The Important Difference between Shame and Guilt?

Shame and guilt are often painted with the same brush, but the question is often asked: What is the difference between shame and guilt?

The simple answer? While guilt may linger in the space of shame, there are a few differences between them and in turn, different ways that we should approach them.

What is the difference between shame and guilt?

While guilt is carrying regret, or feeling wrong about something you’ve done, shame is about feeling wrong about who you are as a person, and often one can lead to the other.

The difference between shame and guilt lies in what the story is saying to you.

Shame surrounds how you feel about yourself

Tied deeply to our self worth and self acceptance, shame stories that come up for us are usually comments on how we see ourselves.

While the choices we make, the experiences we have, the words we use may bring up guilt, the shame that is created comes from what we think these choices say about us as a person.

Guilt surrounds how you feel about your actions

Guilt may come from choices that you regret making, feelings on letting someone down or saying something that hurt someone’s feelings. The guilt comes from knowing that you’ve done something that you’re not happy about.

Usually, it will be easier to forgive ourselves about and move on from because we can recognise that it’s an event and separate ourselves from the action we’ve taken.

Shame likes to become a part of us

When those feelings of guilt, or fear, or jealousy, or other feelings that we associated as “bad” start to fester, we start thinking about what they mean about us as a person – this is when they start to create shame stories.

The shame stories tell us that it’s a repeated behaviour and comments on our value as a person because we make those choices.

We start to take on those stories as a part of our identity, telling ourselves that the shame isn’t a feeling anymore and is actually a part of us and evidence of our perceived low self worth.

We then start believing it, telling ourselves that this is a fact over and over until we forget that shame is still just a feeling.

Pretend you decided to eat every donut in the box.

Some of the shame stories that come up could include things like: “I’m so greedy for eating all of those, I’m a bad person” or “I’m useless because I didn’t have the self control to stop.”

Guilt however, would show up in the form of “I didn’t even leave any for anyone else, and that makes me feel bad,” or “I told my friend I would cut sugar this month with her and now I’ve betrayed her and that makes me feel bad.”

They can seem so close, but the real difference I’ve found between them is the way that they tend to stay around.

When a shame story comes up, separate yourself from it

The difference between shame and guilt is that one is a comment on an action, and one is comment on you as a person. Being able to recognise a shame story for what it is, gives you the opportunity to pay attention to something that is telling you it needs work. A part of you needs some extra loving, a bit of healing, and to be reminded that it’s a part of you.

Whether it’s something you’ve done or something that has happened to you, whatever it is, it has already happened.

If you’re carrying a story that is commenting on your value or capabilities as a person, try to see past the hurt and the defensiveness that might be coming up and look at what it is that the story is really telling you.

That’s where you’ll be able to figure out what needs to be done about it.

Stay Fierce,

P.S If you’d like to read more about shame, get yourself a copy of my book, Now Get Back Up.

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