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MARCUS BRIGSTOCKE, BRITISH COMEDIAN
But if you wish to have a more academic evaluation, Christian Miller from Wake Forest University, USA, did an interesting summary of the differences that have been found by researchers.
Below, I have selected a few of the points she made that are relevant to our work in this book. Remember, these are only some of the differences that have been found through research.
• Guilt is a private emotion, whereas shame usually develops as a result of disapproval – real or imagined – from others.
• Shame can be triggered not just by moral wrongdoing, but by failing to abide by certain laws, rules or usual etiquette that do not have a moral base, e.g. wearing the wrong kind of dress to a wedding, forgetting to brush your hair before going to work or failing an exam.
• Guilt relates to wrongdoing that has been done. Shame concerns how you feel about yourself. You don’t like yourself at all, or you don’t like an aspect of yourself, rather than you don’t like what you have done.
• Shame makes you feel helpless, but guilt doesn’t always do so. In fact, guilt often prompts you to try to make amends or makes you wish that you could. Shame makes you want to hide yourself away so you and your failures are not noticed.
• When we are ashamed, we are less likely to feel empathy with anyone else who might have suffered as a result, e.g. people who put a lot of time and money into helping us with a project that we failed to deliver. With shame, we might be feeling so sorry for our failings that we cannot feel sympathy for anyone else who has suffered. With guilt, our focus might be on how we have let people down.
• Guilt is more likely to make us want to get into action to help others in some way. Shame doesn’t do this because it makes us feel useless.
As this kind of information always makes more sense when we apply it to our own personal experiences, try this exercise:
EXERCISE: CLARIFYING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GUILT AND SHAME
The purpose of this exercise is to help you judge which aspects of your response to a past wrongdoing indicate whether you were feeling shame and/or guilt. Being aware of roughly to what degree you felt each emotion will help you to decide the kind of action you need to take. As you know, this book is largely about dealing with guilt, but we will also deal with one kind of guilt that has a large element of shame mixed in with it. I call this Shameful Guilt. My two examples here illustrate how a wrongdoing can trigger both emotions.
Think of a time when you felt guilty and/or ashamed and ask yourself these questions:
a) Did I feel that I wanted to hide away or did I want people to know how bad I felt?
b) Did I do something that was morally wrong or not (as opposed to just breaking a rule or law that many people think is daft or out of date)?
c) Was my focus primarily on myself or on others?
d) Did I feel bad because I had done something ethically wrong (e.g. I wish I hadn’t done that) or did I feel bad that others would judge me as stupid/inept/inadequate/too ugly, etc. (e.g. I’m such an idiot).
e) Did I do something to repair my wrongdoing or did I do nothing?
Using a scale of 1–10 (10 being the highest amount for either feeling), score yourself separately on the amount of guilt and/or shame that this aspect of your response indicates you were feeling.
Example 1
Wrongdoing: I was unnecessarily cruel to say what I said in that meeting – he was only a trainee. I was so shocked by my behaviour that I was speechless.
a) a) I only wanted to hide away. I didn’t consider acknowledging my guilt to others.
Shame 10/10Guilt 0/10
b) Morally, I was totally in the wrong. The trainee was trying and I was unnecessarily aggressive about his naïve suggestion.
Shame 0/10Guilt 10/10
c) My focus was largely on myself – I hardly thought of what he must be feeling.
Shame 8/10Guilt 2/10
d) I knew what I had done was very wrong, but I was more worried about how others would judge me.
Shame 9/10Guilt 5/10
e) I didn’t even apologise.
Shame 10/10Guilt 10/10
Example 2
Wrongdoing: I lied to Mum in my message. I told her I had to work all weekend. I just couldn’t face driving all the way there – she’s such hard work these days. But I did worry about her and rang her on Sunday for a chat.
a) a) I told Jim what I had done but wouldn’t have told anyone else.
Shame 7/10Guilt 2/10
b) Jim said stop worrying, it was only a white lie. But I do think lying is wrong and I could have just told her that I was exhausted. Not going to see her every weekend is not that selfish – I do go often.
Shame 5/10Guilt 3/10
c) My focus was largely on Mum.
