Understanding Guilt and Shame

After thousands of hours of using Internal Family Systems with clients, I’ve observed the most common source of mental health problems is a deep personal sense of not being enough. Not enough to be loved, to be accepted, to be included, to be useful, to be valued, or to have a purpose. In a word: shame. Sometimes it is specific like “I am ugly” or “I am stupid.” It is both a feeling and a belief that there is something so wrong about us it makes us unacceptable to others or unworthy of love. We do our best to bury those thoughts and feelings, but they are impossible to fully contain or push away.

Shame shapes our lives

Negative experiences can shape the way we feel about ourselves for the worse, especially in childhood. If you were bullied by your peers in elementary school, you might have come to believe you are a loser. If you were abandoned by your father, you might conclude you were unlovable. If you grew up with no boundaries, you could easily have concluded you weren’t important because your parents didn’t seem to care.

Not all of us believe those things; it is just a part of us. Which is why we can be overwhelmed by feelings in a difficult moment. Then the feelings fade as the moment passes. We can take that part of us that got overwhelmed and stuff it back down and move on.

However, stuffing that part of us away doesn’t undo that emotional wounding. We carry it and it can make us sensitive to criticism, rejection or judgement. The pain of that wound can overwhelm us as feelings of inadequacy blend with everyday anger to amplify it into destructive rage. It can make a tough day at work so unbearable we need to reach for another drink when we go home to find a moment of peace. It can make us so anxious about judgement that we are afraid to apply for that new job or audition for the role you’ve always wanted.

Shame is often at the heart of depression, anxiety, unwanted anger, addiction, insecurity, people pleasing, perfectionism and arrogance.

Keep in mind shame isn’t the source of all mental health problems. I also see unhealthy guilt, trauma, personality disorders, toxic relationships, burnout, intense stress, etc. Some conditions have a biological, neurodevelopmental or genetic cause. All these factors need to be considered as well.

Is there any use to shame?

The answer is complicated. If you’ve ever heard the phrase 1 step forward and 2 steps back, that describes the human experience of shame. While it can compel behaviour that benefits us, it ultimately undermines us. The cost is much higher than the benefit.

Shame compels us to develop parts or impulses that have some benefit

If we have a part of us that is burdened with shame, we often develop parts to compensate for that shame. For example, say someone is berated by their parents for not being good enough, and in response they develop a strong drive towards perfectionism. This part develops in order to avoid more berating and prove themselves worthy. Someone with a drive towards perfectionism will do many things well. They might have excellent grades, do well at their job, or keep a very good lawn. They can accomplish a lot and be well thought of.

The downside is their sense of self is fragile, and failure is interpreted as a failure of their character. If an adolescent perfectionist only got 67% because they hung out with friends too late one night, they take it much harder than people normally would. Those deep-seated feelings of insecurity and shame surface, causing emotional overwhelm. That part that carried all that shame that was buried is no longer buried, unearthing deep feelings of distress.

The energy that fuels perfectionism is anxiety. While people can go for a long time driven by anxiety, it wears you out. You have a hard time figuring out how much is too much, so there is a higher risk of burnout. Living in a state of constant anxiety eventually causes physical problems.

The pain of shame keeps us from forgetting

One way to remember the mistreatment you’ve received is by holding on to the hurt. It is also a good way to maintain a grudge. If you are at risk of being hurt again, holding on to the hurt helps you keep your guard up. The downside is obvious: you are holding on to pain with the hope of limiting future pain. It doesn’t always work, and living in emotional pain makes you vulnerable in other ways. Emotional wounds, like physical wounds, increase our sensitivity, making mild or benign interactions feel worse.

In the past it helped keep people alive

You can find some use for shame in human evolution. Shame was necessary historically to motivate people to stay acceptable in a community because chances of survival outside a community were slim. When humans were living in small hunter/gatherer communities, communal rejection was likely the default way to correct harmful behaviour. In the modern world, our physical survival doesn’t depend on the people in our community or family to accept us.

We try to control others by shaming them

Despite this, shame is a tool we use to control others we disapprove of, especially children. We assume that people will behave well if they are properly motivated. If we disapprove of a child’s actions, we don’t just discipline the child; we say and do things that make them feel like they are the problem, not what they did.

