The Shame Economy

Every day, industries weaponize your insecurities against you. Here's how to recognize the pattern and break free.

Let's call it what it is.

Shame isn't a feeling — it's a business model.

It's a sales strategy. A spiritual leash. A management tactic. A billion-dollar hook buried in your chest, designed to keep you small, compliant, apologetic, and profitable.

You're not broken. You're being marketed to as if you are.

And for years, I bought in. I bought the language of "growth" from execs who gaslit me. I bought "healing" from a therapist who drained me. I bought approval from managers who pretended to mentor me while documenting lies behind my back. And I kept buying because I thought the problem was me — not the system profiting from my self-doubt.

It took getting fired, manipulated, blackmailed, and extorted by people in positions of trust to see the playbook for what it was. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Here's how the shame economy works — in religion, rehab, education, coaching, MLMs, and social media — and why your self-loathing is their profit margin.

RELIGION: Sin For Sale

Churches don't need to sell you a product. They sell you guilt, then offer salvation for 10% of your income.

In the evangelical world I came up in, your body was a battlefield. Your thoughts were sinful. Your questions were rebellion. And your doubt? Proof that you lacked faith.

They don't teach you how to love yourself. They teach you how to distrust yourself — and how to confess every deviation back to the same people who programmed your guilt in the first place.

Purity culture made young girls feel dirty for existing. Gay kids were told they were possessed or broken. Men were shamed for lust while being handed accountability partners instead of real psychological support.

And if you challenge it? You're "deconstructing" — aka, dangerous.

But let's be clear: this is not about God. This is about control — and the $74.5 billion dollars raised annually by churches that rely on your shame to keep you tithing and silent.

THERAPY: Licensed Coercion

I didn't just survive church. I survived therapy.

Or what I thought was therapy.

I paid a licensed professional to help me rebuild after religious trauma, addiction, and the psychological abuse I endured at my corporate job and childhood. And for five years, she played the role well. Until I got fired and couldn't pay anymore. That's when the mask dropped.

She offered to "continue therapy outside of work." It became a friendship. Then a contract. Then an extortion scheme. She isolated me from everyone. Made me pay for "reputation management" to protect me from fake threats she made up. She said people from my past were stalking her. She blamed me for her career collapse. She used my deepest trauma as leverage — things I only told her because I trusted her as a therapist.

And I paid her over $125,000 before I realized I wasn't healing — I was being held hostage.

Licensed. Credentialed. Abusive. This is what the shame economy looks like when it wears a name tag and charges your HSA.

WORK: Performance As Punishment

At a major financial institution, I was a top advisor. Highest in my role for two years. But when I started setting boundaries — when I asked for actual clarity instead of smoke and mirrors — they didn't like that.

My manager smiled while suggesting I might not belong there. Told me maybe I wasn't happy and it just wasn’t the place for me. Cowards hate accountability. My sales coach invited me for beers after I disclosed my sobriety countless times. I was coached in riddles. Gaslit for asking follow-ups. Told I was "only good at a few things" despite outperforming everyone else. They weaponized feedback. They documented lies. They sabotaged my career behind the scenes while pretending to support me to my face.

When I finally reported it to HR? They invited me to lunch with the same people I reported — to "celebrate my process."

That's not culture. That's psychological warfare dressed in professionalism.

This is what shame-based management looks like:

Gaslight the high performerUndermine their confidenceDocument them into a cornerPush them out and pretend it was their fault

They don't want thinkers. They want pleasers. And when pleasers wake up? They get punished.

REHAB & COACHING: Keep Them Sick, Keep Them Spending

Rehab and coaching are supposed to help people heal. But too often, they exploit the fear of being broken.

In coaching, they call it "pain-point marketing." In rehab, it's "tough love." In both, the message is the same:

"You're not healed because you haven't tried hard enough. Pay more. Try again."

The rehab industrial complex is a $9.4 billion business that profits when people relapse. Many rehabs use shame as a tactic — confrontation, humiliation, forced confession. And then they wonder why people cycle back through. The answer is simple: shame fuels addiction, and they know it.

Coaches aren't much better. They'll tell you your hesitation to spend $10K on their "mindset accelerator" is proof you're still in a scarcity mindset. That you're not succeeding because you "don't believe in yourself." That if you're broke, it's your fault for not thinking abundantly enough.

It's toxic optimism with a credit card swiper. And it's all rooted in making you feel inadequate.

MLMs: Monetizing Your Guilt

You ever get a "Hey girl" message from someone you haven't talked to since high school?

Welcome to the shame-pyramid hustle.

MLMs recruit people (mostly women) by selling empowerment — then shame them into compliance.

Didn't hit your quota? You must not want it bad enough. Thinking of quitting? You're giving up on your dreams. Questioning the system? You're the problem.

They create cult-like communities that love bomb you on entry and guilt-trip you on the way out. And when you lose money — like 99% of participants do — you're told it's your fault for not believing enough.

Meanwhile, the company keeps cashing in off your debt.

SOCIAL MEDIA: The Algorithm of Insecurity

Finally, we've got the loudest shame machine of all: your phone.

Instagram makes 1 in 3 teen girls feel worse about their bodies. Facebook profits off rage and scandal. TikTok dangles curated perfection in front of you while quietly feeding you content that triggers insecurity and inadequacy — because shame is sticky.

The more ashamed you feel, the more you scroll. The more you scroll, the more they earn.

Even apology videos are monetized. That's how deep it goes.

So What Do We Do? Building Shame Resilience

We name it. We expose it. We refuse to carry what was never ours.

The shame economy survives on silence. On polite compliance. On people like you and me feeling too "emotional," too "difficult," too "selfish" to speak up.

Fuck that.

I'm not difficult. I'm clear. I'm not broken. I'm awake. And I'm not ashamed of what I survived — I'm enraged by who profited from it.

And now I write.

So if you've been gaslit, guilted, ghosted, or groomed — in your church, your job, your therapist's office, or your Instagram feed — this is your exit ramp.

Three steps to start your liberation:

1. Connect with others who understand. Shame thrives in isolation. Find people who've seen the same patterns. Share your story. The moment you speak shame out loud, it begins to lose power.

2. Question the systems, not yourself. When something makes you feel inadequate, ask: "Who profits from this feeling?" Follow the money. Follow the control.

3. Reclaim your narrative. Your pain is real. Your anger is justified. But your story doesn't end with what was done to you — it continues with what you choose to do with that knowledge.

You don't owe anyone your shame. And you're not crazy for seeing the cracks.

You're just done pretending it's okay.

— Cody Taymore

More essays, tools, and survivor clarity: KillTheSilenceMovement.com