You may sometimes confuse shame with guilt, a related but different emotion. Guilt is a feeling you get when you did something wrong, or perceived you did something wrong. Shame is a feeling that your whole self is wrong, and it may not be related to a specific behavior or event. – verywellmind.com
Since first memories, we learned to feel both guilt and shame. They both influence how we see the world, ourselves, and our relationships. At some point, in our babyhood, we learned to feel bad when we fail, for instance, we had a strong reason to stands, to walk, and we did not give up until we did so. But, did we get frustrated when we tried and failed? Did we wail in anger, were we afraid to try again once we bonked ourselves on the floor, did we grieve not being able to walk right away? Or, did our failures drive us on to try try again, and win the approval and glee of those who were around us and cheerleaded us on? Much can be said of the beginnings of our feelings of guilt and shame and I have a sense it started back then. My perfectionism started way back then as I have memories of feeling like I could not measure up to the angel baby my parents lost that had them adopt me. I was aware, very early, of being a replacement child. I was aware of feeling like I could not live up to the perfection of the angel baby they had lost. No one MADE me feel this way. I just did. Shame comes from the feeling that you cannot, or did not, live up to others’ expectations. Guilt comes from feeling that you were capable of better.
As I consider the two words, Shame and Guilt, I realize that guilt beds itself down inside us an takes up residence in our conscience, and expresses itself through our Inner Critical voice/Evil Inner witch/Lizard Brain as a personalized feeling, not necessarily coming from others. It is a self-evaluation. Shame comes from others and is insidious because it has us feel like a bad person/a failure, according to others’ critique of us or our sense of such.
Bottom line, I think that Guilt helps us know a problem and gives us the opportunity to change it. Shame is centred around the person instead of a behavior. Guilt says we have a problem and we can fix it. Shame says we are a bad person, not good enough, unworthy.
Guilt comes when we feel like we have done someone wrong and we are not proud of it. We want to right it. Sometimes guilt is a good thing.
Shame is not really about our actions. It sinks into a deeper level of our feelings about ourself. We dwell on who we think we are as a person, in a very negative way, and that we are sueless to try to do any different, that we ae a bad person, a useless person, an unworthy person for anything other than what we deserve, which is a sad, angry, selfish, basically a bad person.
I have read that we are either a guilt-driven person or a shame-driven person. A guilt-driven person has faith that they could, should do better. A shame-driven person accepts a personal view that they could not, would not, should not do better for your lot in fie is that you are not worthy of anything other than the negative view you have of yourself. You live with a sense of hopelessness. You cling to the thought that you cannot change. You blame others and take no responsibility and accountability for things that you might have done.
I do not know if I have explained the difference well enough but, if it strikes a chord in you and you can come up with a better definition of the difference between guilt and shame, please share it.
©Carol Desjarlais 4.24.22
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