Guilt is one thing. Guilt can be healthy. It’s feeling bad about something we did or something we didn’t do that we should have. Guilt can be a way we demand of ourselves to do better next time. Shame, however, is when we feel bad about who we are. While this isn’t a great feeling it, too, can be a catalyst for change. The problem begins when we start to internalize shame. Then it becomes poisonous. Toxic shame is feeling bad about who we are all of the time. It produces profound feelings of hopelessness. When we are submersed in toxic shame we feel stupid and unattractive. We feel like we will never be enough. We feel unlovable. We may even wish we had never been born.
The stress and anger of shame can cause or worsen diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and various autoimmune disorders. Toxic shame burrows its way into our heads and into our spirits. It cloaks us in defeat. It changes the way we hold ourselves and affects how we interact with the world. Toxic shame, and the negative self-talk it feeds, is a way we destroy ourselves from within. It’s these negative statements, the things about us we feel we need to fix, that we internalize and obsess about. High levels of shame are connected to anxiety, panic, depression, and stress. Fueling our harsh and derogatory inner voice shame can leave us feeling worthless and exhausted.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory involving a pyramid of human needs. The bottom of the pyramid forms the most basic needs, those that have to do with the physical. From there we go to safety, love and belonging, and finally to self-actualization. Having the needs at the levels below met is the only way to ascend to the next level. Shame, focusing on the mistakes of the past, causes us to focus on the bottom of the pyramid. We question our value which causes us to feel insecure in safety of our place in our world. Worse, focusing on these negative emotions of shame and guilt reinforces our focus on negative emotions.
Our physical and mental health may depend on our ability to reduce the hurt and anger we aim at ourselves. We hold onto our guilt and shame for the same reason we hold grudges against others. We think we deserve it. These schemas, these beliefs about ourselves, form the glasses through which we look at the world. But in our self-punishment we are not allowing ourselves to be our best. We become unable to move forward trapping ourselves in our past actions while struggling with self-doubt and self-loathing. Most importantly we are stopping ourselves from learning and improving from our mistakes. These stories we tell ourselves are powerful. The good news is they are learned patterns of thinking which means they can be unlearned. One of the first steps to doing this is to forgive ourselves.
Dwelling on past bad decisions only allows those decisions to keep defining us. The past will not help us. It is unchangeable. Only the future is malleable. Fortunately, as Sharon A. Hartman, LSW, a clinical trainer at the Caron Foundation, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Wernersville, Pa. notes, “Forgiving ourselves is as close as we come to a system reset button.” Leaving everything in our past and focusing on our future is the only way to work towards improvement. As with forgiving others, forgiving ourselves is a process. It requires self-understanding, respect for our fallible humanity, and taking responsibility and making amends for our wrongs. If we subscribe to higher powers we may want to have a conversation with them, as well.
The first thing we need to do is embrace our wretched humanity. None of us, not one of us, is perfect. Even the gods are flawed. No amount of guilt or shame can reverse what has happened. Rather than wallow in our pain the most valuable thing we can do is learn from it. Not to sound like a fortune cookie, but every mistake is a possible lesson. What wisdom have we gained in this debacle? How can we take this wisdom and make our lives, and the lives of others, better? We need to figure out how to use our errors to begin the journey towards making things right, of putting more good into the world.
We must acknowledge the wrong. Stick it in a box and slap a label on it. According to psychologist Fred Luskin, PhD and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, “Most of us find it hard to forgive ourselves when we’ve done one of … four things.” When we feel we have failed. Usually at something big. When we flunk out of college or our marriage falls apart. Knowing that our actions have hurt someone. Sometimes, even when we know we’ve done the right thing. Realizing that we’ve made bad life choices. Too much alcohol, not enough exercise, prioritizing work over people, whatever choices we made that are self-destructive or have caused pain to people we love. Not doing something we know that we should from saving for the future to reaching out to friends and family.
Confess. Not make excuses or misdirect. Saint Augustine said, “If you excuse yourself in confession, you shut up sin within your soul, and shut out pardon.” If we want to release our guilt we have to specify the particular wrong we have done and recognize and acknowledge the harm it caused. We don’t have to share this information with the person that we’ve harmed, if there is one. In some cases, where a confession would only cause more damage, it may be best to keep our traps shut. We should talk about our transgression with people that we trust, our support network. (Click here for info on how to build one.) English Roman Catholic nun, writer and critic Maude Petre wrote, “True confession consists of telling our deed in such a way that our soul is changed in the telling it.”
Most of us have this idea, this ideal, of who and how we are supposed to be. For me it’s a crunchy mama. A vegan who makes everything from scratch. The kind of person who never uses plastic and knits her own socks from virgin cotton she’s grown and dyed herself with organic dyes she’s made herself. Whose kid has never even heard of a screen. She has all the routines down pat and knows exactly how to respond to every nuance of emotion from her child or partner. She’s a lady who lunches while painting, writing a monetarily successful blog, doing yoga, swimming daily, and taking tantric sex classes.
She does everything, in moderation and to perfection.
