HOW SHAME, GUILT AND FAKE GUILT ARE CONNECTED

We all feel shame, even those who try to avoid feeling it at all costs. We all feel guilt as well. We also all feel fake guilt. In this article we will analyse all of them and their connection.

Guilt it helps us understand when we have acted against our values, against what we believe is correct, when we have acted with a behaviour that is not always adhering with the idea of justice, against what we perceive right. Guilt is the voice of our conscience.

We may feel guilty when we act against our belief system, what we have been told is 'right' from our family or our culture. We may feel guilty when we have hurt someone.

Then there is fake guilt. Fake guilt is when we feel guilty for not taking care (or trying to resolve) other people feelings, when we try to make other feel good, or try not to disappoint them. Here we abandon ourselves to make others feel good. A typical example of it is people pleasing. We say yes to something we do not want to do to make others feel good (and to feel good ourselves since we derive our sense of being good by 'being good' and in this way we also avoid feeling the fake guilt).

See my article and my online course on people pleasing, if you suffer from this devastating behaviour you'll benefit immensely by my new framework to remove this it.

The problem then is to analyse which are our values, our beliefs and our actions and if our behaviour is are really something we 'should' really feel guilty for.

For example we could feel fake guilty for 'abandoning someone' when separating from a person, or for not 'being helpful' even if we were not asked to help, or for saying 'no' even if we were asked to be helpful; or for not being kind and considerate to others.

What about Shame?

Shame is blame reversed toward the self. It derives from a sense, a feeling of being unlovable. If we stop blaming ourselves for being imperfect (or for having made the same mistake over and over again) we will not feel the shame. Because there is not shame to feel if there is not wrong doing. Shame is a feeling that tells us we are not worthy. Shame is what we thing we are and not what we do.

We feel shame when intentionally hurt someone for example.

But we could feel shame for being assertive, in a society where for example assertiveness is considered rude; we could feel shame for not performing at our best. Basically we could feel shame for a million different motives but the question is when feeling shameful is 'sane' and when it is not?

The connection with shame and guilt is that for some of us we were made feel shameful for a behaviour and for who we were. So we confused guilt with shame and when we felt guilty we confused it with shame and it increased it. This was because we lived in dysfunctional family where our caregivers were full of shame and reversed their shame on us. We developed toxic shame. A shame reduction therapy or some sessions with a trauma informed coach with me will help you to reduce that shame.

In my early years I felt tons of shame and guilt, I was carrying the shame of my mother that she could not feel herself so she made me feel it for her, I had to to feel loved enough to be able to survive; there was so much shame in me that even normal activities would provoke shame and from that shame I was paralysed. Even worse I was paralysed from the fear of feeling the shame.

I was induced to feel guilty because it served others to keep their control. Those were dark years where I knew what was happening and what was done to me but I could not move away or stop feeling that guilt. I was in FOG: Fear, Obligation, Guilt.

Now rare are the occasions I feel guilt or shame, regardless of what others think of me or on how they interpret my behaviour. It is very rare for people to know other people motives and many times people's opinions of others is just a reflection of themselves.

I came to the conclusion that if I act with integrity (being honest, direct and expressing my truth and in doing so validating my feelings and my reality), I cannot really feel shame even if my behaviour creates 'bad feeling to someone else', or even if it goes against what is commonly considered acceptable.

As long as I don't deliberately hurt someone and if my motives are clear from any form of manipulation and dishonesty I can be reassured that 'being myself' is good enough and when acting in this way I am free.

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