Working Through Guilt And Shame

Shame is something that really affects people’s lives in the worst way possible. Shame completely alters your life where you’re not able to live the life that you are meant to live. Guilt and shame are two feelings that often get confused.

What Is Guilt?

Guilt is when you feel like you did something wrong. Guilt is a part of our moral compass. When we do something against our values we then will feel guilt. Your values, what you feel is right and wrong, are taught at a very young age by your parents and society. When you do things against that right and wrong; when you do things like you steal, you hurt someone’s feelings, you say something hurtful or you cheat, you were taught that that was wrong. This then causes you to feel guilt and will want to make amends. That is normal and healthy.

Now if you grow up in an abusive home or you are very codependent, you’re a people pleaser, you will experience false guilt. You will experience guilt all the time and that’s because if you’re codependent you worry about other people and hurting other people you’re worried about their feelings. When you grow up in an abusive environment you are guilted all the time where you were taught to feel guilty about things that you shouldn’t feel guilty about you are taught that if you take care of yourself or if you do something against your abuser, you’re doing something wrong.

So again it goes into that codependency of worrying about someone else’s feelings that’s because your abusive parent has used guilt as a way to manipulate and control you. For instance, let’s say you want to hang out with your friends and your abusive parent says you always hang out with your friends, you never hang out with me and you never spend time with me, you are then made to feel guilty like you’re doing something wrong. In reality, you are not doing anything wrong. You’re allowed to go hang out with your friends so it’s using guilt as a weapon.

When people feel guilt, they’ll deal with it in two ways. They will either own it and try to make amends, so they’ll go and apologize, they’ll ask what can i do and they will try to deal with the fact that they feel like they did something wrong. Then they are able to release that guilt and no longer feel it because they feel like they dealt with it. The second way is by not taking accountability and then your ego will try to protect you from the pain. If you don’t own what you did you don’t take responsibility for it it will then come out in other ways. It will come out with you not being able to move on, it will come out in projection and it will turn into shame.

What Is Shame?

Now going into shame which is much deeper, it’s the feeling that you are wrong as a person. You are bad. Guilt is actions like I said it’s you feel like you did something wrong now shame is you there’s something wrong with you, you are worthless, you feel empty and you feel like there’s something wrong with you. Shame comes from negative feelings towards your flaws or things you have done that others criticized you for. These are things from your past or when you were a child that you were made to feel shameful about.

This is why it’s very common that narcissists deal with deep deep shame. They dealt with something that then caused them to feel shame and they are not able to realize that it’s shame where it then comes out in other ways. How shame can come out is it can come out in anxiety, it comes out in projection, it comes out in depression, lack of motivation, it comes out in eating disorders, it comes out in trying to hide or isolate, and it comes out in addiction. Studies have shown that the biggest reason for addiction is shame.

You can become very toxic where you project and you think that the other person is doing these things because you’re not dealing with your shame. It can also come out with you avoiding your feelings, becoming emotionally unavailable and it could come out with you trying to hide. You may try to hide things, hide what you think, hide things about you or it could come up with you overly apologizing, people-pleasing, overly apologizing.

So this comes from the those past or childhood things that you have dealt with. For instance when you were a child, if you went to your parent and you were really sad and you were looking for their comfort and they then shooed you away or they told you not to cry don’t be a baby that’s no reason to cry, you now feel shame. You feel like there’s something wrong with you. Your child mind will be like “Why couldn’t they comfort me, why couldn’t they validate me.” That has now become the wiring in your brain, that there’s something wrong with you for why your parent couldn’t be there for you. Or for instance, you’re gay and you don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with it but your family does, you now feel shame about it.

You feel bad about yourself and wonder why cant your family love and accept you. Or shame with food. Food is a big one where there’s a lot of shame, especially in abusive households. If you go and maybe get another helping, they’re like what if someone else wanted it, why do you eat so much. You now feel shame like you’re not worth food or that you don’t deserve that food. You eternalize like what’s wrong with me, why don’t I deserve that helping.

This all happens in childhood because when you’re a child, you cannot reason and we are very egocentric. When something happens as a child, you can’t look outside of yourself, you can’t understand that your mom is this certain way and you can’t understand that maybe this person’s going through this certain thing or it’s not personal, it has to do with them. So because of that, you internalize it and you think it’s me. I’m the cause of it. I made them angry. If I wasn’t like this then maybe they wouldn’t behave like this and so you take that into adulthood. That’s the wiring that’s in your brain that when something happens you’re bad, you’re worthless, and you’re not enough. Now this will cause you to feel unlovable, and feel like you’re morally wrong like you’re disgusting. You’ll feel all these things all this shame because of that wiring. You think that when things happen you’re a bad person or maybe even when things don’t happen that you want to happen it’s because you suck you’re a bad person and you’re not worth it and you don’t deserve it.

That’s why it completely alters your life and your ability to do things because of your deep beliefs that you’re not worth it and you’re unlovable. When you believe that you now act as if it’s true. You now don’t go after the things that you want. You now are afraid of things because of that shame belief or maybe you’re afraid to feel your feelings. There is a feeling that it is not okay to feel your feelings. There is a belief that feelings are for babies or for women or whatever it is, you don’t feel like you’re allowed to have those feelings. So you don’t allow them and then you stuff them down and then you become angry and then you feel more shame because you reacted off of that anger. It’s a constant cycle.

