Mistakes as Lessons, shame as responsibility

It’s been two years since I last shared a new blog—and for good reason. What a journey it’s been. Reading Frank Anderson’s To Be Loved reminds me how powerful vulnerability can be: he lays bare his own story, and I resonate deeply with that courage - as a powerful catalyst for safety and connection.

As we grow—both in life and in our profession—mistakes are inevitable. Every week I sit with clients holding  the exile of “I’m a bad person,” “I’m unlovable,” or “I’m just too broken.” These beliefs, picked up in childhood, can feel life-threatening. Holding space for them, witnessing their pain, and guiding them into safety is beautiful work—but it demands I continue meeting my own inner parts with that same presence.

When I first started as a therapist, my “manager self” believed: I’ve done my healing, now I hold space for you. But what do you do when the floor beneath you cracks open (again, at least in my system this goes layer by layer) and the lava of unmet needs, unworthiness, and protectors with own agendas bubbles up outside your awareness? 

I carry a healthy guilt part that knows I’ve made mistakes: times I wasn’t grounded before a session, that I could not meet my client yet, because I had not been there yet, or when I blurred the therapeutic container big time. I own that damage. I want to take responsibility, make amends if it helps others heal. It stil holds deep grief and love—both for these precious people and for myself—because trauma histories - including my own - are complex and foundations were often shaky. We can heal each other, but we can also retraumatize. Sometimes the good, the bad, and the ugly go hand in hand.

I’m not a mother, but I imagine it’s what a parent feels when they see—alongside the love they gave—their own wounds passed on. I want to be a caregiver who welcomes my child’s honest feedback: “Tell me when I’ve fucked up.” To do that, I must keep doing my inner work—to receive those words from my Self with grace. But in order to be there I really have to be there for my own parts, building a deeper foundation.

Yet alongside that healthy guilt sits a shame part, screaming: I’m a horrible person, I should disappear to a desert island, where I receive a lifesentence. As I meet it with more compassion, I realise how it already lives on this desert island living out his lifesentence of being a failure for decades. I slowly make the island a little bit nicer with some palmtrees, rest, and a comforing sun. And giving it some toys that it can start learning.

And then there’s my learning part: you can’t become a good therapist just by reading books. You learn by practice—by falling down and rising up again. I carefully dose the intensity of shame so my learning centers stay open, and I truly absorb what needs healing and learning. I’m starting to see growth—sometimes that part reminds me it’s proud of how far I’ve come.

I once heard, “Mistakes were never meant as life sentences, but as lessons” (Vic Johnson). Easy to say to others; it’s deep work to step in as your own Inner Deliverer and love these parts back to life. But as that truth settles in me, I know I can hold a deeper, safer container than before—aware of the sacredness of this work. Lesson learned—the hard way. But I’m here, still learning. With more compassion for my own past as well as for the burdens my clients are carrying. Ram Dass said, “We walk each other home.”

How are your parts responding on painful mistakes and damage?