Dealing with guilt and shame. List of tips. Concrete advice.
Dealing with guilt and shame can be challenging, but there are concrete steps you can take to navigate these emotions. Here are some tips:
Recognize and accept your guilt: It's important to acknowledge and accept your feelings of guilt. Guilt shows that you are reflective and care about your actions .
Differentiate guilt from shame: Guilt is about recognizing that you made a mistake, while shame is believing that you are a mistake. It's crucial to separate your actions from your identity .
Change your behavior: The best way to address guilt is by changing your behavior in the future. Focus on doing better and learning from your mistakes .
Reflect on past mistakes: Take time to reflect on past mistakes and understand the impact they had on your life. Recognize that you are not defined by these mistakes and that you have experienced both success and failure .
Apologize and make amends: If appropriate, reach out to the person you might have hurt and offer a sincere apology. However, be mindful of their feelings and assess if direct communication is the best approach .
Treat yourself with compassion: Be kind and compassionate towards yourself. Avoid self-blame and negative self-talk. Instead, focus on self-growth and learning from your experiences .
Seek support: It can be helpful to talk to a therapist, coach, or trusted loved one about your feelings of guilt and shame. Sharing your emotions in a safe and vulnerable space can aid in your healing process .
Remember, dealing with guilt and shame is a personal journey, and it's essential to be patient and kind to yourself as you work through these emotions.
Jay Shetty: Not taking enough care of someone, not being there for someone. Another one, not achieving something. Sense of failure. The next one, negative self-attributes or flaws. We feel guilty about them because we take responsibility for them. And then there's divorce and breakup, cheating, having affairs, problems, issues in relationships and marriages, not spending enough time with children, Procrastination and waste of time being unproductive. How many of you have that where you haven't been productive, you haven't been effective, and then you feel guilty about it? You think, oh my gosh, I could have done all of that by now. Could have launched that podcast. I could have written that book. I should have done that. I should have done this. And then it never happens. That's what's really interesting about guilt, is that guilt blocks growth. Guilt can be used as a launch pad. It can be used as a great incentive for change, which I'll come on to in a moment. But at the same time, guilt blocks growth if we just grow guilt. If we keep just growing a sense of guilt, it will block our growth because we get so negative about who we are, what we do, how we behave, and we feel we have missed so much time. We feel we have missed so many opportunities that we now feel that we can't turn it around.
Jay Shetty: Now, the second thing that people felt guilty about, or the most frequently stated reasons for feeling guilty, was not spending enough time with family members, not taking enough care of family members, and not being there for family members. I think we can all identify with that type of guilt, and we will be coming onto this moving forward in this podcast. The reason I'm sharing these with you is always to help you recognize that you're not alone, to help you recognize that we all have these emotions and experiences, that there is no one, including me, who has perfected this, figured it out, mastered it, and gets everything right. I think it's often our desire for perfection that creates so much of the guilt and shame we experience. Our desire for getting everything to line up, be perfectly balanced, be fully aligned, centered, grounded, it doesn't exist. The third thing that we most frequently state that we feel is a reason for being guilty is misbehavior towards someone or thinking bad about someone. And this comes from feelings of guilt related to other people. But this could be anyone from the person you bumped into on the street all the way through to the person you cut off in the traffic and later on you're thinking, oh, I wish I didn't do that. They didn't deserve that. It's really interesting, right? It could be anything. Misbehavior towards or bad thinking of someone. Maybe you said something gossipy about a friend. Maybe you said something that you wish you could take back. Maybe you shared someone's private information with someone else, right?
Jay Shetty: And people may not perceive it that way, but you try your best to do that. And the final one I wanted to address was guilt from having got through something difficult when others didn't, often known as survival guilt. This can be really, really tough when you think you got through something and other people didn't. But it's a beautiful opportunity again to help others through their journey, to share your healing, to share your pain. And I think the biggest challenge with guilt is we feel like our guilt is not valid. We feel like somewhere deep inside of us, we shouldn't have that feeling. But the truth is, the more we share it, The more we talk to others, the more we express it to therapists, to coaches, to friends, to family members, the more we create safe, vulnerable spaces to share these things, the healthier our society becomes because we realize that everyone is dealing with something. But helping people through their journey, helping someone who's a couple of years behind you on the journey, is a beautiful and powerful step to take in your own healing. I really hope that this helps you today. I want to thank you for listening as always. I appreciate you letting me riff on some of these topics that are so important. And I hope there's one insight you take away from today that transforms your relationship with shame and guilt. Thank you for listening. Make sure you leave a review. Make sure you share this episode with someone who could use it. And I can't wait for you to come back next week or tomorrow or later today for another one.
