Understanding Shame And Guilt

• True guilt means you were responsible for the event that occurred.
• False or inappropriate guilt, can cause many years of psychological pain.
• Use the 5 step process to overcome your guilt or shame. 

If you are like most people, at some point in your life you have probably felt guilty about something. You may even be feeling guilty right now?

Guilt can range from small things, like feeling guilt about having a bite of chocolate on your diet. Or more serious things, such as harming someone, or committing a crime. But what exactly is guilt, and how do you get rid of it?

What Is Guilt?

The simplest way to describe guilt would be that you blame yourself for a fault, or mistake, you made in the past which you now regret.

You know that what you did was wrong, when at the time it was possible for you to do otherwise. You may not have felt guilty at the time, but looking back you now wish you had done something else.

Undeserved Guilt

With guilt always comes the implication of choice and responsibility, whether or not you were consciously aware of it at the time.

For this reason it is important to be clear what was within your power, and what was not. Otherwise you run of the risk of accepting undeserved guilt, which ultimately will damage your self esteem.

For example, if something bad happened to a person you loved, or cared about, it is often a natural and usually irrational reaction to think that somehow you could have prevented the event from occurring.

This guilt may be fueled by actions taken, or not taken, before the incident occurred. So the person becomes consumed with thoughts about what they could have done differently, which may have prevented the incident from occurring.

However in most of these cases, there was little that could have been done to prevent the incident from occurring. So no true responsibility should be accepted for it.

When there is no responsibility, there can be no reasonable need to blame oneself for what occurred.

This does not mean that the person will not feel any regret or sadness. But it does mean that when there was nothing you could have done to stop it, guilt is not something you should feel.

Overcoming Guilt

In some instances you may have to take responsibility, and accept that your actions most likely lead to the occurrence of the event. In these cases, guilt is appropriate and must be accepted.

In order to overcome this guilt, you should perform each of the 5 steps listed below.

1. Face and accept the full reality of what you have done, without disowning or avoiding it.
2. Understand why you did what you did.
3. If other people are involved, tell them you understand the harm you have caused them, and the consequences of your actions.
4. Take any and all actions available to minimize or resolve the harm you have caused.
5. Make a commitment to yourself to behave differently in the future.

Resolving Guilt 

These 5 steps are essential in resolving guilt. If you fail to complete these steps, you may continue to feel guilty about something and spend many years dealing with the guilt.

People have even been known to have psychotherapy to deal with guilt.

But unless they follow these five steps, all the talks and worksheets they take on overcoming guilt will never truly release it.

They will know that what they have done was wrong, but if they choose to ignore or disown their guilt, ultimately it will create an internal conflict within them.  

This may then lead to both physical and mental symptoms of guilt. To the extent where the guilt becomes so unbearable, they resort to suicide.

Guilt And Shame

I once saw a TV program about white men in South Africa who used to torture, beat and sometimes even kill other black men.

Even though at the time the white leadership allowed and encouraged this behavior, when white rule ended these men became consumed with enormous guilt and shame regarding their actions.

The program showed how these men went back to the families of the men they had either tortured or killed, and apologized to them for what they had done.

Even though some of these men had plates smashed in their face by the families they were apologising to, or were attack in some other way, afterwards they were visibly pleased that they had gone back to those families. Like a weight had been lifted from their shoulders.

I don’t know whether you could say these men were guilt free after committing such horrendous crimes. But it did seem to be a big step for them, in dealing with the guilt and shame they felt.

So in these cases even though these white men had killed some of the black families sons, they still did whatever they could to relieve their guilt.

This does not mean to say that what they did was right, or justifiable. But from their perspective, it was the only way they could relieve the incredible guilt and shame they felt.

Shedding Your Guilt

Unless guilt is specifically addressed, and action taken to resolve it, you will most likely feel guilt for the rest of your life.

This is why it is important to understand the psychology of guilt, so you know when guilt is appropriate, when it is not, and how to resolve it. Only then will you be able to successfully overcome and release the guilt you feel.

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