Guilt and Shame can often be mistaken for each other but they should be considered as starkly different. Here’s why …….

Briefy, Guilt is a sense that we’ve done something wrong or bad and Shame is feeling that we are wrong or bad in our entirety.

Guilt can actually be helpful as it’s our intuition and senses telling us that we’ve done something that is outside of our values and morals. If we do something that we feel is not right, we should feel guilt as this feeling guides us to continue with living with good intention. However, it can be problematic as our emotions are often illogical or we can have distorted views of ourselves meaning we can place guilt upon ourselves unnecessarily.

Key points to remember –

• Guilt allows us to align with our values and morals.
• It is temporary (whereas shame is long lasting).
• Guilt should be used to guide us to make healthier choices in the future.
• When we feel shame it’s linked to our self-esteem and is often a distortion of negative thinking.

If we don’t think particularly highly of ourselves or carry a significant amount of shame, we can easily have distorted feelings of guilt and be concerned we may have upset someone or feel we’ve done the wrong thing. For example, within the complexity of life, we may interact with someone with good intention and they may react negatively which can lead to us questioning ourselves. Having a balanced view on this can allow us to see that the other person’s reaction is their reaction and they can have ownership of that.

Overthinking leads to self-doubt and catastrophising (generally) leading us to feel bad about ourselves. We can have distorted thoughts that maybe we weren’t nice enough, interesting enough, good enough or that we may have been insensitive or offensive in some way. If we have an overt ability to feel guilty and self-blame, it’s often because we’re carrying shame where we continually feel that we’re not good enough or bad in some way.

Practising self-compassion can be very helpful to help us with our shame as well as journaling to help us with our self-awareness and sense of self-identity.

As always, feel free to leave any comments.
Best wishes, Duncan