No one likes guilt or shame. There is nothing humbler than having to admit we were wrong. There is nothing more painful than believing we are fatally flawed. But without guilt or shame, we would have no conscience and no moral code. Together, they help us understand right versus wrong so that we can develop the principles we wish to live by.
Having a healthy level of guilt means we are humble enough to accept we were wrong but confident enough in our ability to make amends and recover from it. Having a sense of shame means we know what not to do, as we know there will be consequences. Shame is our inner judicial system whose wrath we don’t want to incur. It threatens us with the prospect of losing face, both with ourselves and others if we defy these boundaries. We can think of guilt as our community service agent who talks our judge, jury and executioner into giving us a lighter sentence.
Guilt or Shame: A Breakdown of the Two
Guilt is focused on our actions. When we make a mistake or realize we have hurt someone else, we see what we did as bad. Guilt motivates us into making it right so that we will feel better about ourselves.
Shame is when we see our mistake and use it to define us. It isn’t just the action that was bad (Guilt). We believe the action means we are bad. This is what triggers our inner judicial system. It sentences us to self-attack and devalue ourselves. So, we start name-calling ourselves as bad, stupid or ugly. When we believe we are inadequate or unworthy, it causes the mistake to loom larger in our mind. Because when we perceive ourselves as inescapably flawed, so is our perception of the problem which triggered it.
Guilt wants to avoid shame at all costs. So, when our inner judicial system is triggered and we are indicted, so is guilt’s confidence in recovering from “such a shameful error.”
Major Problems Have Silver Linings
The problem in the Complex-PTSD community is, we have an overabundance of both. Trauma Glossary 2 includes a slew of symptoms rooted in guilt or shame. Among them: our vicious inner critic, FOG, impostor syndrome, self-abandonment, shame spirals, super-conscience, and of course, toxic shame. I listed the terms in alphabetical order, so that you may find them more easily as you scroll down. If you identify with them, it means you have achieved accidental mastery of integrity and humility.
Most people in the Complex-PTSD community have never stopped to consider this. In the process of striving to be opposite of our anti-role models and a desire to do the right thing, no matter how confusing it is – and it’s very confusing! – we have developed a rare gift.
Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
New Oxford American Dictionary
Humility: a modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness.
And Our Conscience
Our conscience prevents us from acting on urges that are “selfishly” motivated. The greater the conscience, the greater the desire is to act on what is morally right. It stops us from acting on what we want by considering the needs of others, first. It ensures that we weigh what we want against consequences. Our conscience is key to the practice of human decency.
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
We do not have an ordinary conscience; it’s a super-conscience. It is a byproduct of our toxic shame, which believes we are fatally flawed. We stay conscious of this belief, which keeps us fearful of manifesting it in real time. So, instead of asserting what we want, we fall to self-abandonment. The dread of triggering our inner judicial system leads us to err on the side of self-sacrifice, “just in case” asserting what we want might be a sign of selfishness.
Like all extraordinary gifts, they feel more like a curse until we learn how to work with them.
Saving Face: How Those Without a Conscience Handle Guilt or Shame
There are those who have a history of catastrophically immoral behavior. We know them as our anti-role models, the Cluster B disordered (Trauma Glossary 1) parents who raised us. Thoughts and feelings define no one until it is put into actionable behavior. No better proof of this exists than understanding how those who seem to have no sense of shame do, in fact have it.
They use their sense of shame to mask in public and then unmask (Trauma Glossary 1) behind closed doors. Their refusal to bring it to consciousness causes them to redirect their shame onto their children and spouse. The Cluster B’s inner judicial system has indicted them and they force those closest to them to serve their sentence instead. We know this technique of theirs as projection (Trauma Glossary 1). They achieve confidence in how to handle their shame, but no humility to accept their wrong-doing.
Consider how they manage their sense of guilt or shame compared to us. If you need a primer, this article includes eleven visual aids that demonstrate our stark differences. The gist is, we are both terrible at managing our guilt or shame, but in completely opposite ways.
