Working Through Shame: When You Feel You Don’t Deserve Help

A voice inside keeps telling you that your problems aren’t serious enough to deserve attention. That others have it worse, so you should just handle things on your own. That asking for help is a sign of weakness or selfishness. That you should be able to fix yourself without support. It’s not just hesitation – it’s shame standing between you and the help you need.

At Televero Health, we work with many people for whom shame creates a powerful barrier to seeking support. They come to us not just struggling with anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, or other challenges, but with the profound belief that they don’t deserve help with these struggles. What they discover is that this shame itself is often both a significant part of their suffering and a primary obstacle to addressing it – a double burden that maintains problems by convincing them they shouldn’t seek support for those very issues.

Maybe you recognize this shame in your own experience. Maybe you find yourself thinking your problems aren’t “bad enough” to warrant attention, or that asking for help would burden others, or that you should be able to handle everything independently. Maybe you compare your struggles to others’ and conclude yours don’t count because they seem less dramatic or visible. Maybe you feel that needing support is evidence of fundamental weakness or failure rather than normal human need. Maybe you can see how these same struggles would be entirely legitimate in someone else, yet somehow don’t qualify as deserving care when they’re yours.

This shame about needing help doesn’t emerge randomly. It often develops through experiences where vulnerability was met with criticism rather than care, where needs were treated as burdens, where independence was valued above connection, where struggling was equated with failing. It can be reinforced by cultural messages that idealize self-sufficiency and stigmatize mental health needs, or by family systems where certain feelings or needs were acceptable while others were rejected or dismissed.

Whatever its origins, shame creates a particularly challenging barrier to seeking help precisely because its core message is that you don’t deserve that help. Unlike more practical obstacles that can be addressed through problem-solving, shame operates by convincing you the obstacles shouldn’t be overcome – that the help you need is itself inappropriate to seek. It creates a painful bind where suffering continues in isolation specifically because reaching for support feels wrong or unjustified.

We see this dynamic play out in many ways. The person who minimizes significant anxiety because “others have real problems.” The individual who endures depression alone because they believe needing help means they’re weak or fundamentally flawed. The client who apologizes repeatedly for taking up space in therapy despite experiencing genuine distress. The person who can clearly see how friends or family deserve support for similar struggles yet somehow exempts themselves from the same care and consideration.

If shame has been keeping you from seeking the help you need, know that this barrier, while powerful, isn’t insurmountable. That the very feeling that you don’t deserve support is itself often a core part of what needs addressing – not a valid reason to continue suffering alone. That needing help with mental health challenges reflects normal human need for connection and support, not weakness or failure. That the standards you apply to yourself are likely far harsher than those you would apply to anyone else experiencing similar struggles.

In therapy, we help people work through this shame barrier through several approaches. First, by explicitly acknowledging and normalizing the shame itself rather than just focusing on the underlying issues it’s blocking from care. Then, by exploring how this specific belief about not deserving help developed and what functions it might be serving despite its costs. Finally, by gradually building experiences that challenge shame’s core messages, creating new evidence that needing and receiving support doesn’t lead to the rejection or confirmation of worthlessness that shame predicts.

This work moves at different paces for different people. For some, simply naming shame as a barrier begins to reduce its power, creating space to directly address underlying concerns. For others, shame itself becomes the initial focus of therapy, requiring considerable work before other issues can be approached effectively. For many, shame’s grip loosens gradually through the very experience of being treated as inherently worthy of care and attention regardless of the specific nature or severity of their struggles.

What many discover through this process is that shame thrives in isolation but begins to lose power when brought into relationship. That the very act of reaching for help despite feeling undeserving of it can begin to challenge shame’s fundamental messages. That being treated as worthy of care can gradually shift internal beliefs about deserving that care. That standards applied to others – where support for struggle seems entirely appropriate – can slowly be extended to oneself through continued practice and the experience of receiving care without the rejection or judgment shame predicts.

They also discover that shame often protects legitimate vulnerabilities. The fear of rejection if needs are expressed. The risk of disappointment if help isn’t provided as hoped. The challenge to identity if independence has been central to self-concept. Part of working through shame involves acknowledging these genuine vulnerabilities while finding ways to address them that don’t require complete isolation or self-sufficiency. To develop relationships where needs can be expressed with reasonable expectation of care rather than criticism. To build identity that includes both strengths and needs rather than requiring perfect self-reliance.

This more balanced approach doesn’t mean suddenly believing you deserve more care or consideration than others. It means gradually extending to yourself the same compassion and support you would likely offer anyone else experiencing similar struggles. It means recognizing that human needs for connection and care are universal rather than signs of particular weakness or unworthiness. It means challenging the exceptional standards that shame often imposes specifically on your needs while maintaining more compassionate perspective for everyone else’s.

Because the truth is, seeking help for mental health challenges isn’t self-indulgence or weakness. It’s acknowledgment of the normal human need for support during difficult times – a need that belongs to everyone, including you. And while shame may have convinced you otherwise through painful experiences or messages, that conviction isn’t reality but a perspective that can gradually shift through new experiences of being treated as inherently worthy of care simply because you’re human, not because your struggles meet some arbitrary threshold of severity or legitimacy.

Ready to explore how shame might be creating barriers to the support you need? Start here.