Shame & Guilt

Shame and Guilt - I've written about it before, but it's something I want to bring up again, since these are feelings which take up a big part of many people's lives.

My dear colleague Ann-Charlotte Johansson have shared her knowledge about guilt and shame. Many thanks!

To feel guilt and shame can help people seeing their own limits, but when these emotions are rooted in something dysfunctional, our “inner guidance” is not reliable and our self-image becomes distorted. As a relative to a person suffering from an alcohol- or drug addiction, you're probably familiar with feelings of guilt and shame.

As a close one to a person with addiction, you may try and maintaining a type of facade. It's common that a person suffer from thoughts like: "what if others would know?", "what would they say at work?". These thoughts of shame may take over and affect a person's daily life. Furthermore, a feeling of guilt may occur when you for example can't help your close one.

According to Marta Cullberg Weston, psychologist, psychotherapist and author of numerous of books, there's two types of shame: the temporary shame and the chronic shame. The first one occurs in a specific type of situation, when we've for example made a big mistake. We might blush and feel "offended". The chronic shame is more harmful and is rooted in the individual's self-image; for example that he/she is useless or not worthy of being loved.This is the type of shame we have to deal with. 

 

Do you feel shame and guilt? 

 

In order to identify in which areas in your life you feel shame or guilt, try filling in the following sentences: 

 

- "I don't want people to think that I'm ..."
- "I don't want to be seen as a person who ..."
- "I would die if people found out that I ..."
- "I can't stand the thought that others would perceive me as ..."

What can you do to in order to handle your feelings of shame and guilt?

We need to recognize and face our shame, guilt, sadness, anger – well, all the feelings we've pushed aside in order to endure our daily life. A kind of conciliation process will help a person seeing things more clearly and a picture of how the person want his/her life to look like will begin to take shape. When you'll start focusing on the parts in your life which you're actually able to influence and change, the shame and guilt will start to subside.

Instead of running away from your feelings of shame and guilt – face them! A good start might be talking about the one thing that might affect your life a lot; your close one's addiction.

 

The text is translated from a post written by Ann-Charlotte Johansson