Lately I have been thinking a lot about shame and guilt. Noticing it with clients, my friends, and even myself. We are so hard on ourselves! Thinking about what we should be doing like cleaning up a mess or getting to that home project (I am worthless because I did not do the dishes today - shame), what we should not have done like eat that cookie or talked to someone a certain way (I can’t believe I snapped at my best friend - guilt) and thinking over and over again about these things. Ruminating about this stuff makes us feel worse.

Let’s define shame and guilt, since naming them helps get on the road towards compassion.

Shame: I am bad.
Guilt: I have done bad.

Both can lead us to more destructive thoughts. If you’re familiar at all with Brené Brown, you might have heard of Shame Shields. These are the way we react to feeling shame (how we put up a shield to others and disconnect):

Move Away: Withdrawing or hiding from others, silencing yourself, and keeping secrets.
Move Towards: Trying to please others.
Move Against: Taking your shame to try to make others feel shame - this tends to be more aggressive as a way to gain power over others.

The situation itself and your relationships with others will tend to determine which shield you react with when you start to feel shame. Sometimes shame and guilt come hand in hand, other times guilt feeds into shame, or guilt just happens on its own.

Now how can you combat these shame shields? Well, the best thing to take the power away from shame or guilt is through empathy. Either by trying to connect with someone your trust to hear your feelings and have them feel with you or even empathizing, contextualizing, and normalizing for yourself (self-compassion) is powerful too.

Can you think of how you might have used a shame shield recently? What might you tell yourself next time something feels similarly?