Thoughts On:  Guilt & Shame

Definition of Guilt:  A feeling of having done wrong or failed in an obligation.

Definition of Shame:  A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. 

Guilt and shame have been pervasive feelings throughout my life.  If you’ve grown up in the Catholic faith, then you are quite familiar with the term “Catholic Guilt”.   These emotions have always been ever present in my life and only after I started doing the work of healing my bruised and damaged inner child did I start to think about guilt and shame and how destructive these emotions are.  For me, guilt and shame have not been markers to make me aware of destructive action.  Far from it.  For me they have only served to heighten the worthlessness I have felt inside.  From the time I was very young I can remember sitting in church and listening to sermons of fire and brimstone.  If you do such and such then that is a sin punishable by going to hell.  If you have feelings and desires of a homosexual nature then just the thought is enough to send you to the eternal fires of hell.  Those destructive teachings were deeply internalized and every time I had an “inappropriate” thought then that was a sin.  I would beat myself up over these thoughts and the more I did this the worse I felt about myself.  I can remember sitting in church as a child and praying with all of my heart and mind to please cleanse me of these unnatural thoughts.  I was so dreadfully scared of going to hell and I carried these feelings with me constantly.  Imagine the destructive nature this has on an innocent young child who doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the long-term negative effects this thinking has on a person.  I remember the first time I went to confession one Saturday afternoon prior to mass and telling the priest that I had committed a mortal sin of masturbation.  It took every once of my little body combined with the fear of eternal damnation to get me to confess my sin.  The absolution after felt like a ton of weight had been released.  I felt like a balloon lighter than air and fully renewed.  Then a couple days later I gave in to the natural desires of my body and masturbated again.  A young man, having never been educated by a parent, teacher, or the church about the natural feelings, desires, emotions and normal workings of my young hormonal body.  This is when the destructive cycle began.  Guilt of having fallen from grace which lead to deep shame and self-loathing which eventually lead to habits of self-abuse.   I started abusing alcohol and cannabis in my young teenage years. The older I got the more the destructive cycle perpetuated until it just became a part of my DNA.  I got to a place where I couldn’t imagine life without my guilt and shame nor without the substances I used to fill that empty void.  My substances of choice were alcohol and sexual promiscuity.  When you live a lifestyle like this for so many years it can make you feel so empty inside.  I felt hollow and completely worthless.  On the outside, what people saw was a highly functioning person who was always on time for work, successful, making good money, and building a life most would envy.  My inside picture compared to my outer appearance were diametrically different.  This incongruence led me to a place where I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror.  To say I didn’t like myself was an understatement.  The best way I can describe how I felt was that of a rotting corpse.  Repulsive in every respect.  My “bottom” thankfully wasn’t as deep and self-destructive as many.  I am so grateful that my art and poetry were ways there that I could use to “release the valve” so to speak of my emotions.  I was crying inside and looking for a way out of the misery I was feeling.  My art, my poetry, my family, thankfully were the anchors that I always had to lean on and they are what I used to pull myself out of my internal abyss.  I am grateful I finally got to the point where I was ready to do something, anything to find a better way of living and a better feeling about myself.  Once I started my healing journey of looking at all aspects of my life that were not serving me I made note of them and slowly worked to eliminate them one at a time and replace them with healthier things.  I started with things that were easy like stopping drinking soda’s.  I know that sounds like a silly place to start but I needed to get a win wherever I could find one and being a vane person who “needed” to look attractive to make up for the how ugly I felt inside, this was a win for me.  Quitting sweet sugary drinks gave way to a healthier overall diet.  Changing my diet gave way to exercise.  Then I started working on the low hanging fruit of my emotions and that was my destructive anger and rage.  On and on I continued working on all aspects of my life.  Slowly my destructive ways gave way to more loving and nurturing habits.  Although I’ve been on my healing journey for over 30 years, it’s only the last several years where I’ve been able to go deep in analyzing the deep wounds and destructive patterns.  I’ve done the healing work with my relationships with my parents and with myself.  A big part of my deep healing is now understanding the patterns that became part of my DNA.  Guilt and Shame have been the hardest to unroot.  In fact I’m still working on these, however I can say that when these emotions come up today I recognize them instantly and I dialog with them.  I ask them “why are you hear”, “what are you hear to show me”.  By doing this I am able to intercept the old destructive patterns that would have led me to continue the cycle of self-abuse.   I’ve learned how to use the emotions of guilt and shame as moments to become present with myself.  What is the story going on in my head that is triggering these emotions to come up?  Just this very  question instantly brings me to being present and from here I can take a moment to breath deeply and remind myself that I am whole, I am not the story in my head, and I can choose a healthier thought that will lead to a healthier action.  To me guilt and shame are damaging emotions unless and until you learn to recognize them when they show up and you use them to become present and change the inner dialog in you mind.