Guilt VS Shame
Guilt VS shame. No one escapes from these painful feelings, but only one feeling lies There is a lot of information regarding guilt and shame. Some experts, like as John Bradshaw, a behavior expert you may have seen on TV, focus on healthy guilt and healthy shame as opposed to unhealthy guilt and unhealthy shame. But we find that people are confused by the idea of healthy and unhealthy describing the same feelings. What may be healthy shame for someone who has hurt someone else may be experienced as guilt by someone else. Because of this confusion guilt Vs shame, we examine guilt as a healthy feeling and shame as an unhealthy feeling. So what are the differences?
What Is Guilt
Guilt is what we feel when we’ve had unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. When we have hurt someone or done something we shouldn’t have, like cheating or stealing. With guilt, we have remorse and regret. Guilt is about violating our own morals, our own consciousness. We learn guilt early in our childhood; it is part of our healthy developmental process. In guilt, we acknowledge our errors to ourselves and to others. Guilt tells us clearly what we have done wrong. For example, while we may have guilty thoughts and feelings, these are normal; it’s when we act out of these thoughts and feelings in a negative manner that causes problems. Healthy guilt is about making a mistake; it is not about being a mistake. Guilt says “I did a stupid thing, but I am not a stupid thing.” It can be painful, but guilt can be about healing. The 12-step-programs focus on guilt for guilt has us take responsibility for our behaviors and then make amends as needed.
For example, Liddy is very angry at her 3-year-old son, Ben, for breaking a family keepsake. Her anger may be normal, but yelling at a toddler is like beating a puppy. When Liddy starts screaming at Ben, however, her behavior has become inappropriate. When Ben starts sobbing and wets his pants, Liddy recognizes that her behavior was wrong. And she feels guilty for losing control. As guilt is focused on responsibility and making apologies, Liddy is able to cuddle Ben and tell him she was wrong to yell at him. She apologizes for her behavior and tells herself that she cannot do this again. She also tells Ben’s father about the incident to accept responsibility and ask for help. Her openness prevents secret keeping and helps her to understand that hurting a toddler is wrong. She may have regrets about yelling, but understands that everyone makes mistakes and vows to do better.
What Is Shame
Shame is a different story for it is the only feeling that lies to us. Shame is not about doing a bad thing, but about feeling bad to our core. Shame makes us focus on ourselves and not on the others around us. In our shame, we think we are terrible, horrible, sick, bad, and worthless. We feel we are dog-dodo stuck to our own feet. This toxic shame makes us feel unworthy, a mistake that cannot be healed, for we are flawed to our core. In the book Facing Shame: Families in Recovery, Fossum and Mason state:
Shame is an inner sense of being completely diminished or insufficient as a person. It is the self judging the self. A moment of shame may be humiliation so painful or an indignity so profound that one feels one has been robbed of her or his dignity or exposed as basically inadequate, bad, or worthy of rejection. A pervasive sense of shame is the ongoing premise that one is fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not fully valid as a human being” (italics by Fossum and Mason).
Taking the case of Liddy and Ben again replacing guilt with shame has a different and toxic result. Liddy falls into shame instead of guilt for yelling at Ben. After she screams at him, she feels so horrible that she internalizes shame into the feeling that she’s a horrible person, unworthy of having children. Instead of accepting that she made a mistake, Liddy believes she’s a terrible mother, falling into her own pain instead of taking care of her son at the moment he needs her. In this case she’s not able to let go of her mistake. Because of her shame, she is unable to feel healthy guilt for which she could make amends by comforting her son and apologizing to him. Instead, they both end up sobbing. With only shame guiding her behavior, she cannot nurture her son or herself. Now, when he is naughty, she cannot correct him or nurture him because the focus is solely on her losing all capacity to cope with him. Liddy sees Ben’s bad behavior is a function of her being a bad parent. This creates a shame spiral where Liddy now becomes inept in her parenting capacity.
Shame is too often felt in dysfunctional families. Remember, shame lies. We will also explore shame and how to cope in other articles.
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