In this short video, I explain why shame grows in hiding and starts to ease when someone sees it clearly, and how that can happen safely over video.
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Online shame therapy helps you when a quiet, persistent sense that you are defective, too much or not enough has started to shape how you live. Sessions take place one to one by video, in English, as 1-hour appointments with 50 minutes of therapy, timed to suit your own time zone.
I help you trace where the shame began, what keeps it alive and how to stop arranging your life around hiding it. This is the shame branch of my online psychotherapy. If what weighs on you is something you did, see online guilt therapy, and if shame tends to flip into rage, online anger therapy goes further into that.
You can book a free 30-minute call, find a session time, read my client policy or send me a private message.
Online shame therapy is for English-speaking adults, anywhere in the world, who carry a steady feeling that something about them is wrong. To others you may seem capable and even confident, while privately you brace to be exposed. You want to stop hiding and feel at ease being yourself.
Shame threads through many difficulties, and some of them call for a more precise starting point. When a line below is closer to your experience, its link leads to the page built for it.
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These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“In my clinical experience, the people most crushed by shame are seldom the ones who look ashamed. They tend to be polished, helpful and endlessly accommodating, with lives arranged so that nobody gets near the part they believe is rotten. Under the polish I hear ‘If you saw all of me, would you still want me here?’ Alongside it sits a firmer refusal: ‘I will handle this myself, where nobody can watch.’ Some carry a third request as well: ‘Look at me, but please do not see me.’ I am convinced shame cannot be reasoned away in private. It softens when someone sees exactly what you have hidden and stays.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Keiko is 42 and works as a translator in Vancouver, having grown up in Osaka. Her colleagues rely on her precision, and her husband adores her. She has not been swimming in 15 years because she cannot bear anyone seeing her body, and she rewrites every report until midnight. When her husband praises her cooking, she flinches and lists what went wrong. She has never told him how her mother spoke about her weight.
I would start with that flinch at the dinner table, slowly and in detail: the tightening, the urge to correct, the voice underneath. In our first video session Keiko would probably notice that the voice sounds like her mother, and that hiding has been her way of protecting an old wound. That gives us a real place to begin.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried to talk yourself out of the feeling for years, and it still arrives before you can think.
There is no right moment to start and no reason that has to be good enough. Feeling that something about you is fundamentally wrong, and that you must keep it hidden, is reason enough. You do not need a diagnosis, a traumatic story or the courage to say everything at once. In 22 years of practice I have met shame in nearly every form it takes, and I recognise when a private ache has become a pattern that governs your life.
I will help you see when shame takes over, what keeps it in place and what needs to change. These 6 questions may help you judge whether to contact me.
If you do, take that replaying seriously. A clumsy remark in a meeting, a stumble in a foreign language or a joke that fell flat comes back to you in the shower, on the train and in bed. Each replay brings the same heat in your face and the same urge to vanish.
I would look at how often this happens, how long each episode lasts and what kind of moments set it off. That shows whether this is ordinary embarrassment or shame that has taken root. Should that be your experience, book a session with me and we will start with the latest replay.
Both are true, because each protects something important. The longing wants to be loved as you really are. The dread protects you from the rejection you expect if anyone gets that far. So you let people close in some areas and keep a locked room in others.
I do not take sides against the part that hides. In psychosynthesis and in Jungian work we treat such figures as parts of a whole person, each with a story worth hearing. We look at what the hiding part learned to fear, and what the longing part needs. Then you can open the door at your own pace.
Many people carrying shame do. A frown, a pause or an unanswered message can feel like a verdict. You rehearse what you said, look for clues and try to win back approval before anyone has even withdrawn it.
Wanting to be accepted is entirely human, and I will not make you feel weak for it. What I help you change is the alarm that rings at the slightest hint of judgement. We look at the fear beneath it, often of not being worth keeping, and you practise checking reality directly rather than assuming the worst.
This pattern is very common with shame. You share something vulnerable, feel close for a moment, then wake the next day flooded with regret. You avoid the person, change the subject next time or decide never to say that much again.
In our sessions I slow this cycle down and find the moment openness turns into alarm, often when you imagine how you looked to them. I have compassion for this protective retreat, and I will also ask you to notice when it costs you friendships or intimacy you genuinely want.
Often, yes. When a conversation nears what you feel ashamed of, you may go numb, crack a joke, turn cool or suddenly argue about something else. It keeps the hidden part safe, and it also leaves the people around you confused.
I see this as protection, not a failing, and I will not shame you for it. I help you understand what the distance protects, so you can stay present a little longer when something tender comes up. You learn to say “this is hard for me to talk about” before you shut down.
After many years, shame stops feeling like a feeling and starts to feel like a fact. You may believe you are inherently lazy, stupid or unlovable. Years of adapting to a critical family, a demanding culture or a new country can blur what you actually think of yourself. That reflects what you have lived through, not who you are.
