00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 39, "Guilt and Shame." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Well, hello there! How are you doing today? I hope that you are in a good place. And if you're not, I hope that you are recognizing that that's okay. That it's okay not to be in a good place all the time. Sometimes we have things we've got to figure out. And it's okay if our emotions are not positive and happy. It's okay if we're struggling. Because that's part of our human experience, right? It's part of what we should be doing. So hang in there if it's tough for you. Do some thought models, figure your stuff out. Give me a call if you need to work through some stuff, and we can do that. 

00:58 

But meanwhile, glad to have you here today. We are going to be talking about guilt and shame today, which is a concept that I really, really love. My biggest foray into this discussion was when I first encountered Brene Brown, right? Have you heard of her before, by chance? I had a friend who introduced me to her many years ago, and I started reading her stuff, and I was like, "oh my gosh, this just makes so much sense." And I love the connection between Guilt and Shame, because I think that so many women, especially, live in this place of shame. And I think there's a lot of men who do too, although it's founded in different areas. But it's important, I think, for both men and women to understand the difference between guilt and shame, to see where they come from, when they're useful and when they're not, and what's going on. 

01:51 

So that's what we're going to tackle today, because I realized that although I've waded into the shallow end with you on this concept, I occasionally mention guilt and shame, we haven't yet taken the plunge into the deep end of the pool yet to really dig into it a little bit. So that's what we're going to do today. Understanding the differences between guilt and shame is huge for our emotional health, especially if we get caught up in shame. And it can help us in understanding how to interact with others in ways that are more emotionally healthy for them and for us as well. 

02:25 

So figuring out guilt and shame is a huge win-win. I think a lot of us were raised with shaming ideas and so our go-to a lot of times with ourselves and with others is to shame. And so the more that we understand it the more we can start to see how our interactions with other people are making an impact. When we begin to grasp these concepts more fully we find that we can have more self-compassion, we can have less criticism, we can have less self-judgment, we can have more self acceptance and respect, and who wouldn't love to have all those benefits? Think of the healthy place that we would be moving into if we had less self-criticism, less self-judgment, more self-acceptance and respect, more self-compassion. We would be in a much better place. 

03:17 

So, Brene Brown's research on this is quite fascinating, and a lot of the basic concepts are gonna be coming from the things that I have learned from her. So, let's start with some quick definitions of guilt and shame, and then we'll be digging a little bit deeper into both of those. 

03:31 

Alright, so shame, to start off with, is the belief that there is something inherently wrong with me. It finds its roots in deeply held beliefs about our worth, my worth, as a person. Shame says that I am bad. Me, as a person, I am bad. My worth is in question. Everything about me stems from the belief that I am bad in my core. Shame believes that I am inherently flawed, okay? So guilt, however, doesn't have to do with us, but rather the focus is on our behavior. A person who feels guilt has the ability to separate out their behaviors from their worth as a person. Their worth is not in question. Whereas with shame, their worth is in question. With guilt, worth is not in question. 

04:22 

Guilt is most often experienced when we act against our deeply held values when we're not living as we believe we should be living. Guilt says that what I did was bad. My behavior was bad. So guilt does not attack the self, but rather the behaviors that occur. So shame says I am bad. Guilt says what I did was bad. Shame says I'm a horrible person. Guilt says what I did was horrible. Shame says there's something wrong with me. guilt says there's something wrong with my behavior. It would be akin to saying, to guilt would be saying, "I cheated on a test." Shame would be saying, "I am a cheater," right? So the difference between the behavior and the actual applying it to themself, okay? 

05:19 

So guilt is productive and helpful. Guilt oftentimes gets a bad rap, okay? Because oftentimes we use guilt when we should be using shame when we work with these definitions. But guilt is a feeling of discomfort that comes when we haven't lived up to the values that we profess. It can be a measuring stick for us to see where we are and where we need to move toward, all right? Shame, however, makes us feel as though we are not worthy of love and belonging. Shame is not productive or helpful in any scenario. It is destructive. 

