Dealing With Shame and Guilt - Ditch the Shame

I hope to educate others to recognize the differences between shame and guilt and how shame kills the soul.

Guilt says, I have done something wrong. Shame says there's something wrong with me. Guilt says I made a mistake. Shame says I am a mistake. The outcome of feeling shame can be debilitating, causing people to give up on their dreams, often feeling unloved, unworthy of happiness, depressed, anxious, angry, and hurt.

Shame can invade our lives at a young age. A parent who disciplines a child with purposeful assaults such as you're stupid, lazy, ugly, dumb, too fat, too skinny, can leave a child feeling that s/he doesn't measure up. A persistent and severe attack insults a person's soul leading to responses of rage and violence, drug addiction, eating disorders, compulsions, battery, and incarceration. The outcome of shame leaves a person feeling ridiculed, worthless, lacking sense of pride, self-respect and self-love.

Guilt is a feeling that acts as a catalyst to change our behavior without destroying our confidence. Shame is a dark emotion that seeps into our soul and robs us of our human dignity, feeling sinful, debauched, mean, diabolical; accused, judged and convicted as charged.

What are some of the sequence of events that leads to feeling shame?

A Vietnam vet returning from the war to a country that is angry at him for fighting a war. A person that is bullied in school because she is not wearing the right clothes. A man who is overweight and cannot fit in an airplane seat. A child that been overly corrected and told that they did not do the task correctly and to do it again, left with an over whelming feeling of not being good enough. A woman who has been raped while others said "she asked for it." A man was lost his job and can no longer provide for his family. A mother whose ex-husband speaks badly about her to their children. A birthday that was forgotten.

Shame leads to tears which leads to anger, and rage. Like a tragic song that is stuck on the same track and plays itself over and over again each and every day.