Shame: The Game is a card deck for self-reflection, built on image, metaphor and story. This is where it came from.

For more than three decades, I grappled with shame. It wove its way through my thoughts, my feelings and my choices. Over the years I found ways to cope, and some helped for a while. But I kept patching the tire without ever looking at the road that kept puncturing it.

Things shifted when I started looking at my experience through images. When shame had a shape (an octopus, a cage, a cloak), I could look at it instead of only feeling it. Metaphor gave me enough distance to get curious. That's where the cards began.

Two bodies of thought shaped the deck most. Brené Brown's research on shame resilience showed me how much depends on naming shame and saying it to someone who responds with empathy. Douglas Hofstadter's argument that analogy sits at the core of how we think helped me understand why a picture can reach what an explanation can't.

Writers and philosophers left their mark too. Carl Jung's idea of the shadow, the parts of ourselves we'd rather not see, runs through several cards. Michel Foucault's writing on how societies watch and judge us shaped the cards about exposure and judgment. Their work offers perspective, not proof. It's part of the game's imagination, not its evidence.

Every card is a symbol and an invitation. Shame cards picture the forms shame takes. Worth cards picture the strengths you already carry. Activation cards picture the moments that set shame off.

In this game, shame isn't a monster to slay. It's something to get to know: where it shows up, what sets it off, and how it has shaped the story you tell about yourself.

Shame: The Game isn't therapy, and it won't do the work for you. It's a way in: a set of images that make a hard subject easier to look at, alone or with people you trust. My hope is that it helps you see your own story a little more clearly, and tell it on your own terms.

— Paul J. Chamberlain

Paul J. Chamberlain is the creator of Shame: The Game, host of the Smart Funny Tortured podcast, and principal of Chamberlain.Life. A coach and crisis advocate, he helps people shift the power dynamic between themselves and their shame.