06:00 

However, so many of us were raised being shamed or learned to speak in shaming ways to ourselves that it becomes second nature. It's something that we just do. Shame keeps us stuck because if there is something inherently wrong with me, it won't do any good to try and fix it because I can't. Something is inherently flawed, right? So we can experience shame as early as 15 months. 15 months! Think how young that is. This is a little child who has just barely learned how to walk and some of them not even yet, right? They may be starting to say one word, things here and there. That's young. This is why shame is so deeply wired into our brains and can be difficult to recognize as a thought. We've been doing shame for so long and if parents shamed you from this young, from 15 months and that's when we start recognizing it and experiencing it, we can see why it's so deeply ingrained into our primitive brain as a go-to reaction to our circumstances. We will be feeling shame and acting out on it even before we're aware that a situation is occurring sometimes because it is so deeply ingrained into our primitive brain, alright? 

07:29 

Guilt, on the other hand, we don't start to experience guilt until somewhere between three to six years of age. So it's not so deeply ingrained as shame can be because guilt is tied to our behaviors and how they don't match up with, okay, so let me start over with that. Because guilt is tied to our behaviors and how they don't match up with our values, we have to be old enough to recognize that certain values are important and not being lived up to and that's why we would start to feel guilt for them. So we can see why that starts later on in life. But being ashamed of our behaviors if we are shamed by parents and by what parents say or what parents do to us even from very young that can start at 15 months. So we may have been working through shame issues since that little bit of an age. 

08:25 

Okay so let's tackle shame first. Let's dig into this one first. Okay so first so let's reiterate that shame is caused by an innate sense of being worthless or being inherently defective. So we feel this because we don't have a good sense of our self worth. We don't see ourselves as being able to change into someone of worth. And because shame thoughts bring feelings of not being able to change. Our actions then play that out. When we plug that into the model, a situation happens, a circumstance, our c-line, and then our thought line is a shameful thought. And that brings feelings that I can't change, and my actions then play that out. We don't move toward changing behaviors for the better because we feel as though and we think that there is no point. If I'm bad to the core, changing my behaviors isn't going to change that. We would view it as being just a superficial thing. So shame is based in a fixed mindset belief. 

09:35 

So if you haven't checked out the podcast entitled "Mindset," that's number 12, go check it out if you need a better explanation of how mindset fits in with shame and guilt. But basically, a fixed mindset believes that we are how we are and we cannot change. Nothing we can do can make me a better person. So shame is a very fixed mindset idea. Shame thoughts also cause a fear of rejection, which perpetuates itself. When we have the thought, "they might reject me," we feel fear. When we feel fear, we pull into ourselves. We don't work to connect with others. Those are our actions, right? And the end result is that we are rejected by others because of how we've acted toward them. 

10:22 

So when we have the thought, "they might reject me," we create the ultimate result that they do reject us because of how we've acted toward them. So shame can be tough to tackle simply because it goes to the core beliefs of our worth. If we want to tackle shame, we have to start working on self-compassion and a greater sense and acceptance of our self-worth. Okay, have you noticed yet how often self-worth comes up in our discussions? I truly believe that it is the core ingredient in having a healthy emotional life. 

11:01 

So if you have a lot of shameful thoughts, how do you start to work on it? As we mentioned, getting in touch with your self worth as a person is a perfect place to start. We do that by practicing self-compassion and moving away from self-criticism. Another place to focus on is in establishing healthy relationships. So when I start to connect with others in meaningful ways, it builds my sense of belonging and my sense that I'm enough. When I approach a relationship with vulnerability, when I really put my true self out there, that's when I find connection, right? We don't find connections in relationships without vulnerability. So it requires vulnerability to have that connection. And then I can slowly begin to realize that what I'm bringing to the table, my true self is worthy of connection. Many people who work within shame struggle. They struggle to be vulnerable enough to make the connections necessary for a healthy relationship. Alright, so our whole sense of self-worth is tied up not only in what we think in our heads but in what we bring to relationships and our lack of being able to be vulnerable. 