I help you separate the verdicts you absorbed, often handed down through generations, from your own sense of yourself. I will challenge you when you condemn yourself, but I will not impose a new identity. The aim is to know who you are and live as that person openly.
If you recognise yourself here, a free call gives us a gentle first conversation, and booking a session lets us start the work.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
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Understanding where your shame comes from matters, but the work also has to change how you show yourself to other people.
This work will help you understand what happens when shame takes over, recognise the patterns that keep it going and make changes you can feel in daily life. Insight helps, and many people already know where their shame began. Knowing that does not loosen its grip on its own.
In 22 years of practice I have found that shame moves when the therapist is engaged and honest, not neutral. I will guide you, say what I notice and question the harsh stories you tell about yourself. I will also make sure you never feel judged by me. The 6 questions below describe where we are heading.
For men: online therapy for shame in men. Related reading: Why do I still feel like a fraud when I am doing well? and Why do I feel guilty all the time?.
I help you tell the root from the symptoms. The blushing, the hiding and the endless rehearsing are real, but they are results. Beneath them usually sit a few old convictions: that you are too much, that your needs are a burden, that something in you must stay out of sight.
I tell you what I think is going on, what needs attention first and which explanations keep you stuck, such as “I am just a private person”. We work with what you already know about yourself and what you have not yet noticed, including what your body does when you feel seen. When the time feels right, book a session with me.
You can learn its earliest signals. There is usually a chain: heat in the face, eyes dropping, a sinking in the stomach, then the thought “you idiot”. Once you notice the first link, you have a moment in which you can respond rather than collapse.
In sessions I help you slow that chain down and see what triggers it and what it protects you from. Noticing is only a start. We practise a different response, first with me on screen and then in your week, until you can use it in an ordinary meeting.
Steadying yourself does not mean pretending you feel nothing or arguing yourself out of it. It means staying present enough to feel the shame without obeying it. Shame lives strongly in the body, and it often arrives as a wave rather than a thought.
I help you recognise that wave sooner and understand what your nervous system is reacting to, often an old experience of humiliation. We find specific ways of letting it pass through, and you practise them a little every day between our sessions.
Speaking clearly begins with letting yourself know what you feel and need. Shame makes this hard, because every need can feel like an imposition. So you hint, joke, minimise or say nothing, and then feel ashamed that nobody understood.
Together we find words that are honest and proportionate, such as “I felt hurt when that happened”. I will challenge you when you erase yourself, and also when you expect others to guess what you will not say. We often rehearse a real conversation before you have it.
Decisions become clearer once you separate the fear of being judged from what you actually want and value. Shame often makes choices quietly: you avoid the course you would love, the career change or the relationship conversation, because failing in public feels unbearable.
We weigh each option and what it would demand of you. You get my honest view, and I will name it when shame is answering for you, but the decision stays yours. If guilt about a specific act is part of it, online guilt therapy looks at that more closely.
The change has to reach your daily life, not only our sessions. You may begin to accept a compliment, let a friend see your home as it really is, share something from your past or swim again after years.
I help you decide what needs to change and what can stay private by choice rather than by fear. Your modesty and your sensitivity are not the problem, and we are not trying to remove them. The aim is a life in which you show up as yourself.
You can also send me an email
You do not need to say the hardest thing first, or know how to explain it. We start where you feel able to start.
In our first session I listen closely, help you name the central difficulty and give the work a clear direction. You decide what to share and when. Many people begin with something recent and only later reach the oldest layers.
Online shame therapy is a main branch of my online psychotherapy, structured individual work on your inner life and your relationships. If the shame lives mainly between you and your partner and they are willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. If you know the work will take time, a therapy bundle gives real savings and a plan agreed at the start.
I ask what has brought you now, where shame shows up most in your life, what you have tried and what you hope will change. You do not have to tell me anything you are not ready to say.
By the end I share my first understanding and suggest a direction. Then you decide whether my way of working feels right. Some people prefer a free 30-minute call before they commit, and that is a good first step too.
Individual work fits when shame lives mainly in you: in your history, your inner voice and the way you hide at work, with friends and in love. For most people with shame, a private space with one steady person is exactly what is needed.
I give you direction, continuity and honest challenge across our sessions. If you want to look at shame alongside other themes in your life, online psychotherapy describes my structured individual work as a whole.
Couples therapy fits better when the shame plays out mainly in your relationship and the relationship needs sustained attention. If criticism and defensiveness run between you, if intimacy has stalled or if one of you withdraws whenever the other gets close, working together often helps more.
In couples work I help you both see the cycle between you, own your part and build safer ways of being close. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing, and some people work on their shame alone first, then bring it into couples sessions.
