Guilt vs. Shame: What’s the Difference?

Do you know the difference between guilt and shame? Put in the simplest terms, guilt is the felt-sense of “I did something bad,” and shame is the felt-sense of “I am bad.” Guilt is usually in response to your actions, including inactions. Guilt is a useful tool that can call us into realigning with our values and how we want to move through the world, allowing us to maintain and fortify a sense of self-respect. Shame is usually an indictment of your whole personhood, not just focused on behavior, and can lead to feeling worthless and unlovable.

c/o giphy: guilt

Let’s take it a little deeper. At its core, shame is the fear of disconnection. Because connection is vital to our well-being, shame is one of the most intensely painful emotions and experiences humans can have. Like a poison, it can rot us from the inside out, corroding any sense of worth we may get from work, friendships, and our actions. We tend to have acute reactions to the feeling of shame, trying to either get as far away from the feeling via attempting to ‘prove’ ourselves via people-pleasing, perfectionism, and seeking reassurance or overidentifying with it and shutting down into a place of depression, isolation, and self-loathing. Neither of these reactions helps move us out of the feeling of shame, which can get us psychically stuck in an overwhelming relationship with the feeling.

Here’s the thing, not only is shame a toxic emotion for the person experiencing it, it’s also toxic to the people around the person stuck in shame. While shame is the fear of disconnection, staying in shame threatens our connections with others. Without shame resilience, it’s impossible for us to have an embodied relationship to accountability in the rupture/repair process. With shame resilience comes the willingness to be imperfect with tenderness toward the mistakes made. This resilience allows us to stay present and grounded in the face of mistakes, to move toward empathy for self and therefore be able to offer the person we’ve harmed what they need to rebuild the trust and connection. Next time you or someone you love is stuck in a place of shame, try finding a place inside you with some tenderness toward the shame; speaking it out loud often gives us back our agency over shame and a pathway for moving forward. 

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