When asked about her inspiration for the lyrics, Lindsey said the following:

For some reason, I had this little burst of inspiration. I just saw the image that is on my album cover. I saw a ballerina on a music box. It was a snow-globe music box. And she has a very stark expression but she’s perfect and flawless and poised. And basically, that ballerina, I related so strongly to her because there was a time in my life when I was surrounded by this shell that I had basically built around myself, this image of perfection because I was so obsessed with being what I thought everyone else wanted me to be and I realized one day that I was so unhappy because I was a slave to my own control. And “Shatter Me” is about breaking free, discovering yourself and learning to love yourself for the imperfections that you have and breaking free from this shell of perfection. For the ballerina, she had to basically shatter this porcelain shell in order to find that she wasn’t going to break but she was going to discover herself underneath. So that’s what the song is about. The ballerina is a metaphor for the person I once was.