“Why is it impossible for you to listen?” “Why can’t you be like your older sister?” “You will never amount to anything.” “You need to man up.” “Don’t be such a crybaby.”

We try to control ourselves with shame

When we grow up hearing those messages from parents, teachers, coaches and peers, we come to believe that we can motivate ourselves with shame to become better. It has an internal logic to it, and it is what other people did to motivate us, but it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. Shaming yourself might provide a temporary boost of motivation, while fertilising the soil at the root of your unwanted behaviour. It’s like smoking to cure cancer: it gives you a short boost, but really just makes you sicker.

It isn’t uncommon for us to spiral into shame; it is a very human reaction. However, your shame makes things much more about you and nearly to the exclusion of the person you’ve harmed. Shaming yourself doesn’t demonstrate you care for who you harmed; it is self-centred and places your own flaws front and centre. It can collapse you into paralysis and futility, impairing your ability to understand the feelings of those you’ve harmed. When overwhelmed by shame, all that matters is how terrible you think you are. If you have harmed someone, your shame doesn’t help them feel better because they just feel like they don’t matter to you in a different way.

For some, the shame overwhelms their capacity to tolerate it, and it transforms into rage and blame. So the more shame you carry, the more likely you are to come across with more anger than is necessary, avoid accountability, be defensive, and lash back at others.

We are vulnerable to shame in childhood

By the time we are adults, we have developed the ability to see things from a perspective outside of our own. When we were children, we were the centre of our world. In adolescence, we developed the ability to see how someone might think less of us, but it really isn’t our fault; it is something wrong with the way they see things.

In our younger years, we don’t have the capacity to do that, so we tend to think everything that happens to us is our fault. If you have ever wondered why some kids blame themselves for their parents’ divorce, this is why. If an adult explains to them that it wasn’t their fault, that usually frees people from self-blame, if the child believes them.

In my childhood we used to say, “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” It was something you threw at someone who was trying to put you down. The truth is, though, in childhood we tend to be more glue than rubber, especially when that shame comes from people important to us.

So when we are told we are worthless or we are treated like we are worthless in childhood, we often accept it. A part of us carries that shame while the rest of us develops, but that part is still stuck in those feelings. Many of us do our best to bury that part of us, keep it locked away, but when something happens that echoes how we were treated or shamed in childhood, this part can flood us with negative emotion.

A child that was abandoned by their mother may feel rejection and fear rejection much stronger than a typical person would. A child that was constantly shamed for their marks in school might drive themselves to perfection to avoid all that shame flooding back.

Most of the shame we feel in childhood has less to do with what we did and more to do with what was done to us.

What is the difference between guilt and shame?

Brené Brown challenged the world on the impact of shame. She defines guilt as “I did something wrong” and shame as “I am something wrong”—this is backed by decades of empirical research by pioneering psychologist Dr. June Tangney.

In her landmark research, Dr. Tangney discovered that while guilt can help you change and become motivated to repair relationships, shame is a destructive force that actually blocks empathy and triggers defensiveness.

Guilt is something that healthy humans have the capacity to experience. In a sense, healthy guilt is empathy for people you have harmed. It motivates you to alleviate the pain, make amends, and take measures to repair the rupture and ensure that the harm stops. Guilt is the feeling we experience when we have done something wrong and we care about it.

Guilt is a healthy part of life. If we didn’t have the capacity to feel guilt, we would lose the impulse to correct our behaviour and maintain relationships. There is a difference between healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt.

What does healthy guilt look like?

Healthy Guilt is connected to things you are responsible for

Feeling guilt for someone that you can’t change or something that was never your responsibility in the first place is unhealthy. A grandmother who lets their child ride their bike needn’t feel guilty if a speeding driver injures the child. The grandmother made no mistake and they aren’t responsible for the actions of others or things they couldn’t possibly have anticipated.

The same grandmother should feel guilt if the same child wasn’t wearing a helmet because they didn’t have one and was more severely injured because of it. Ensuring a child has proper safety gear is something the caregiving adult can and should control.

