Guilt and Shame are both very common with any type of trauma. They are both horrible feelings and difficult to talk about. It’s helpful to understand the difference between the two.
Guilt is feeling you have done something bad or didn’t do something you should have, usually involving another person. This is about doing something bad.
Shame is feeling you are bad, worthless and unlovable. This is about being bad.
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Guilt
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There are two types of guilt. One is appropriate and the other is inappropriate.
Appropriate guilt occurs when you have harmed someone else or have caused damage. This can be worked through in therapy to figure out how much responsibility you need to take on for this, how you can redeem yourself, and make amends going forward. It is common to ruminate about this type of guilt and to blame yourself. Some of this may be justified but excessive self-blame is damaging over time. It’s important to look at what other factors contributed to the situation.
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Inappropriate guilt is common with child abuse, neglect or with an overly needy or anxious parent. The child takes on an inappropriate amount of responsibility in order to maintain the relationship with their adult care giver (usually the mother and/or father). An example of this would be a parent who easily becomes very anxious and overwhelmed by life’s pressures or a parent with addiction issues. The child learns to take care of the parent and to protect them against difficult things. This is a type of role reversal where the child looks after the parent. This is an inappropriate amount of responsibility for a child, but they need to carry this to keep the connection with their parent. As this child grows up, they continue to have this inappropriate amount of responsibility towards others they are in relationship with. In therapy we look at this type of excessive responsibility, where it came from, and how much is too much.
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Shame
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Shame develops in children when they are made to feel bad for who they are naturally or if something shameful has been done to them, such as in abuse. All human beings have basic needs that start in childhood: to be nurtured, supported, accepted, seen, heard, understood, respected, protected and rescued from unsafe situations. These are all big but normal needs. When these needs are not met in a child, they feel shameful for having them. They also internalise the shaming words they hear from the adults in their lives and believe them to be true.
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When a child is abused, verbally or physically, they take on the belief that they are shameful, that they must be bad for this to happen to them. It is much safer for a child to believe they are bad and have caused the abuse than to believe adults and the world around them are dangerous. The child is dependent on the adults to survive and therefor must believe the adult is good and dependable. If they don’t, they are alone in the world and will perish. The child takes in the shaming words the abuser uses as their own. In this way people develop internal parts of themselves that feel shameful and parts that are shaming. We look at which are present and how dominant they are.
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Shame can also develop anytime in life if someone is in situation where they are forced to do something that goes against their moral code. This can happen during military combat when a soldier does things they wouldn’t do in regular life. This also happened on the Covid wards when medical staff had to make decisions about patient care that went against their training of “do no harm”. Teenagers could feel this if they did things because of peer pressure and felt bad about this.
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If someone feels shame, they likely feel judged by others and themselves. They usually react to this by wanting to hide away, attack themselves with self-blame, and blame others (sometimes with anger and abuse) for making them feel bad. All three of these responses make sense but are harmful to the person and others. In therapy we look at the origins of guilt and shame. We bring understanding and compassion to the parts of you (often young parts) who felt shame and were shamed. We work with the parts of you that still shame you today. You may always feel some element of shame because that is a normal human feeling, but we can change your response to it, so it doesn’t overwhelm and incapacitate you.