Now you don’t necessarily have to come from an abusive background to struggle with shame. You could have really loving great parents but because they’re human and they make mistakes they still may do things wrong. For instance, maybe there was a time when your dad said he was going to go to your baseball game and he didn’t show up. You then may feel shame that there is something wrong with you and why he didn’t go. It’s not because he was abusive, it’s because you couldn’t understand that maybe he was really busy and it had nothing to do with you. He didn’t sit down and talk to you be like “Hey listen, I’m sorry I didn’t show up to your game. It had nothing to do with you, I just was busy with work.”

Or your mom she maybe didn’t have very emotionally available parents. She didn’t know how to emotionally be there for you. Now you feel shame as a child. You’re like oh there’s something with me. My mom can’t validate me. and then there are those abusive parents where they overly make you feel shame and they cause you to be codependent or they cause you to overly people please to get that validation.

How To Heal From Feelings Of Shame And Guilt

1. You have to recognize these thoughts you have and be very self-aware and do a lot of self-check-ins: Check in with yourself and how you feel. Be aware when you are having these thoughts of feeling worthless or you’re having these thoughts of you’re not feeling good enough or you’re having these negative thoughts about yourself. A good way to see that you’re shaming yourself is when you say “I should have…” I should have done this, I should have done that. You are shoulding all over yourself. That is the most shameful thing you could say to yourself. It’s beating yourself up for something in the past. Don’t beat yourself up for the past. You want to be very aware of the things that you’re telling yourself and if you have a hard time being aware then you want to ask yourself a lot of questions. When you’re feeling bad or you’re feeling negative, that’s your cue to ask yourself “hey what’s going on, what am I telling myself right now. What’s the story that’s playing. What’s stopping me from doing this thing right now, Why am I avoiding x, y, and z.” You want to ask yourself a lot of questions to get to the root because when you get to the root of what’s going on then can do something about it.
2. Acknowledge, own your mistakes and be compassionate. If you are struggling with guilt and you did something wrong own it. A lot of times ego will stop us from admitting when we did something wrong because we don’t want to experience that shame. So we’re like “nope it has nothing to do with me, you did it”. Or “There’s nothing wrong with what I did.” You’re so afraid of feeling that shame or feeling bad about yourself. You need to remind yourself even though you did something wrong your behavior does not define your worth. You can make mistakes and it does not mean you’re a terrible person. You are only human and you’re going to make mistakes. That’s where that compassion comes into play. Understanding why you did what you did and giving yourself room to mess up. “It’s okay that I messed up. It’s okay that I stayed in bed for three days in a row.” You’re allowed to be compassionate towards yourself. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re excusing yourself. You are seeing the reason why you did something and giving yourself room to grow.
3. Validate your feelings. Your feelings were not validated in the past. You were made to feel bad about things that maybe were not that wrong or you should have been given forgiveness. You’re allowed to feel how you’re feeling. It’s so important to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Feel those feelings. The only way you can grow is by admitting how you’re feeling and allowing yourself to feel that way. Stop running from it or stop avoiding it. Don’t judge them, just observe and feel. That’s the whole thing with compassion is you feel it without judgment. Don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t feel this way. Don’t tell yourself you’re a baby, don’t tell yourself the things that you heard when you were a kid. Allow yourself to feel this way and treat yourself the same way you would treat a friend or a little kid. With love and empathy like “Hey I understand that you’re feeling a little bit down because you’re disappointed. You made a mistake, you cheated and it’s okay every one makes mistakes.” Or “Maybe you’re not the weight you want to be at hey it’s okay that’s perfectly fine.”
4. Change the language you use and what you tell yourself: Nurture and reparent. You need to talk to the inner child and you need to make sure to reaffirm the opposite of what you’ve always been told or that negative voice that plays in your head. The wiring that you’re worthless, not good enough, don’t deserve this, you need now to reverse it. Tell yourself you do deserve to have the life you want. You do deserve to open your own business. You do deserve to have kids. You still are worth what you want regardless of the flaws or mistakes you have made. The biggest thing that counteracts shame is being proud of yourself. Remind yourself of the things you did rather than what you didn’t do. What have you done in your life that’s positive? What have you accomplished? Be proud of yourself. It’s not just important to validate yourself in those negative moments, validate yourself in the positive moments too. I have a lot of clients that will tell me but like what if I always excuse myself? What if I don’t improve. Then you can ask yourself what did I learn? What do I want to do to grow and change? That completely changes the language so you’re looking forward to it rather than being like oh I suck. I’m never gonna achieve what I want, I’m worthless, I’m embarrassed. You’re looking forward to it, it’s motivating rather than demotivating. With self-parenting language, it is telling yourself things you wish you heard as a child-like ” I love you. I’m here for you. I got you no matter what.”
5. If you have done something wrong you need to make amends. You need to apologize. Once you own what you did, you have to go and apologize you have to ask how can you make amends. What can you do that will get others’ trust back? What can you do to help them? You have to let down that ego and just own it. Forgive yourself, you did what you did and can’t go back so all you can do is make it better. You can’t punish yourself forever. That’s keeping you in that shame. That is not helping you to live the life that you deserve to be living. So forgive yourself. It’s okay to make mistakes. You are a human that deserves compassion no matter what you have done. Understand that even if the person doesn’t forgive you or you can’t make it better doesn’t mean you shouldn’t forgive yourself. There will always be consequences to your actions. Do what you can.

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