Jay Shetty: And people may not perceive it that way, but you try your best to do that. And the final one I wanted to address was guilt from having got through something difficult when others didn't, often known as survival guilt. This can be really, really tough when you think you got through something and other people didn't. But it's a beautiful opportunity again to help others through their journey, to share your healing, to share your pain. And I think the biggest challenge with guilt is we feel like our guilt is not valid. We feel like somewhere deep inside of us, we shouldn't have that feeling. But the truth is, the more we share it, The more we talk to others, the more we express it to therapists, to coaches, to friends, to family members, the more we create safe, vulnerable spaces to share these things, the healthier our society becomes because we realize that everyone is dealing with something. But helping people through their journey, helping someone who's a couple of years behind you on the journey, is a beautiful and powerful step to take in your own healing. I really hope that this helps you today. I want to thank you for listening as always. I appreciate you letting me riff on some of these topics that are so important. And I hope there's one insight you take away from today that transforms your relationship with shame and guilt. Thank you for listening. Make sure you leave a review. Make sure you share this episode with someone who could use it. And I can't wait for you to come back next week or tomorrow or later today for another one.
Jay Shetty: If we keep just growing a sense of guilt, it will block our growth because we get so negative about who we are, what we do, how we behave, and we feel we have missed so much time. We feel we have missed so many opportunities that we now feel that we can't turn it around. It's almost like negative math working against us. It's like we're like 10-0. Right? We're losing 10-0 in the world of guilt. And now we're like, well, even if I do one thing, it would still be 10-1. I'm so far away. That's what it feels like. You're like 10 goals down. Then it continues with unfavorable health or self-indulgence. We guilt ourselves over what we eat. And if we do or don't work out, And it's really interesting, right? Those are the top categories of guilt that we as humans experience. And I think all of us could agree that we've all experienced them at one point or another. So now that we understand the difference between guilt and shame, I want to focus in on the different types of guilt that we experience in our lives and what we can do about it. Remember, guilt is, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame is, I'm sorry I am a mistake.
Jay Shetty: If you've not read her book, daring greatly, I highly recommend it to understand more about this topic. In the words of Brene Brown, shame is I am bad, guilt is I did something bad. She goes on to say, how many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake? How many of you would be willing to do that? Guilt, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. Shame, I'm sorry, I am a mistake. I love this disconnection because it's so subtle, but it's so very important. How many of us know that the voice in our head makes us the problem? Not that we have a problem, but we are the problem. Not that we made a mistake, but we are the mistake. How many of us walk around life thinking that not that we did something wrong, but that we are wrong? And it's so subtle that you might just miss it, but the inner critic's voice will give you a clue. If you listen closely to the inner critic, you'll be able to very clearly understand whether you say things like, I made a mistake or I am a mistake. Now, I want to go on to share the incredible worlds of Paul Ekman. He also said that the distinction between shame and guilt is very important since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. He says, Paul Ekman, the wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession.
Jay Shetty: But we won't accept that we are them. We're not going to accept that we're defined by them because our life shows us that we have a bit of both. We've all won and failed. We've all been stuck and focused. We've all made mistakes and got things right. Please recognize that. Now, the first type of guilt that we experience that I want to talk about today is guilt over a past mistake. How many of you replay your past mistakes in your mind? Maybe it was in a relationship, and you think to yourself, well, if I didn't do that, they'd still be here. If I did do that, they'd still be here. I ruined that. I messed that up. I had such a good thing going, but maybe if I just didn't open my mouth, maybe if I didn't set those boundaries, maybe if I didn't push so hard. We all experience guilt over past mistakes. And sometimes these guilts get so deep-rooted that they start to impact all of our lives afterwards. They start to impact everything. What ends up happening is that when you feel guilt over a past mistake, you now reflect and project that guilt onto new people at work, new people in your relationships, friends, anyone that comes across your way. And so it's so important to address this. It's so important to accept it.
Jay Shetty: Remember, guilt is, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame is, I'm sorry I am a mistake. And I want to shift us away from believing that we are a mistake or that we ourselves as an entity are wrong, are lost. We say things like, I am a failure. No, I have experienced failure. And that's what I want you to do with the inner critic in your mind. I want you to start making that switch. where instead of every time you catch yourself saying, I am a failure, I am a mistake, start replacing it with, I have experienced failure. I failed at this. This particular event failed. I think it's important to start disconnecting your identity from an emotion and a statement. Right? The mistake we make is when we mesh together our identity with a word. We start to identify with that word, and that becomes a belief. Once that becomes a belief, it becomes a repetitive habit in our lives, and then it feels like normal. It's almost like when someone says something in your head, you think, well, I'm a loser anyway, so what's the point? Right? So I want you to start creating that distance. Now, how do you start creating that distance, you ask? The first way is to watch your inner dialogue and make that difference.
