The Secret Ingredient in Math Trauma

March 15, 2026

Last week’s blog post defined math trauma and explored how math trauma is more than just math anxiety. Math anxiety is one way in which math trauma shows up, likely the easiest way for people to describe their feelings.

But although math anxiety may be the easiest or most common way to articulate one’s negative feelings about math, there’s a feeling that is a deeper root to math trauma.

In fact, here’s the driving question, what’s the difference between failing a math class and having math trauma?

What if you just don’t like math, does that mean you have math trauma?

Not being successful in math from the get-go, or not liking math, or not enjoying math isn’t math trauma.

Math trauma is deeper, it’s about the feelings we’ve been made to have around our intellectual self-worth.

The difference is shame. Yes, shame. The shame one feels about math.

Shame that you have to take the same class over and over again. Shame that you don’t understand fractions. Shame that you won’t get that promotion because you don’t know how to use Excel. Shame that you can’t help your child with their homework.

Math trauma is about shame and how we feel about ourselves and our intellectual ability because somewhere along the way, we were made to feel that we are unable to or unworthy of understanding mathematics.

Guilt, shame, and math

Dr. Brené Brown discusses the difference between shame and guilt. If you want a more detailed explanation, check out her book, “Daring Greatly” (2012).

Dr. Brené Brown defines guilt as an uncomfortable feeling we get when we’ve done (or didn’t do) something that stands against our values.

You feel guilty because you didn’t study well for an exam or because you forgot to call your sister on her birthday.

It’s easy to pinpoint a feeling of guilt because you’re reflecting directly on your own actions or inactions. You know exactly what you did that is tied to your guilt. We can do something about our guilt.

Shame, on the other hand, is the feeling that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love or belonging.

Shame is more destructive and comes down to our fundamental feelings about who we are as a person.

What does this have to do with math? I suspect that shame manifests as, or may be a fundamental factor in, the difference between having a difficult time in math and math trauma.

In short, the connection between math trauma and shame may come from feeling like you are fundamentally, intellectually flawed (intellectually, you can’t, and will never, understand math) or unworthy of the love that is needed to patiently teach someone a difficult topic.

But I am here to tell you that this is simply not true! You can do this; it won’t be easy, but it can be done.

Believe me, the fulfillment and relief and feelings of empowerment that comes from working through your math trauma will bring more relief and open more doors than you can imagine.

As you reflect on your experiences learning math and how shame and guilt are echoed in math trauma, the Compassionate Math Framework, can help you see how these feelings are manifested and how you can work through some of these feelings.

With that, I want you to understand that your feelings are a natural consequence of the experiences you had.

Math trauma is a normal response to how you were treated and how you were made to feel when you were learning or engaging in mathematics.