Depth Psychology Perspectives on Guilt and Shame Part 1

This information is designed to give us some clarity surrounding the deeper meanings of guilt and shame. The goal is to clarify the design of these unique emotions that are frequently misunderstood due to the intensity of their dissonance and discomfort. The hope is that while you journey through the valleys of guilt and shame you might find some surprising value in the existence of these somber states of consciousness. You might even change your perception of these unwelcome visitors gaining an appreciation for these guardians of the sacred worth of the Sentient Being.

PART – ONE

Goals:

1) To understand the difference between guilt and shame.
2) To understand guilt that is healthy.
3) To understand shame that is healthy.
4) To understand the health of sexual shame (Modesty).

How are guilt and shame different?

GUILT vs SHAME

While Guilt and Shame share the same visceral experience of a dark and cloudy feeling that surrounds a sense of deep and intense embarrassment about being wrong and/or failing to be right these emotions also hold distinct differences. We do know that shame and guilt are closely related. Much like brother and sister cut from the same cloth guilt and shame reside within the domain that we commonly call the conscience.

Considering the primary difference between guilt and shame we note that guilt is more about the wrongness of an action and the resulting injury to another while shame is about the belief and subsequent feeling that you are not a good or worthwhile person.

What is the nature and purpose of Guilt?

UNDERSTANDING GUILT

Guilt is a powerful feeling of distress and humiliation that occurs when you have, or perceive that you have, committed a wrongful or injurious behavior that has mistreated or
hurt yourself and/or another/others.

The Guilt feeling places focus on a wrongful behavior choice and the impact the choice had on self and others. The focus clarifies that the commission of this particular behavior choice will put you through the intense discomfort of humiliation and distress because the action is wrong due to its negative impact on self or others. This guilt feeling targets and marks the action that was wrong and often leads to feelings of empathy surrounding the injury that resulted from the action.

The distress and humiliation of guilt mean that even though you are a good person, the choosing of this wrongful choice jeopardizes your goodness and the goodness of others around you. The notion of goodness surrounds the characterization of one who does not promote and facilitate the suffering of others. The distress feeling surrounds the discovery that there is something bigger and more important than the self-absorbed agenda that led the individual to the wrongful and/or injurious behavior choice. The distress of this discovery surrounds the foolishness that you feel at the realization of how small your agenda actually is within the grand scheme of things.

The humiliation feeling that accompanies guilt reflects that it is not only that the choice itself that was wrong but more so it was wrong that you had the willingness to choose the wrongful act and within that willingness there was intent and motive for the wrong in question.

This willingness suggests the neglect of ignorance, or recklessness or the existence of a character flaw. The case of a character flaw may suggest a tendency to engage in deliberate and willful malice towards others.
The remedy for the guilt feeling is learning. The lesson to be learned is to learn how to target the wrongful choice as a behavior that is not worth choosing and to make a specific plan to ensure that the choice is not repeated. This plan is more commonly known as a relapse prevention plan.

What is the nature and purpose of Shame?

UNDERSTANDING SHAME

Shame is a powerful feeling of humiliation and despair regarding a specific judgment on one’s self worth. Shame surrounds a conclusive negative judgment on one-self unlike guilt which is a negative judgment on an action that wronged another. This negative judgment that comes with shame has a direct impact on an individual’s sense of human worth, including the worth of one’s soul or character.
Shame includes the feeling that you are simply not worthy of goodness or happiness because you are unrighteous and flawed and there is somewhere, somehow, something fundamentally wrong with you.

Shame is the shadow side of Worth, sisters who share the same coin. Where Worth is heads in the light Shame is Tails in the shadows. The presence of shame announces the absence of worth.

Shame by design is healthy and serves a critical role surrounding the restoration of worth. Healthy Shame is a spirit guide who appears in the conscious mind in the event of violation. Shame appears to announce the absence of worth. Shame clarifies that worth is absent because worth and violation cannot occupy the same space. Worth surrounds the sanctity of life and cannot be lost but in the event of violation is relocated. The spirit of shame is designed to give direction on what-where and how to purge the violation and restore worth to its rightful place. Shame is the guide for this journey known as the restoration of trust and by design will leave the conscious mind at journey’s end.

What is it that makes guilt and shame healthy?

HEALTHY GUILT

Healthy guilt is designed to help individuals target a wrongful or harmful choice as a behavior that is not worth choosing. Healthy guilt accomplishes this by teaching a series of lessons that clarify the cost of the misbehavior, demonstrating with clarity how the cost far out-weighs the benefit. The deconstruction of the benefit reveals the individual’s intent and motive for the commission of the wrongful behavior. This guilt then helps individuals to make a specific plan to ensure that the choice is not repeated.
This plan is more commonly known as a relapse prevention plan.

Guilt helps to increase our awareness of behavior choices that are reductive and/or destructive and guide us instead towards, behaviors that validate worth and beliefs that acknowledge the truth of equality. Once we have learned guilt’s lessons, guilt moves on. We then continue our travels along that curve on which we learn, traveling now with both a higher state of consciousness and a greater awareness that we are far more than we ever thought we were. It is at this time that we meet the character that replaces Guilt, we meet Reverence.

