“Shame keeps you silent!” Tell the truth to improve your self-worth
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For ten years of her life, Fearne was gripped by a deep feeling of shame; she chats through how she’s now learning to let it go. Shame breeds in silence, so we’re talking about it loudly in this episode...
-Shame researcher Brené Brown talks through how to cope with feeling ashamed through self-compassion
-Comedian Dawn French explains that we all need to embrace being a bit of a twat sometimes because we learn more from mistakes than success
-Artist Charlie Mackesy’s got some thoughts about how shame is stopping us being vulnerable and connecting with others properly
-Mental health activist Ben West opens up about the shame he felt after his brother’s suicide
-Singer Lulu reflects on how ashamed she was of her difficult childhood
-Broadcaster Jamie Laing talks for the first time about his eating disorder and the shame he’s held inside for so long
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and a massive welcome to Happy Place with me Fern Cotton. Today, a pretty gritty subject that can be really difficult to talk about. |
| 0:10.5 | But I know I've certainly got a lot to say about it. And that is shame. |
| 0:15.2 | Guilt is I did something bad and shame is I am bad. |
| 0:19.8 | This is other weird shame that hangs in you just because you |
| 0:23.6 | exist. And I absolutely believe people lead entire lifetimes defined by it. It's the feeling of it's just you. |
| 0:31.1 | There's a deeply lonely feeling. I've never spoken of this and still as I start to talk about this, |
| 0:35.6 | I feel like shame, right? You feel a bit of shame, then you feel ashamed about that and then it will just cascade. |
| 0:41.3 | You know, it's hard for me to say, but I had an eating sort of, for sure. |
| 0:43.3 | I had a lot of shame about my life, about moments in my life. |
| 0:47.3 | I was so convinced that I'd committed a crime that I was absolutely petrified of anyone finding out that I felt so ashamed. |
| 0:54.8 | And so obviously the violence and the alcoholism, I was ashamed. |
| 1:02.4 | Oh, where do I even start with Shane? |
| 1:04.9 | Like many of you, it is my least favourite feeling. |
| 1:08.3 | But also, like many of you, I have drowned in it at times. It has, at times it's |
| 1:14.7 | totally taken over because that is the nature of it. It's really insidious. It's very sneaky, |
| 1:21.2 | yet unbelievably powerful. Can hold rains on you for years and years. I would say for 10 years of my life, shame was weave through so many parts of it. |
| 1:31.7 | And I'm only now sort of coming to terms of that and letting it go. |
| 1:35.9 | And my God, does it feel good to let it go? |
| 1:40.4 | And I think when you're recovering from bouts of shame, there's lots of conclusions you can |
| 1:47.7 | come to. One might be that the shame wasn't yours in the first place. And that is deeply, |
| 1:52.6 | deeply important and very powerful. And that's certainly been part of my story. And also, |
| 1:58.4 | it leads you to believe that you're the only one feeling it. And as we know from |
... |
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