12:21 

So alright, there's shame so let's move on to discussing guilt a little bit more in depth. So whereas shame says "I am bad," guilt says "what I did was bad." Guilt focuses on the behavior and guilt comes from a growth mindset. The growth mindset believes that I can change and grow and that mistakes are an essential part of life. So guilt is such a healthier way to approach life because guilt is a feeling of discomfort when we've done something that does not align with our values. Our behavior was not what we would like it to be and behaviors can be changed and that's good news, right? We feel like there is room for growth, there's room for change, there's room for improvement when we feel guilt. 

13:10 

Oftentimes within our society, we just mentioned this briefly before, guilt and shame will be used interchangeably. More often I think guilt is used when we should really be talking about shame. So getting our terminology right here is really important especially as you have discussions about this with other people. You need to have the same ideas of what guilt and shame are because a lot of people will say "oh, I felt so much guilt," when actually what they were feeling was shame. And so if you have this discussion with people around you get clear on those definitions first because then you can really have some good discussions about guilt and shame and where they're taking us. 

13:49 

So guilt is actually very useful. If we never felt guilt or discomfort for something we did wrong, we would never be motivated to change the behavior, even if it was hurtful to ourselves or to others. So I may feel guilt when I say something careless to a friend. I get that gnawing feeling inside and I keep thinking about what I said and that it didn't really reflect the love that I feel in my heart or that I want to feel for them. So that guilt will motivate me to apologize and seek to be more aware of what I'm saying in the future, right? It will create that change. Guilt leads to emotional healing because when I apologize and change my behavior, the gnawing discomfort goes away and I can begin to move forward again, alright? So guilt also requires that we take responsibility for our behaviors, and being able to take responsibility for our actions is a huge step toward emotional adulthood. and emotional health. 

14:55 

So now I'm going to divide up guilt a little bit because guilt can be divided between healthy and unhealthy guilt. So healthy guilt takes into account the fact that we are all humans and that perfection is really not an option. Okay, healthy guilt realizes that I'm not going to do everything right but that I don't need to berate my my every behavior that falls short of my incredibly unrealistic standards. So unhealthy guilt comes from a place of expecting near perfection from ourselves. Our standards are so high that allowing for human behavior and inconsistencies is just not an option. 

15:45 

So healthy guilt could be if I intentionally stole something from my neighbor. Okay I would feel guilty about that hopefully guilty enough that I would want to return it with an apology. Unhealthy guilt would be beating myself up for borrowing something from a neighbor and forgetting to return it for a few weeks. There's a difference between those two things, right? We all make mistakes. What if I bump into a co-worker at a restaurant on a Saturday and I forget their name? Is that something I should feel guilty about? No, not really because that's part of the human experience. It's an unrealistic expectation that we should always remember everybody's name all the time. If we spent the rest of the weekend feeling bad and guilty for forgetting their name that's unhealthy guilt. 

16:42 

But what if I bump into someone's car in the parking lot? I leave a huge dent and then I go park somewhere else and I don't inform them. For many of this this of this is a decision that goes against our value of being honest and we would feel healthy guilt about this. Alright, we would want to fix it, that feeling of discomfort that I did something against my values. 

17:07 

So how do we handle unhealthy guilt? First, we need to drop our beliefs that we should be practically perfect. Right? Try this great unhealthy guilt hack. You obviously want to acknowledge that you feel uncomfortable for not remembering their name, but we don't have to say "I'm sorry" for every little thing that happens. This guilt hack changes from "I'm sorry" to "thank you." Alright, so rather than saying "I'm sorry I forgot your name," try "thank you for reminding me of your name." Rather than "I'm sorry I'm always late," how about "thank you for waiting for me." Instead of "I'm sorry I always mess up," say "thank you for your patience while I figure this out." Rather than "I'm sorry for talking so much," we can say "thank you for being such a great listener." 