Healthy guilt is connected to things we can control

If a wife asked her partner to go to the store and get some milk, the husband goes and finds out they sold out, the wife should not feel guilt over asking her husband to get milk.

Healthy guilt is proportional to the situation

If a mother forgot to put the sandwich she made in her child’s lunch box and sent their child to school with only a juice box and an apple, that would be worthy of a little bit of guilt. It would motivate the mother to apologize and take a little more care next time.

If 3 months later the same mother is still apologizing for the mistake, even though she has never made the same mistake again, then that guilt has outlived its usefulness.

Healthy guilt is focused on making things better

The purpose of guilt is so that we correct our behaviour to make things better for others and ourselves. Feeling guilty for the sake of feeling guilty doesn’t do us any good.

Healthy guilt has an expiration date

As soon as we have made the necessary corrections to stop any negative patterns and repair relationships, there isn’t any use for guilt anymore.

Healthy guilt alerts us when we aren’t acting according to our morals and values

We need to know when we’ve done something wrong, and for us to change we usually need to feel it more than just think it.

If we feel guilt for things that we aren’t responsible for or have no control over, it is likely that someone else was using guilt in an unhealthy way during our development. If someone tried to make you feel guilt for things you aren’t responsible for, things you can’t control, things you’ve already addressed, or for offending their particular values that you don’t share, chances are they were just dumping their dysfunction on you. As a child we have limited capacity to see things differently than how adults tell us, so it is understandable that people can get their definitions skewed.

Sometimes we are divided in ourselves over our experience of guilt or shame

If that same mother that forgot the sandwich in her child’s lunch was still feeling guilty about it 3 months later, she might find herself questioning why she still feels guilty. It isn’t uncommon for parts of us to feel guilt or shame while other parts of us wonder why we can’t just let it go. This can result in harsh polarization inside of us when we are angry at ourselves for feeling bad about things we know we had a hand in, or in a situation where the people you’ve harmed often have no reason to feel bad about it. This is a helpful perspective that the Internal Family Systems world gives us.

How to respond to unhealthy guilt and shame

Shift towards self-compassion

While our default response is to be frustrated with ourselves, the real solution is to treat ourselves with compassion. Shame says you aren’t enough because of this, that and the other thing. Self-compassion says you are enough regardless of what you’ve done or what has been done to you. Start treating yourself like you are worth something. You don’t have to treat yourself like you are worth more than others; that is more likely to cause you to perpetuate the cycle.

There are many meditations that help shift you towards self-compassion. There are books and workbooks on pursuing mindful self-compassion. The practice of meditation helps soak and shift.

Responding to shame from an IFS (Internal Family Systems) perspective

There is more than one way to approach engaging with your own shame. I am well-versed in one, that is IFS, and I appreciate other ones that stress self-acceptance.

With IFS we see that shame is held by a part of you, but not all of you. Which is why it can be confusing how come you can feel great about yourself, confident in your work and secure in who you are, and then something happens and suddenly you are overwhelmed, overcome by self-doubt or drowning in inner-criticism.

For many people, that experience of shame means something poked a part of you that you might try to keep buried; it emerges and takes over. Maybe it was a failure at work, or the criticism of your spouse, or distance from your children. Our instinct might be to push the part of you feeling shame back down, argue with it, or distract yourself from it. But the best response is to bring your compassion and understanding to it. It isn’t uncommon for the part that is overwhelmed with shame to feel that way because of the way people treated you, not because of any mistake you made. When we are little, we have to make sense of why people hurt us or neglect us, and the easiest conclusion to come to is that the problem must be with us. Often when people are using IFS, they find that the part that feels shame is just a younger version of themselves that can’t understand why the bullies hated them, or why their mother was always angry at them, or why dad left and didn’t bother to care to be in their life anymore. They can be really stuck.

It might be a bit weird, but try not to push away the part of you that feels shame. Try to talk to the part of you that feels shame and listen to the response come back in your mind. Our instinct is to block the thoughts and feelings that surface that don’t make sense to us. It’s also common to be frustrated or even hate those parts of us that can’t “get over it”. Invite your frustration with the part to make room for your compassion. Bring patience, kindness, curiosity and care as much as you’re able.

Love heals.