Saving Face: Complex-PTSD with Guilt or Shame
Having internalized a toxic level of shame is the reason we are vulnerable to shame spirals. This misdirects our guilt into rescuing us from shame, itself. Because let’s face it, there are few things more painful than being in the throes of a shame spiral. Our actionable behavior typically comes out in:
- Urge to isolate: “Because I can’t do anything right, anyway.”
- Self-abandonment: “Because if I do what I want, I’m being selfish.”
- Groveling series of apologies: “Because what I did was so horrible, I need to apologize again. And I have reviewed every wrong thing I’ve ever done, and I want to apologize for that too.”
- Perfectionism: “Because I’m not good enough and therefore, my best is never good enough.”
- Over-achieving: “Because I’m almost good enough but the goal post keeps moving.”
There’s humility in accepting our mistakes but no confidence in recovering from them.
Recovering from Shame
In Master Toolbox 1, I listed two things for recovering from a shame spiral: 1) anything written by the shame researcher, Brene Brown and 2) process it out until you achieve validation. That’s because shame thrives in the dark. Just ask Brene Brown. The key to working out our shame is bringing it to the light. Shame will always look worse when it’s hiding. Now here are more ways we can work through our shame.
It starts with challenging the above actionable behaviors. This feels impossible in real time because we are forced to give an immediate response and unfortunately, our easiest response is our trauma response. That’s why taking a few minutes each day to reflect and check in with ourselves is so important. When we do this, we are calmly reviewing our day with a clearer perspective than we were having in real time.
If you used one of your trauma responses to “rescue” yourself from a shame spiral, for example, don’t beat yourself up with more shame. Instead, practice forgiving yourself by acknowledging that our toxic shame developed over years of parental abuse. Therefore, it won’t be corrected overnight. Find at least one thing in the triggering event that you can validate for yourself. Then think of how you could handle a similar event in the future. Follow that up with a reminder that you will make mistakes until you finally get your first success out of the shame.
Working with our other emotions and cognitions
Shame almost always leads us into another uncomfortable emotion and it immediately plays a duet with our shame. Don’t be afraid to go with that, because our emotions all have their unique language. Anger and sadness are our inner parental units. Sadness is our nurturer who wants us to fully process the problem with self-compassion. Anger wants us to champion for and protect ourselves by daring to name the problem. Anxiety wants us to make a decision and then give it our full focus.
The cognition sheet is an excellent tool for daily reflections. Half the sheet is devoted to the practice of thought correcting our guilt or shame. How interesting is that when we consider it was originally created for (EMDR) treating trauma? I wrote an article here on the various ways we can use the cognition sheet to gain clarity and maximize growth. Believe me, it’s helped me grow. In fact, I consider my article on using the cognition sheet to be the prequel to this series on our emotions.
Developing Healthy Guilt
Guilt is our troubleshooter. It wants to solve the problem by correcting our mistakes. It’s up to us to decide if we want a good troubleshooter or a mediocre one. We have mastered humility. Now it’s time to develop our confidence, being humble enough to accept we will make mistakes but confident enough in our ability to recover from them. The more we develop this, the more we will develop resiliency. It starts with doing the shame work.
Shame Spiral Success Stories
In case you need a couple of “case studies” on how to recover from a shame spiral and the major growth spurt waiting for you on the other side, check out my history comics. In my prequel comic (*The only article that comes with a language warning.) it started with challenging my trauma response when an ex-friend scapegoated me. I had a strong urge to review our entire history as friends so that I could give her a groveling series of apologies. Let me tell you, that eleven hour shame spiral I suffered was no joke, all because I defied my trauma response. But look all the growth that came out of it. I used anger to verbally vent my way out of the spiral.
The next one was my first official comic, Guided Wisdom with George Washington. That’s when I shame spiraled again all because my growth spurt ended and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t busting more barriers anymore. I used sadness to reparent myself out of that one.
Be sure to check back here on May 30th for my new history comic. It concerns a man who, at just 22 years old, made every mistake you can think of and he (accidentally) started a global war. But history doesn’t remember him for that mistake. He is remembered, instead for his greatness. If he could recover from that mistake, we can recover from ours.