Hi guys and welcome to today’s session. I am Gilles Brideau, I’m a psychotherapist, coach, and hypnotist that lives and works in Sudbury Ontario Canada.
Today I thought I’d do a little quick video on the difference between shame and guilt. Now, having worked with addiction clients for the majority of my career, this topic has often came forth as 1 of the primary kind of factors in helping people overcome addiction. I was propelled to do a short video about this just because of a client that was in yesterday. How she has a tendency to self-sabotage due to these issues. Let’s jump right in and let’s look at what really are the differences between shame and guilt.
If we start with guilt, guilt is really about the transgression of a value. It’s based on morality. If I steal your money or something like that, then guilt says I should feel bad about that because I’ve done something wrong, I violated a moral or societal norm. 1 of the key components of guilt is there has to be verbal structures in the brain. In other words, it’s usually developed between ages of 4 and 6. Kids have to have the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong, and also the concept of apologizing and feeling sorry. That it’s just not 5 letters, S-O-R-R-Y, yeah, 5 letters with sorry. It’s really much more than that. It’s saying, “I feel bad for what I’ve done, and this was why it was wrong. I want to make amends in some kind of way.”
There has to be verbal structures already in the brain that has been formed. Now, in terms of kind of the key components of guilt is I’ve done something wrong, and because you say, “I’ve done something wrong,” you could do something about it. You could apologize, you can do an action like if I’ve taken your money I can say, “I’m sorry,” and then repay you. There’s kind of a follow up and an action that can take place.
Shame on the other hand is much, much more toxic. It’s also pre-verbal. It could be developed at a really early age. I’ve worked with clients who say they remember the rejection that they had for their mothers as long as they can remember. Sometimes that is much younger than where verbal structures would be. It was just this feeling of that there was something innately wrong with … in some of the cases for some of my patients they were wrong for being born, they were mistaken, they were told they were a mistake really early on, or they were wrong for being a boy when the family wanted a girl, or vice versa. A girl when the family really wanted a boy. There’s occult crimes of gender. It’s like I’ve done something wrong because I was born of the wrong sex.
You can really see that shame says differently than guilt. Again guilt says, “I’ve done something wrong.” Whereas shame says, “There must be something inherently wrong with me.” You can just see, let me just move my screen here a little bit. That there’s something inherently wrong, and shame feels much more hopeless. That’s why it’s 1 of the key kind of components in addictive behavior. A lot of my clients will self-sabotage because of shame, because at their heart they feel like there’s something wrong with them. They kind of don’t deserve the good stuff.
These 2 are very intrinsically synced. Sometimes the guilt will say, “You need to punish.” You think of our punitive system, when somebody is charged with a crime and they’re guilty, there’s punishment that follows. I find with guilt and shame it’s kind of the same thing. If there’s some good stuff that happens in a person’s life they’re much more likely to sabotage, and it’s usually because of guilt and shame. In working with clients, in working with addictions, understand that a lot of it has to do with the emotional part. Most addictions are not logic based, meaning people don’t logically want to continue their substance use. Sometimes people can say it has a function of self-medication, or numbing out, or something like that. It’s usually because of emotional drivers. Obviously emotional drivers is not a logical part of the brain.
For a lot of my clients it’s really understanding these key components of guilt and shame, helping them uncover that. Often times with the use of neurolinguistics programming, hypnosis, cognitive behavioral therapy, or other therapies. To help them push those old feelings of guilt and shame far behind them so that can free them for the rewarding life that they do deserve. It’s making them realize that in fact they do deserve some of the good stuff, and that those old programming tapes of not being good enough, not being worthy enough, were formulated by somebody else. It’s not useful or efficient in their everyday life now.
that’s it, just kind of a quick video today. Understand that guilt and shame, many authors have talked about that as being kind of a key component. Gabor Mate talks about it, how toxic shame is really the key component in addiction and addictive behaviors. With that, thanks so much for joining me today. I’d love to keep the discussion going about this comment, and part of lowering stigma is also lowering the shame that people feel in dealing with mental health and addictions issues. With that, thanks so much for joining today. Have a wonderful day.