk it out with Him and see what is really going on.
3. Surrender it (the way out). The answer to an ember is not to try harder. It is to surrender. And surrender is not giving up. Surrender is giving it to God. It is handing Him the old belief you have been carrying and letting Him tell you the truth about who you are instead.
One honest thing before you try this. Some shame is not just an old belief. It grew from real harm someone did to you. If that is you, naming it and handing it to God is still the right first step. It is just not the whole way home. Ask Him to lead you to a pastor or a good counselor who can walk the rest with you. There is no shame in needing more hands than your own.
For me, surrender meant admitting that my endless editing was not excellence. It was fear. The enemy loves to keep us toiling, perfecting a sculpture that is not even sculpted by the Creator’s hands. When your hands are in God’s hands, you can put the work out before it is perfect, because the outcome was never only yours to carry. “Jesus did not conquer death so that we would continue to bury ourselves in shame.”
What happened when I finally surrendered mine
When I audited my own fear, I found it. The ember was the YouTube channel. Underneath “I am afraid to post” was an older belief. I tried, it went nowhere, so I am a failure on camera. Years of it, smoldering.
So I gave it to God. One day while I was praying, I took a deep breath, and I felt like He said to look up, in Gemini, the top platforms where people build in public. Building in public is what He has been asking me to do. Show the daily struggle, not the highlight reel.
The first result was Substack.
I know one day I will launch a podcast, and I will be on camera. I am not fully there yet. But I am not hiding anymore either.
Remember that morning I checked the views and heard “maybe you are the problem”? I still post to a small room some days. The difference is that the handful of views does not get to name me now. You are reading this in public, on the platform God pointed me to, and for me that is new. The ember is losing its power. Not because I tried harder, but because I finally named it and handed it over.
A quick thank-you: I found this platform after a Brand Builders strategy call about growing on Substack, where one name came up, Nicole Roth. She happened to be in Austin the very next day, we met in person, and two days later she sent me a video about shame, the exact thing God had already been walking me through. Thank you, Nicole, for the nudge that made this land.
“
Shame doesn’t come from God, but it can keep us from God.
Dee Patience
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between shame and guilt?
Guilt says “I did something bad.” Shame says “I am bad.” Guilt points at an action you can fix or confess. Shame points at your identity, which is why it makes you hide instead of act. The gospel answers shame directly: in Christ there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1).
How do you let go of shame from a past failure?
Find the ember underneath it. Name the emotion, the memory, and the belief that failure created, like “I always fail.” Then surrender that belief to God and let Him replace it with the truth about who you are. The failure is an event. The belief is what keeps it alive.
Why do I feel shame every time I try to put myself out there?
Because an old ember is still glowing. A past attempt that felt like a failure became a belief (“I am not good at this”), and now every new attempt, whether selling, speaking, or being on camera, wakes that belief up. It is rarely about today’s platform. It is about the coal underneath.
Is it a sin to feel shame?
Feeling shame does not make you a bad Christian. It makes you human. What God offers is not a rule against feeling it, but a way out of carrying it. Once you have brought it to Him, the shame that keeps accusing you is not coming from Him. You name it, and you hand it over, instead of letting it decide what you do next.
What is a good prayer or first step for shame?
Start by naming it out loud to God, plainly, no hiding. Then ask Him one question: “What would You say about me instead?” That single question is the hinge between the old belief and the truth. Write down what comes.
Find the ember before it names you
The free Clarity Pages walk you through this with God, one page at a time. Give thanks, grace, intent, faith, and focus, and let Him tell you the truth the shame has been covering up.
Get the free Clarity Pages
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