Jay Shetty: And I've started to recognize that it just shows that I care. It just shows that I'm reflective. It shows that I'm allowing myself to question myself. I'm allowing myself to not think that everything I do is right and perfect and wonderful. And I think that that's a great quality. It's shame that we want to shift away from. And guilt, if it's not taken care of, will very easily grow into shame. And so While shame is unhealthy, guilt is something we have to deal with. It's showing us what we need to heal, but it's also showing us that we're reflective, introspective beings. So I don't want you to guilt yourself for feeling guilt. I want you to feel heard and seen and understood. I don't want you to guilt yourself for feeling that way. The second type of guilt is guilt because of how someone made you feel. Now, this may be guilt where you didn't see any involvement, you didn't see or feel any responsibility, but someone came back at you and told you. Someone may have told you, hey, you said this to me and it made me feel this way. You did this and it made me feel this way. And now you're feeling guilty because of how they've expressed that to you. And in this opportunity, it's always important to acknowledge the person's feelings.
Jay Shetty: Now, how do you start creating that distance, you ask? The first way is to watch your inner dialogue and make that difference. The second is to recognize and go back to when you have felt guilty. Reflect and write down the top three times or even one time that you have experienced guilt and shame. and when it really started leaning into shame. And now in hindsight, I want you to look back and recognize, is it true that you have also been not responsible in certain challenges? Is it true that you've also won as well as lost and failed in different things? Is it true that there is more diversity in your experience than there is consistency? Is it true that if you think you are a mistake, that you've also got certain things right and done things well and made people feel good? Noticing this discrepancy is what helps you accept that, yes, I have made mistakes, but I am not a mistake. And even repeating that, recognizing and accepting, remember, we're not shunning our mistakes. We're not trying to push them away. We're not trying to pretend that they didn't happen. We're not trying to be in denial. We're accepting they happened. We're accepting we made them. But we won't accept that we are them. We're not going to accept that we're defined by them because our life shows us that we have a bit of both.
Jay Shetty: And whether the person on the other side was amicable or reciprocal, what I found is that the person who shared it, felt the most healed, and the person who received it found some solace in it. The second thing that you can do with guilt over a past mistake is change your behavior in the future. This is the best remedy for yourself and others. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. Let me say that again. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. You can't make yourself feel good about the past if you continue to behave badly in the future. It doesn't work that way. We can't change the past. We can't solve the past. We can't edit the past. But when we edit the present, we create the future that we really want. We can't edit the past. And we live in the past just kind of doing mental exercises, trying to figure it out, but it doesn't work that way. And I want you to recognize with all of this guilt and shame that if you experience a sense of guilt, it just shows that you're reflective. I always feel that way. I experience guilt. And I've started to recognize that it just shows that I care. It just shows that I'm reflective.
Jay Shetty: He also said that the distinction between shame and guilt is very important since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. He says, Paul Ekman, the wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession. but the wish to avoid the humiliation of shame may prevent it. How many of you have ever been caught in that mess where you want to tell someone how you feel or you want to tell someone that you know that they're going through something or whatever it may be, but at the same time, you're scared of what that comes with? We get caught in the middle, and I know so many of us experience this in so many different ways. Before we dive into the different types of guilt and how to overcome them, I want to talk to you about the different types of guilt that we experience using research from Biomedcentral.com. So they ranked the percentage of all things people felt guilty about. Number one, was telling lies or withholding truth and information. That's the number one thing we feel guilty about. And this comes from the category of feelings of guilt related to misconduct and mistakes being made. Now, the second thing that people felt guilty about, or the most frequently stated reasons for feeling guilty, was not spending enough time with family members, not taking enough care of family members, and not being there for family members. I think we can all identify with that type of guilt, and we will be coming onto this moving forward in this podcast.
Jay Shetty: And whether the person on the other side was amicable or reciprocal, what I found is that the person who shared it, felt the most healed, and the person who received it found some solace in it. The second thing that you can do with guilt over a past mistake is change your behavior in the future. This is the best remedy for yourself and others. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. Let me say that again. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. You can't make yourself feel good about the past if you continue to behave badly in the future. It doesn't work that way. We can't change the past. We can't solve the past. We can't edit the past. But when we edit the present, we create the future that we really want. We can't edit the past. And we live in the past just kind of doing mental exercises, trying to figure it out, but it doesn't work that way. And I want you to recognize with all of this guilt and shame that if you experience a sense of guilt, it just shows that you're reflective. I always feel that way. I experience guilt. And I've started to recognize that it just shows that I care. It just shows that I'm reflective.