HEALTHY SHAME

Shame by design is healthy and serves a critical role surrounding the discovery and restoration of worth. Healthy Shame is a spirit guide who appears in the conscious mind and is accompanied by extreme feelings of humiliation and despair. The feelings can be so powerful that it feels like there is no way to recover a sense of hope or happiness. The intensity of shame’s discomfort is designed to compel growth and change often surrounding violation clarification for survivors, and wrongful or injurious behaviors that offenders may have inflicted upon others. Thus, shame’s discomfort both commands attention and compels change. How strong after all would discomfort levels have to be to motivate us to identify a violation or question an injurious behavior that produced some level of reward or benefit?

Healthy shame visits both, individuals who have survived a violation (the survivor) and individuals who have committed a violation (the offender). Shame appears to both, to announce the presence of a violation and the subsequent absence of worth. Shame clarifies that worth is absent because worth and violation cannot occupy the same space. Worth surrounds the sanctity of life and cannot be lost or altered but in the event of violation is relocated.

For the survivor the spirit of shame is designed to give direction on how to purge the violation from the soul and restore worth to its rightful place. Shame is the guide for this journey known as the restoration of worth and by design will leave the conscious mind at journey’s end.

For the offender Shame is the guide for this journey known as the four-stages of genuine remorse. Shame for the offender is designed to teach the lessons of reverence including self-accountability – self-correction – self-regulation – self-trust – and finally self-forgiveness. Shame by design will leave the conscious mind of the offender at journey’s end.

What exactly is modesty and why is it important?

HEALTHY SEXUAL SHAME – (MODESTY)

One of the most common forms of healthy shame surrounds the notion of modesty which refers to the human sense to protect of the sacred worth of the body. This sacred worth includes the inherent value of the body’s sex appeal as well as the value of healthy lust.

To clarify the nature of this modesty or healthy shame we might consider a teenage boy and girl in the course of changing into street clothes in the boy’s car after a day at the beach. The girl goes into the back seat and places a towel over the opening between the front and back seat. At some point the makeshift curtain slips which the boy inadvertently notices as he looks in the rear view mirror. He immediately averts his eyes focusing on the road ahead while jokingly say that the view in the back seat has never been better. The girl, giggling quickly fixes the barrier and finishing up climbs into the front seat full of questions about what he might have seen. The boy proclaims gallantly that he is a man of honor and that her virtue is intact. The girl who values the worth of her beauty in her deep romantic inner sanctum is jubilant at the boy’s capacity for both self-regulation and self-respect.

The scene above suggests that the value of following the modesty instinct is freedom, the freedom to enjoy attachment rituals without the intrusion of predictable sex role dramas that demand sexual performance. These role dramas tend to surround an intrusive requirement to engage in the pursuit of sexual gratification with one’s partner in order to secure some form or semblance of attachment commitment. This means that the sexual interchange is driven by an expectation rather than free will and sense of readiness found within the organic rhythm of attachment ritual. These sex role dramas also tend to be scripted and are filled with expectations that call for the bravado of performance rather then than the discovery of the dance. These sexual role dramas also obstruct the creative process of sexual identity development and the ability to create moments rather than follow scripts.

The free love mantra often posed by naturalists as far back as the 1960’s would say why be ashamed of the body’s beauty and cover it up? Why not be proud of the body’s beauty and expose it? Healthy shame however is not about being ashamed of the body’s beauty it is about protecting the worth of that beauty.

When considering the nature and agenda of healthy shame it is important to note that disgust is the cousin of healthy shame. Consider the way that disgusting odors prevent us from ingesting or consuming harmful toxins. When milk or meat become spoiled the disgusting odor is instrumental in keeping us from consuming the now physiologically harmful products. In the same way healthy shame creates a disgust surrounding the choice of violating an organic sexual boundary. Such disgust may be encountered when considering sex with a family member or an adult having sex with a child. The violation of what seems to be the notions of some original sexual design creates an intense feeling of distress and humiliation seemingly created to ward us away from the harm that results from the erosion of healthy sexual boundaries. The specific harm of boundary erosion surrounds a slavery to sexual preoccupation and an impairment in ones ability to form healthy emotional attachments. Thus, the intense discomfort of healthy shame seems to be acting as a regulatory agent that marks fence lines that help us govern the compelling force of the sex drive.

While there are certainly cultural differences surrounding the ideas of exposure vs boundaries when considering sex appeal and sexual lust the critical goal of healthy sexual shame is the protection of the worth of both beauty (sex appeal) and lust. While constantly exposing the body’s sex appeal might diminish the worth of that appeal it is also true that the constant consumption demands of sexual lust may well diminish the worth of sexual lust. Thus, it is the role of healthy shame to protect the worth of both the body’s sexual beauty and the healthy hunger for that beauty.