The right pace depends on how heavily shame weighs on you, how much room you have and how much continuity the work needs. Shame work benefits from a steady rhythm, because trust builds over regular meetings.
I usually recommend weekly sessions at first. You will hear from me plainly when sessions sit too far apart, when a closer run of them would help and when it is safe to ease off. If you prefer a concentrated start, back-to-back online psychotherapy gathers sessions into a few days.
A bundle makes sense when you expect several sessions and want continuity rather than deciding after each one whether to continue. After a session where you have shown something tender, shame often whispers that you should not go back. A planned course quiets that voice.
A bundle lowers the cost per session and gives you the safety of an agreed plan. The options are on therapy discounts and bundles, and in the cards further down.
Therapy has done its job when you have more ownership, clarity and choice, and the shame has shifted enough for you to carry on without the same support. It may still visit, but it no longer runs your life.
I review progress with you openly and do not encourage dependency or therapy without end. Sessions can thin out, pause or stop when the work is complete. Returning later with a new difficulty does not mean anything was wasted.
Not sure shame therapy is the right starting point? Here is how it compares with the options people carrying shame most often weigh up.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online shame therapy (this page) | You feel that something about you is wrong, and you hide because of it. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online psychotherapy | You want to explore your life broadly, with shame as one theme among several. | 1-hour video sessions at a pace you choose |
| Online guilt therapy | You are tormented by something you did, or feel responsible for everything. | A focused course of video sessions |
| Online trauma therapy | Your shame is rooted in abuse or a frightening event that still intrudes. | Steady, carefully paced video sessions |
Online shame therapy with me is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for adults who carry a deep sense that something about them is wrong or unacceptable. It helps you understand where that feeling came from, how it shapes your life and how to stop hiding from the people around you.
I work in depth, with your feelings, your body, the hidden parts of you and what you inherited from your family. Within my online psychotherapy, shame has its own main branch, and this is it.
Come when shame is costing you relationships, opportunities, intimacy or peace of mind, or when you notice you are hiding more than you would like. You do not need a dramatic reason. Your own sense that shame is shaping your life is enough.
I look at how long the shame has been with you, how many parts of life it reaches and what happens when you try to push against it. If it keeps returning however much you reason with it, it deserves proper attention.
Yes, often it can. Shame from childhood is usually rooted in how you were treated or spoken to, which means it can be understood and eased as an adult. I cannot promise how quickly it will shift, and I do not offer quick fixes.
In my clinical experience, people often find that the cruellest voice inside them belongs to someone else, a parent, a teacher or a culture. I would focus with you on hearing whose voice it is and what it once protected you from.
Yes. Many people arrive unable to say the thing they most want help with, and that is completely fine. We can work around the edges for as long as you need.
I will not push you to reveal anything before you are ready. We pay attention to the shame itself, how it shows up between us in the session, and that alone often makes the next step possible.
Because both are ways of staying safe. Hiding protects you from being seen. Attacking yourself gets in first, before anyone else can. Many people swing between the two and then feel ashamed of that too. It is a way you learned to survive, not a sign that you are bad.
I help you see which way you move under shame, what that move is trying to secure and what it costs you. Then we build steadier options: letting someone see a little more, and meeting yourself with less cruelty.
We begin with what feels possible. I ask how shame shows up in your days, what tends to trigger it and what you hope will change. By the end you will have my first impression and a suggested focus.
There is nothing to prepare, and you do not need to tell me the hardest part yet. If you feel ashamed about coming at all, we can begin right there. Whenever it feels possible, book a first session or try a free 30-minute call.
Plan for a course of sessions over several months. Shame eases through repeated experiences of being seen and accepted, and that takes time. If it goes back to early childhood or is woven into many parts of life, it usually takes longer.
From 22 years of practice, I recommend agreeing a clear first stretch and then reviewing it honestly together. At each review we decide whether to continue, meet less often or stop.
For many people it is easier. Being in your own space can make it feel less exposing, and you are not walking into a waiting room. Video also keeps the work going if you move country, and lets you see a therapist outside your local world.
Set up a laptop or tablet with headphones and a reliable connection in a room where nobody can listen in. The calendar shows every time in your own time zone. Doubts about video are easy to raise on a free call.
Shame therapy is individual psychotherapy, booked in 1-hour online sessions that each include 50 minutes of therapy. Up-to-date fees in US dollars are shown on my prices page.
If you plan a longer course, a therapy bundle cuts 10 per cent from each session and gives you a fixed, reassuring plan. Compare the options on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book a first session whenever you are ready, or request a free 30-minute call if you would like to talk first. The calendar shows times in your own time zone.
If none of the times suit you, or something humiliating has just happened, contact me directly. Some room is kept for acute cases, usually a time within days, as set out on acute online psychotherapy. Choose a time, and let this be the first step out of hiding.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