She’s impossible. Yet I compare myself to her all of the time. These ideas of who and how we are meant to be seep into our conciousness over time, usually starting when we are very young. They are rarely realistic. Which means they are rarely attainable. It’s important to recognize them as such. Setting unrealistic goals for ourselves means continued failure. Failure which then leads to guilt and shame. We have to recognize when we are holding ourselves to an impossible standard and let it go.
It’s important to examine our feelings. Figure out what they are and where they come from. Generally speaking, it’s not the thing we did (or didn’t do) that’s the problem. It’s our reaction. Recognize the stress and guilt we are putting on ourselves. The negative thoughts that are connected to these feelings not only get in the way of healing and forgiving ourselves they make us feel worse. We need to release this habit, to stop this self flagellation. Only then can we move on.
While it’s important to understand our feelings it’s equally important not to get lost in them. I’ve never liked the brooding antihero trope. No matter how handsome he is some random dude obsessing and stalking from the shadows is just creepy. And kind of pathetic. I mean, just get over it, dude! In retrospect this dislike of brooders probably stems from the fact that I am one. I ruminate. Being the genetic and environmental progeny of two Negative Nelly’s I tend to stew over the bad. The sins committed against me and, of course, the sins I have committed. I am teaching myself to stop that shit. Like all in life, it’s a process.
Positive Emotion Refocusing Technique, or PERT, is an abbreviated meditation and visualization technique Luskin developed to use when we start to stew over past hurts and regrets. Close our eyes and draw in a deep breath through our nose from our stomachs. Then, as we relax our stomachs, slowly push the breath out through our mouths. Once again inhale then exhale. On the third breath visualize something that calms and delights: someone we love or a place that soothes us. Connect and feel our feelings. Bring then into us.
One of the things stopping us from releasing our pain may be that we are using it as a form of self castigation. And, perhaps, to shield ourselves from the real consequences of what we’ve done. By showing the world the ravages of our guilt we are also saying that this is punishment enough. Ultimately, all this does is bring more misery into the world – the exact opposite of what we want to do.
Instead we must try to amend our wrong. When we are still able to contact the person or persons we have wronged a good place to start is a sincere apology. Just keep in mind that an apology that makes us feel better but the other feel worse is no apology at all. In some cases it is impossible to make things right directly with those we have wronged. We can still attempt to balance the scales by working towards good in the world. As Luskin says, “Do good rather than feel bad.”
Once we’ve made amends we need to change the story we tell ourselves. The schemas, the beliefs we have about ourselves, are powerful. We must alter the story so that it is no longer a tale of our villainy. What we have now is a redemption story. We need to accept both the actions that caused the pain and the steps we have taken to mitigate the pain. That means letting go of an unchangeable past and focusing on improving our future.
Accepting our self forgiveness can be a struggle. The past is a tempting place. It may not be changeable but unlike the future, and to an extent the present, the past is knowable. There is a certain comfort in that. The future, for all its great possibilities, is uncertain. As I have discussed at length in several posts, especially Patterns, the brain really hates uncertainty. In many cases we would rather be faced with the sure knowledge of a bad thing than the maybe of a good one.
It can help to put things in perspective by focusing on the good things we do. Every evening take a moment to think about and write down the good things we’ve done. Most of us do kind and loving things every day. From small things like holding the door for the person coming in behind us or helping out with a project to something huge like donating an organ and everything in between. Seeing the good that we bring to ourselves and others gives our mind and body a break from all the shame and guilt by replacing them with gratitude. It inspires us with the knowledge that this is something we can keep doing in the future. Once we accept our forgiveness we can face changing and improving our outlook for the better.
Even when we think we’ve gotten through it all we may find ourselves falling back into old patterns. We need to learn to take care of ourselves by not taking all of the guilt and blame on ourselves, but by treating ourselves as we would a friend. I’ll say this many times in many ways, we tend to be much harder on ourselves than we are on the people we love. Think about how we would react if a friend came to us with our tale of woe. What words of encouragement would we use? Turn that positive energy inward. Tell ourselves that it is okay and that we can use any mistakes we make to improve upon our lives and our selves. That’s it’s okay to start over.
Self forgiveness isn’t about making excuses it’s about not allowing our negative thoughts to consume us. It is a form of self-compassion. A series of experiments has led som experts to think self-compassion has the pluses of self-confidence without the worries of arrogance or egoism. According to the results when we practice self-compassion we are more willing to admit and express regret for our mistakes or bad choices than those who focus on self-esteem or positive distraction. More, when we practice self-compassion we become motivated to amend for the past and make better choices in the future.
Self forgiveness is less about feeling good about ourselves than it is committing to brutal self-honesty and understanding. It’s digging down deep and exposing the dark urges that led us to our mistakes to the harsh light of day. These urges: jealousy, pride, greed, fear, they can be ferocious. To battle them we have to connect to the part of ourselves that is open, warm, brave, and, most importantly, kind. Basically, it’s better to be compassionate, even, perhaps especially, to ourselves.
Sources
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-compassion-chronicles/201706/healing-your-shame-and-guilt-through-self-forgiveness
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