When Shame Speaks Loudest, Grace Speaks Louder

Here is your reminder to…

GIVE YOURSELF GRACE

I was on the phone today with one of the nurses—and a friend—from the burn center in Allentown, PA. In the middle of our conversation, she mentioned that the doctor had some concerns about my upcoming surgery. Those concerns came from something shared by a former member of my care team. They talked about something I don’t like to say out loud.

That I’m a chronic picker.

Even writing that carries weight. There’s a sting to it. A vulnerability that makes you want to shrink back or change the subject. The shame involved in it. The fear that people will hate me for it or think I am disgusting or horrible for it. But I’ve learned something important these past years: what stays hidden tends to grow in shame, and what is brought into the light loses its power to control you.

So I’m choosing to bring it into the light.

This is something I’ve lived with since I was a child. It has a name—dermatillomania. A body-focused repetitive behavior tied to stress, anxiety, boredom, and pain. A coping mechanism that formed quietly over time, long before I ever had language for it. Even now, I dont really understand it completely. It is tied to OCD which I have had tendencies of for a long time as well. But it still does not fully make sense to me.

And the truth is—most of the time, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.

That’s what makes it so complicated.

It’s not usually a conscious decision. It’s what your body does when your mind is overwhelmed. When you’re sitting in silence. When you’re carrying more than you know how to process. When stress has nowhere to go, so it finds an outlet in the only way it knows how. When you're bored and just are sitting doing something else. It just… happens.

When I heard what was said today, I felt it immediately—defensiveness, shame, and something deeper: grief. Not just over the behavior itself, but over what it represents. Years of coping without understanding. Years of patterns I didn’t even realize were forming. Years of hurt that went untreated. Years of learning myself by myself for myself.

Some of you may be saying: oh I pick a scab or scratch sometimes. But it goes so much deeper. Because for some of us, it’s not just a habit. It’s a story. A survival response written into our nervous system long before we had a say in it.

And today, in the middle of all of that emotion, I went to pray. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t polished or pretty. It sounded more like frustration than faith.

“God, I don’t want this. I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to feel stuck in it. I don't want to keep feeling like an idiot and little child.”

And in the quiet, I felt something settle in my spirit:

Give yourself grace.

Not as avoidance. Not as denial. But as truth.

Because grace is not pretending something isn’t there. Grace is refusing to hate yourself while you’re still healing from it. And that matters.

I think part of what hurt today is realizing this pattern was seen in me as a child—and never really addressed. What could have been met with care, support, and early intervention instead became decades of unconscious coping. What should have prompted therapy and intervention was met with lectures and "stop that" hand hits.

Twenty-three years of wiring.

Twenty-three years of responses my body learned to survive.

And breaking that doesn’t happen overnight.

It doesn’t happen by force. It doesn’t happen through shame. And it definitely doesn’t happen through self-punishment.

You cannot bully yourself into healing.

You cannot shame yourself into freedom.

Shame only makes you hide. Grace invites you to grow. And I think that’s the shift I’m learning to make.

Grace doesn’t say, “Stay where you are.”

Grace says, “I see you here… and I’m not leaving you here alone.” Grace says "I will come to you instead."

There’s a difference between ignoring something and walking through it with compassion. One keeps you stuck. The other leads you forward.

Because healing doesn’t come from harshness—it comes from safety.

And for anyone reading this who knows this struggle—whether it’s skin picking, hair pulling, anxiety habits, or anything else that feels like a private battle—you need to hear this clearly:

You are not disgusting.

You are not broken.

You are not alone.

You are a human being responding to stress in a way your body learned to survive.

And that can be unlearned—not all at once, not perfectly, but gently, over time, with support.

I’m learning that I don’t need to fight myself to heal. I need to learn myself. Understand myself. Support myself. Bring others in instead of isolating.

That’s why I advocate so strongly for therapy, for speaking up, for not suffering in silence the way I did for so long. Because silence doesn’t protect you—it just prolongs the struggle.

And healing? Healing begins when honesty meets compassion.

So if you’re in this with me—if you know what it feels like to do something you don’t fully understand, to carry shame for patterns you didn’t consciously choose—then let this be your reminder too:

Give yourself grace when you notice it again.

Give yourself grace when progress feels slow.

Give yourself grace when healing feels like two steps forward and one step back. And then—keep going anyway.

Not because you’re forcing change, but because you’re finally walking with yourself instead of against yourself. Because grace doesn’t leave you where you are. It holds your hand while you grow out of it.

And maybe today, that’s enough.