The Shame We Stand On – The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Shame We Stand On – The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

A recursive meditation on shame as epistemic ground, identity as performance, and healing as ontological disobedience.

What if shame wasn’t a feeling to overcome—but a structure we unknowingly stand on? In this episode, we explore the idea of ontological shame: a form of selfhood shaped not by momentary embarrassment but by systemic, inherited frameworks of erasure and expectation. Drawing from Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, Louis Althusser’s interpellation, and Michel Foucault’s theories of discipline, we consider how institutions, families, and cultural norms silently instruct us to disappear—and how healing begins when we refuse to obey.

This is not therapy-speak or pop-psychology. It is inquiry into how we come to mistake performance for personality, obedience for belonging, and perfection for safety. We follow shame not as symptom, but as infrastructure—asking what it means to unlearn the ground beneath our feet without losing the self we built upon it.

Reflections

Here are some reflections that surfaced along the way:

• Shame isn’t carried. It’s stood on.
• Ontology shapes identity before cognition can intervene.
• The most dangerous scripts are the ones that feel like personality.
• To heal is to betray the choreography shame taught you to perform.
• Self-worth isn’t proven. It’s unlearned from conditions that never served it.
• Stillness isn’t laziness. It’s refusal to audition for belonging.

Why Listen?

• Engage with shame as epistemology, not just affect
• Explore how identity is shaped by recursive social scripts
• Learn what performative healing obscures—and how to move beyond it
• Reflect on the cost of survival strategies mistaken for character

Listen On:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Support This Work

If you’d like to support the ongoing work, you can visit buymeacoffee.com/thedeeperthinkingpodcast or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you.

Bibliography

• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 1990.
• Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Monthly Review Press, 1971.
• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Pantheon Books, 1977.
• Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Bibliography Relevance

• Judith Butler: Frames identity as performative and shaped by normative constraints
• Louis Althusser: Explains how ideology interpellates individuals as subjects
• Michel Foucault: Explores how institutions discipline through normative shame
• Avery Gordon: Offers a lens on haunting and the spectral residues of internalised str