Letters from Jennifer: The shame we don't talk about

Shame is one of the most powerful — and least addressed — forces surrounding gambling addiction.

It silences the people experiencing it.
And it silences the families living alongside it.

I was reminded of that last week, interestingly, while attending an event at BNP Paribas.

I was there in my role as Editorial Director at NOON, listening to my boss and good friend Eleanor Mills speak at an International Women’s Day event about telling your own story, and she talked about something most people try very hard to hide: The shame she felt when she was made redundant.

At the time, she felt as if she had “died”. It seemed like a personal failing. She wanted to disappear.

Even now, she told the audience, telling that story still makes her feel exposed. Yet when she first shared her story in an article, more than 10,000 people responded. They were grateful someone had finally said out loud what they had felt themselves.

Listening to her speak, I found myself thinking about another kind of shame — the one that surrounds gambling addiction.

It’s a toxic emotion, and it still clings to gambling more stubbornly than it does to alcohol or drug addiction. Part of that is because gambling is still widely seen as a behaviour, not a mental health problem.

“Just stop,” people think — or say.

(Hands up: That was my initial reaction when gambling first surfaced in my family.)

We need to shift thinking about our gamblers

It’s easy to see gambling as something addicts are doing — perhaps even something they’re doing to us — rather than something they’re experiencing.

Later this month I’ll be sharing a video conversation with Michelle from Beyond the Bet, whose father died after experiencing gambling addiction. We talk about shame, and the ways it silences both gamblers and the people around them.

The story is changing.

Only recently have we begun to understand how gambling — particularly app-based gambling — interacts with the brain and our neurochemistry.

Yet the stigma lingers. Gambling addiction still carries that sense of personal failure — not just for the gambler, but for their Affected Others.

I felt that shame acutely.

It showed up as a relentless inner dialogue:

Why hadn’t I noticed sooner?
Why couldn’t I stop it?
Why couldn’t I help more?
Was I not important enough for them to stop?

Looking back, it’s uncomfortable to see how self-centred some of these reactions were. But the reality is that gambling addiction affects the entire family. The fallout touches everyone — just as so many of you reading this will know.

The secret source of shame

There was another pernicious source of shame: Money.

We live in a society where financial success is treated as a moral virtue. If you don’t have money, the implicit message is that you simply haven’t tried hard enough.

And becoming poorer? That carries its own quiet humiliation.

(After all, what have you done to deserve that?)

Being skint doesn’t hold the same “artist living in a garret” romance as it did in my 20s.

Selling your house can feel shameful.

Not being able to buy things for your family can feel shameful.

I’ll be honest: I felt ashamed of how visibly my own life had changed. One year I was sleeping in a French antique sleigh bed in high-ceilinged Victorian house. The next I was sleeping on a bed ordered from Amazon in a mouse-ridden flat.

These are just trappings. I know that. And yet I felt not only the loss of my “old life” but also many of the things that populated it.

My weird old-fashioned shame

Me and Edith Wharton: Keen observers of social status…

Part of that shame felt almost antique — something left over from the days of Edith Wharton: The sense of having fallen in society.

Even writing the word “society” makes it sound as though I spent my days drifting between debutante balls and the summer season in Newport. I didn’t, but I still felt conspicuous.

Where I lived had changed.

And how I lived had changed.

Not only could I no longer afford the small luxuries that had once been routine — dinners out, taxis home…. The easy rhythm of financial security was gone.

Of course, my real friends didn’t care about my change in circumstances.

And the people who weren’t my friends didn’t notice (or couldn’t care less).

The shame came from somewhere else — from old assumptions about gambling addiction, from what we tell ourselves money means…and what we think losing it says about us.

It’s time for a new story

The good news is that narrative is changing.

For one, research is advancing, with more studies on everything from the methods used to get people hooked to how the brain reacts to gambling (weird fact: losing provides a bigger dopamine hit than winning).

Then there are organisations such as Gambling with Lives, Gamble Aware, GamFam and YGAM that are helping bring gambling addiction into the conversation about public health.

And people affected by gambling are also challenging the old narratives. Two of my favourites in particular on TikTok are Beyond the Bet by Michelle and Alinobets @nobetsali (pronounced: Ali no-bets) by a young recovering gambler who shares his story and advice with thousands of followers.

Together, we are all helping reshape how we think about gambling harm — both for the person experiencing the addiction and for the people around them.

Speaking out

For my part, I’ve tried to push back against the shame by speaking openly.

I wrote about my experience for The Telegraph and later spoke about it on the Jeremy Vine Show.

During the programme, several women called in. One was dealing with an adult son who gambled. Another spoke about her partner.

Two men also called.

Both said they were trying to stop gambling, and that hearing the conversation had encouraged them to tell their families the truth about their addiction.

That meant a lot to me.

Even though my story included pain, anger and confusion, sharing it helped open a conversation about the real issue: The very real harm gambling can cause.

Does this sound like you?

If you’ve lived alongside gambling addiction, some of this may sound painfully familiar. The secrecy. The financial shocks. The endless mental replay of what you should have noticed, should have said, should have done differently.

Shame feeds on that kind of hindsight. It convinces us that we were somehow responsible for stopping something that, in reality, was never ours to control. And it tells us we need to hide this experience to keep functioning.

I haven’t had 10,000 people get in touch the way Eleanor did (at least, not yet! 🙂).

But every time someone feels able to speak — whether they’re a gambler or an Affected Other — the silence breaks down a little more.

And with it, the shame begins to lose its power.

Telling your story makes a difference.

Sharing your story can help others. I’m interviewing Affected Others and sharing your stories (anonymously if desired) on this Substack. Would you like to share yours?

Get in touch and I’ll tell you more