By Amy Remmele

Amy Remmele is a personal and professional consultant, with her formal education and degree in Psychology. Amy co-owns Peak Of Success with her husband and business partner, Dr. Kent Bath. They are the authors of the book, Re-Phrase It: Adding Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Your Everyday Life, the professionally produced six-hour self-help video, Life Enhancement, and the relationship workbook, Empathy, Communication and Conflict Resolution Home Study Program. Amy and Kent provide assessments, seminars, counseling and consultation to individuals, schools and businesses. Amy is the Convener of the Amherst Task Force for Healthy Communities and on the advisory board of the Small Business Council of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce. Amy balances her career with being the mother of a 14-year-old daughter and 9-year-old twin sons. Amy can be reached at 716-626-5977.

Ask the Life Coach
Answering Life’s
Important Questions

I welcome your questions. They can be emailed to amy@peakofsuccess.com or sent to Amy Remmele, “Ask the Life Coach,” 331 Alberta Dr., Amherst, NY 14226.

I welcome your questions. They can be emailed to amy@peakof success.com or sent to Amy Remmele, “Ask the Life Coach,” 331 Alberta Dr., Amherst, NY 14226.

“Guilt and Shame”

Being in the mental health field, issues of guilt and shame come up frequently. So distinguishing these two concepts and clarifying how they work is valuable. First and foremost, they are “built in,” anthropologically adaptive experiences. The feelings are meant to make a member of the species feel bad for doing something that is non-conforming, socially inappropriate, or detrimental to the “tribe.” Unfortunately, this encompasses behaviors that are accidents and much of the time out of our control, behaviors we should not be blamed for. The evolution of adaptive responses, however, is not always comfortable or completely adaptive. We have therefore inherited some responses that can cause problems and get out of hand.

Think of a continuum, starting at slightly red-faced embarrassment and going all the way to full-blown shame. What we call embarrassment is usually a mild and quick sensation which occurs when we do something minor like tripping over a carpet, stumbling over our words, or spilling a drink on ourselves. Anthropologically, the response is meant to get us to notice that we are “standing out” in a way that the other members of our tribe may consider bad form, or at least not good form. Healthy, adaptive embarrassment will pass quickly in a crowd with decent people, because they will not laugh derisively or call undue attention to the faux pas. Everyone will move through the incident fairly quickly and smoothly.

Guilt too is a natural feeling that usually occurs when we do something “wrong,” something that is considered an offense to our species. The appropriate timing of guilt is when we commit a “crime” or violation against another person or a group. Healthy, adaptive guilt will be a red flag telling us we need to apologize and/or make amends. If these actions are successful, even partly, in restoring a sense of righteousness and moral balance, the guilt, if it is healthy and appropriate, will usually dissipate.

Shame, by contrast, is usually reserved for those times when we commit terrible offenses, when we do not make amends, or when we continually do something wrong. It would be difficult to say that shame has a healthy and adaptive form, except in cases where it motivates positive change. The shame may be due to the shamed person’s engagement in a lifestyle that is creating repetitive, self-degrading internal feelings. The person experiencing the shame may at some point tune into the message, “You are ashamed because you are behavior shamefully, but you can change that.” With appropriate help, that person may then be able to harness the horsepower of shame and channel it into self-improvement and growth.

But there is a time when shame simply goes off the chart and into the zone of useless pain. That is when it has been internalized as a part of a person’s nature. This usually happens when a person is repeatedly exposed to criticism, ridicule and/or hatred. These are what we refer to as “shaming messages.” Rather than embarrassment and guilt, which are associated with a particular behavior, the shaming messages have “pushed the shame in” deeper and deeper until the shamed person believes that the messages are part of themselves. Statements such as, “I am worthless,” “I was never meant to amount to anything,” and similar messages are simply taken as truths, beyond questioning or challenge. Severely shamed people are basically embarrassed and guilty about their own being. Embarrassment might be thought to convey the message to oneself, “I have done something silly or something that makes me look foolish.” Guilt carries the message, “I have done something ethically wrong;” the guilt creates an uneasy feeling that

Freud called “moral anxiety,” a feeling that urges us toward corrective action. Shame, however, is an internalized “big, bad wolf,” devouring us from inside by conveying the message, “I am wrong and unworthy of a place on this earth.”

That healthy and adaptive small embarrassment we discussed earlier can become a very unhealthy bad experience if time and time again the crowd to which a person is exposed is full of “nasty” people who repeatedly laugh and point. It can escalate into some very uncomfortable feelings and ultimately can turn into shame. We all know people who are constantly apologizing and explaining themselves. They just seem to be embarrassed or guilty all the time. They feel bad whenever they cannot please another person and usually feel that they can never do enough to please others reliably. We all also know people who seem simply to feel terrible about themselves, who do not believe anything they do is good enough, or who just seem to go around believing that they are worthless. Think about it. You probably know some seemingly successful people who exhibit these “worthless” feelings in some part of their life. What you are seeing in these people is what happens when embarrassment and guilt have gotten out of control, or when seeds from shaming messages were planted so deep and repeatedly that shame blossomed. Many of these people may be going through life and mostly getting by or even flourishing. But they are plagued at some level or in some areas of life with these “I am not good enough” feelings. This self-deprecation, even if mild, causes them problems. Because it attacks the very core of a person, shame can become almost insufferable to live with and it can cause people to seek pain relief in the form of using intoxicants, engaging in addictive sex, or some other driven, compulsive behavior. Alcohol, since it is the most easily accessible, cheapest and socially acceptable form of pain relief, is “America’s favorite drug” and the most commonly used shame soother. Anger and rage are also common reactions to shame, because they mask and are less painful than shame. It is very difficult to remain mindful and with oneself when experiencing shame, so putting the feelings outside of oneself in the form of anger and blame can create a short-term relief. Unfortunately the pain keeps returning following these temporary “fixes.” The fixes also come with side effects that can range from mildly disruptive to dangerous and life-threatening.

Until people with shame get in touch with what is going on inside of them and do something about it, the shame will keep coming back and taking over. Since shame is such a social feeling and it was usually “installed” by other people, it is recommended that the shamed find good people to help uninstall it. There are some excellent professionals for this purpose. Beware of a couple of things though. First, the systems that installed the shame tend to support and reinforce its continuance. Many times, the people surrounding the person trying to escape shame don’t want the shame to end. Shamed people make good “servants” or “slaves,” easily put to use and manipulated by lighting up their shame circuits. Escaping shame may involve reducing or eliminating contact with those who continue to push shame, either because it is just what they have always done, or because they are benefitting from it. Anyone who has ever broken the shackles of guilt or shame, however, will tell you it was worth the sacrifices!

Amy Remmele is a personal and professional consultant, working with people who want to overcome the roadblocks to success. She has her formal education and degree in Psychology. Amy authored the book, Chief Life Officer: Your Life Is The Most Important Business You’ll Ever Own and co-authored Re-Phrase It: Adding Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Your Everyday Life, and the relationship workbook, Empathy, Communication and Conflict Resolution Home Study Program with her husband and business partner, Dr. Kent Bath. Amy and Kent provide assessments, seminars, counseling and consultation to individuals and businesses. Amy can be reached at 716-626-5977 or visiting her website at www.peakofsuccess.com