Shame 0/10Guilt 7/10
d) I was largely concerned about whether what I had done was right or wrong in relation to my own values. I was also slightly concerned about what Mum would think of me.
Shame 1/10Guilt 9/10
e) I did make good enough amends.
Shame 0/10Guilt 9/10
Repeat this exercise two to three times for other occasions when you felt guilty and/or ashamed.
As you continue reading this book, repeat this exercise and think of other occasions when you felt guilty and/or ashamed. It might help to have some photocopies of the exercise ready to fill out. By the time you have finished the book, you should have become an expert on the differences between these two emotional states.
What does guilt feel and look like?
Most of us think we know the answer to this question. We will readily describe what we feel inside our bodies and how it makes us behave. But your personal experience may be different from what others feel. People notice and describe the ‘signs’ of guilt in different ways. They may also behave differently. To confuse us even more, many of the signs of guilt can be due to other causes. So we may have to rule these out first before we can be confident that they can be attributed to guilt. But the lists that I am going to give you below are a good clue as to whether or not guilt could be at the root of a problem.
Here are some of the ways different people have tried to describe their personal experiences of guilt:
How different people experience guilt
IN THE BODY
There’s a permanent knot in my stomach.
It’s like pain and sorrow mixed with each other.
I feel like I want to cry but can’t.
I go quiet – it’s as though my throat has tensed up and I can’t speak.
It’s like a bunch of moths eating at my insides.
I often feel like I am going to be sick.
I want to hit my head … and I often do!
I find myself hitting my leg as soon as I remember it.
I want to curl up in a ball and my body starts to do that.
I feel scared and go all jittery.
I have this tension in my head – and I just can’t get my body to relax.
I want to hide – my head bows and my eyes close.
I feel like I am carrying bags of lead weights.
My head feels like it weighs a ton.
There’s like a weight on my heart.
It’s like I can’t stop sighing.
It’s weird … sometimes I just feel dirty and that I need to wash and wash … Perhaps I’m going mad, like Lady Macbeth!
IN THE MIND
It makes me think that I should not have done what I did because everyone else thinks it is bad.
I feel like my mind is going to explode.
I go over the situation again and again in my head.
I think people may be talking about me – thinking I am bad or am doing something wrong.
Thinking again and again of what my father would say if he could see me now.
I always think I am making a mistake.
I keep having flashbacks to when it happened.
I am constantly thinking that I should have done it differently, even though others are pleased …
Telling myself if only I had worked just that bit harder I could have …
It’s like I keep thinking that I will be ‘found out’.
I keep imagining what could have happened if I hadn’t been lucky.
Sometimes I feel guilty about being alive … I just can’t get it out of my mind that others died through no fault of their own.
Constantly telling myself I was such an idiot.
I can’t get the thought out of my mind that life isn’t fair – why have I got everything I have when others can’t? Just the luck of the draw.
I just worry all the time that I am getting it wrong and should know better.
It feels as though I am an impostor at work.
I just find myself dwelling on the fact that I could have done more … even though I really know I did what I could at the time.
Sometimes people are not aware that they are feeling guilt. When they first come to me, many of my clients may experience some of these ‘symptoms’ and think they are due to ill health or external stresses. If the latter have been ruled out, we will then look together at how they have led and are leading their lives. This is when it is helpful to also know what the common behavioural signs of guilt are, which may be the underlying cause of distress.
In the next chapter we will be examining in some depth the different types of guilt and the behaviours associated with each. But for the moment here are some of the more common general signs of possible guilt that you may recognise:
Behavioural signs of guilt
• Avoiding certain people or all people, or subjects of conversation.
• Playing too safe.
• Overcompensating with extremely ‘good’ behaviour.
• Overwork.
• Obsessions.
• Depression (without an obvious cause and no bipolar disorder diagnosed).
• Agoraphobia.
• Dependence on alcohol or drugs.
• Rebelliousness.
• ‘Bad’ behaviour.
EXERCISE: MY PERSONAL SIGNS OF GUILT
• Re-read the lists of physical, mental and behavioural signs that I have given above, and mark the ones that you commonly experience.
