Archive for the ‘ Suicide ’ Category

Thank you so much, commenters and Facebook pals! We did a great job with our first four emotions, and now I’d appreciate your help with the emotions Shame & Guilt, Jealousy & Envy, and the Suicidal Urge. Jealousy & Envy are especially difficult, because they’ve been mashed together in our language as if they’re the same emotion!

We’ll start with a social emotion that has a ton of words associated with it. As you read, let me know: Do all of these words work for you? Have I missed a perfect word?

The Single Emotion Called Shame and Guilt

In the book, I take the word guilt out of the equation pretty quickly, because I see it as a weasel word in relation to shame. I know I’m unusual in this respect, but I’m not on a wild-eyed crusade to rid the English language of the word guilt! However, I do want to bring up the subject here so that readers won’t be confused by my inclusion of the word guilt in these lists.

Here’s the excerpt from the book where I talk about guilt and shame:

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GUILT AND SHAME

In my early teens, I read a popular self-help book that branded guilt and shame as “useless” emotions. The book presented the idea that we’re all perfect, and therefore shouldn’t ever be guilt-ridden or ashamed of anything we do. That idea seemed very strange to me, so I went to the dictionary and looked up “guiltless” and “shameless” and found that neither state is anything to celebrate. To be guiltless means to be free of mark or experience, as if you’re a blank slate. It’s not a sign of intelligence or growth, because guiltlessness exists only in people who have not yet lived. To be shameless means to be senseless, uncouth, and impudent. It’s a very marked state of being out of control, out of touch, and exceedingly self-absorbed; therefore, shamelessness lives only in people who don’t have any relational skills. Both states – guiltlessness and shamelessness – helped me understand the intrinsic value of guilt and shame.

Fascinatingly, in a dictionary definition, guilt isn’t even an emotional state at all — it’s actually the knowledge and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Guilt is a state of circumstance: you’re either guilty or not guilty in relation to the legal or moral code you value. You cannot feel guilty, because guilt is a concrete state — not an emotional one! Your feelings are almost irrelevant; if you do something wrong, you’re guilty, and it doesn’t matter if you’re happy, angry, fearful, or depressed about it. When you don’t do something wrong, you’re not guilty. Feelings don’t enter into the equation at all. The only way you could possibly ever feel guilty is if you don’t quite remember committing an offense (“I feel like I might be guilty, but I’m not sure.”). No, what you feel is shame. Guilt is a factual state, while shame is an emotion.

Shame is the natural emotional consequence of guilt and wrongdoing. If we don’t know that and don’t welcome our authentic shame, we’ll be unable to moderate our our own behavior. We’ll continually do things we know are wrong — and we won’t have the strength to stop ourselves. In our never-ending shamelessness, we’ll offend and offend and offend without pause — we’ll always be guilty — because nothing will wake us to our effect on the world.

Guilt is a factual state, not an emotional one. You’re either guilty or not guilty. If you’re not guilty, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. However, if you are guilty, and you want to know what to do about the fact of your guilt, then you’ve got to learn to work with the information shame brings to you.

Okay, now that I’ve made that clear, forget it, because the word guilt will never leave our emotional vocabulary. It’s far simpler for people to use the weasel phrase “I feel guilty” rather than the more honest emotive phrase “I feel ashamed.” Let’s work on this following list so that we can have a more precise vocabulary for shame!

Lite Shame

Hesitant ~ Flushed ~ Self-conscious ~ Speechless ~ Discomfited ~ Awkward ~ Humble ~ Reticent ~ Abashed ~ Flustered

Mood-State Shame

Ashamed ~ Guilty ~ Embarrassed ~ Intimidated ~ Hurt~ Penitent ~ Regretful ~ Remorseful ~ Chagrined ~ Culpable ~ Reproachful ~ Sheepish ~ Rueful ~ Contrite

Intense Shame

Humiliated ~ Guilt-ridden ~ Guilt-stricken ~ Disgraced ~ Stigmatized ~ Mortified ~ Self-condemning ~ Self-flagellating ~ Degraded ~ Shamefaced

Here is The Gifts of Shame post to help you understand the positive aspects of shame. The practice for shame is to understand it as anger toward yourself, hopefully for something you’ve actually done wrong — which means you can make amends and change your behavior. In the book, I call this kind of shame “appropriate shame,” because it relates to something real and fixable: If your shame is appropriate, it will stop you from doing something you shouldn’t, and it will help you change your behavior and make amends.

However, there is another form of shame that I call “applied shame,” which comes from the shaming messages you pick up from others and incorporate into your life. Applied shame can be pretty toxic (especially if it relates to you not being good enough, smart enough, lovable enough, etc.), and the work in the book helps you identify applied shame and work through it so that you can get yourself into a better relationship with your authentic shame. Yay!!

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