18:04 

Don't you love this? I love that we can acknowledge our uncomfortable feeling without blowing up into unhealthy guilt, but by also acknowledging the graciousness and the goodness of the other person at the same time. So instead of "I'm sorry," we can say "thank you." 

18:22 

So I experienced this the other day with my daughter Allison. She and I were sitting in an auditorium and someone from near the middle needed to get past us and she probably said "I'm sorry" about six times by the time she had passed the four people she needed to pass to get out into the aisle. How much more helpful for her if she had said "thank you" as she passed by. Because then coming back in she started all over with the I'm sorrys and apologized all the way back to her seat. 

18:53 

This is the deal. Needing to leave a meeting for a few minutes is just part of life. I definitely definitely appreciate that she wanted to acknowledge the fact that we all had to move our knees to the side so there was room for her to slide by, but there was nothing inherently wrong with her behavior. She needed to leave for a few minutes. Nothing to feel guilty about. In this case a thank you would have been perfect. I'm going to put it out there that unhealthy guilt seems to come laced with a bit of shame. Shame that I'm not perfect yet. There isn't a full-blown lack of self-worth but the shame that comes from not being perfect enough can cause us to feel guilty and that's when it becomes unhealthy guilt. 

19:44 

Alright so there's healthy and unhealthy guilt. Good stuff, right? Okay, love this kind of stuff. So before we finish up, I want to take one last look at guilt and shame together. Shame comes from a place of feeling we are fundamentally flawed, that there is something inherently wrong with us, that we're not good enough or worthy enough. Guilt comes from a place of recognizing that our behaviors are not in alignment with our values and beliefs. In essence, "I am bad" shame versus "what I did was bad" guilt. 

20:19 

Shame is never helpful, never. Shaming ourselves or other people into trying to change will never create the connections we seek with ourselves or with other people. Shame will continue to erode our sense of self-worth and it will continue to break down relationships with people that we try to shame. When we attack another person's sense of self-worth, it's never a good thing, that is shaming. I do believe that many of us were shamed into behaviors when we were young, and so shaming others as a way to try and motivate them can be second nature. We may find ourselves using phrases that we heard when we were growing up without even having thoughts about where those phrases came from and from what they and what they really mean. 

21:11 

So here's something to look for this week. When speaking to yourself in your head or to others, do you find yourself using shaming language, language that attacks their self worth, as a way to try to get yourself or to get them to do what you want. You may find that without even realizing it, you've been using shame as a way to try and get what you want. I know that as I learned about this and started taking a step back, I found that I had used shame a lot with my ex-husband and with my children in trying to get what I wanted. And that's not good. 

21:52 

So start listening to yourself in your head and what comes out of your mouth. And if you're using shame, it's time to start thinking some different thoughts and changing your language. This is not only with other people, but also with ourselves and what we say in our heads. How do you talk to yourself in your head? If somebody else talked to you that way, would they be your friend? Okay, we've got to start looking at guilt and shame and how we use it. So life will change for us big time when we start seeing how we use guilt and shame in our lives. 

22:29 

Isn't it great to grow up? I think this is such a great place to be where I have the experience in my life that all of these concepts really have a place to fit. I think it's pretty awesome and I love it. I hope this discussion on guilt and shame has helped you to put some pieces together and help you recognize where you are and whether you're in a healthy or an unhealthy place with this. 

22:52 

So if you would love some help from me, some personal help to learn how to let go of your shame and work in a place of guilt instead or just to navigate some tough situations you want to work through, you can contact me at tanyahale.com. You can go to the "coaching" tab and you can book a free 20 minute coaching session to get you started. Okay, I would love to help you learn how to be a little bit more compassionate with yourself and get to be in a healthier place. So again, with this podcast, if you'll subscribe, if you'll leave a review, if you will share it, I would so appreciate it. Again, thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate your time and I appreciate, I love that you are in a place where you of growth, that you want to move forward and that you want to have better, healthier emotional relationships with yourselves and with others. Have an awesome day and I will talk to you next time. Bye! 

23:50 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!