Jay Shetty: Remember, guilt is, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame is, I'm sorry I am a mistake. And I want to shift us away from believing that we are a mistake or that we ourselves as an entity are wrong, are lost. We say things like, I am a failure. No, I have experienced failure. And that's what I want you to do with the inner critic in your mind. I want you to start making that switch. where instead of every time you catch yourself saying, I am a failure, I am a mistake, start replacing it with, I have experienced failure. I failed at this. This particular event failed. I think it's important to start disconnecting your identity from an emotion and a statement. Right? The mistake we make is when we mesh together our identity with a word. We start to identify with that word, and that becomes a belief. Once that becomes a belief, it becomes a repetitive habit in our lives, and then it feels like normal. It's almost like when someone says something in your head, you think, well, I'm a loser anyway, so what's the point? Right? So I want you to start creating that distance. Now, how do you start creating that distance, you ask? The first way is to watch your inner dialogue and make that difference.
Jay Shetty: And whether the person on the other side was amicable or reciprocal, what I found is that the person who shared it, felt the most healed, and the person who received it found some solace in it. The second thing that you can do with guilt over a past mistake is change your behavior in the future. This is the best remedy for yourself and others. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. Let me say that again. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. You can't make yourself feel good about the past if you continue to behave badly in the future. It doesn't work that way. We can't change the past. We can't solve the past. We can't edit the past. But when we edit the present, we create the future that we really want. We can't edit the past. And we live in the past just kind of doing mental exercises, trying to figure it out, but it doesn't work that way. And I want you to recognize with all of this guilt and shame that if you experience a sense of guilt, it just shows that you're reflective. I always feel that way. I experience guilt. And I've started to recognize that it just shows that I care. It just shows that I'm reflective.
Jay Shetty: And people may not perceive it that way, but you try your best to do that. And the final one I wanted to address was guilt from having got through something difficult when others didn't, often known as survival guilt. This can be really, really tough when you think you got through something and other people didn't. But it's a beautiful opportunity again to help others through their journey, to share your healing, to share your pain. And I think the biggest challenge with guilt is we feel like our guilt is not valid. We feel like somewhere deep inside of us, we shouldn't have that feeling. But the truth is, the more we share it, The more we talk to others, the more we express it to therapists, to coaches, to friends, to family members, the more we create safe, vulnerable spaces to share these things, the healthier our society becomes because we realize that everyone is dealing with something. But helping people through their journey, helping someone who's a couple of years behind you on the journey, is a beautiful and powerful step to take in your own healing. I really hope that this helps you today. I want to thank you for listening as always. I appreciate you letting me riff on some of these topics that are so important. And I hope there's one insight you take away from today that transforms your relationship with shame and guilt. Thank you for listening. Make sure you leave a review. Make sure you share this episode with someone who could use it. And I can't wait for you to come back next week or tomorrow or later today for another one.
Jay Shetty: And whether the person on the other side was amicable or reciprocal, what I found is that the person who shared it, felt the most healed, and the person who received it found some solace in it. The second thing that you can do with guilt over a past mistake is change your behavior in the future. This is the best remedy for yourself and others. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. Let me say that again. The only way you make yourself feel better about the past is by doing better in the future. You can't make yourself feel good about the past if you continue to behave badly in the future. It doesn't work that way. We can't change the past. We can't solve the past. We can't edit the past. But when we edit the present, we create the future that we really want. We can't edit the past. And we live in the past just kind of doing mental exercises, trying to figure it out, but it doesn't work that way. And I want you to recognize with all of this guilt and shame that if you experience a sense of guilt, it just shows that you're reflective. I always feel that way. I experience guilt. And I've started to recognize that it just shows that I care. It just shows that I'm reflective.
Jay Shetty: Not taking enough care of someone, not being there for someone. Another one, not achieving something. Sense of failure. The next one, negative self-attributes or flaws. We feel guilty about them because we take responsibility for them. And then there's divorce and breakup, cheating, having affairs, problems, issues in relationships and marriages, not spending enough time with children, Procrastination and waste of time being unproductive. How many of you have that where you haven't been productive, you haven't been effective, and then you feel guilty about it? You think, oh my gosh, I could have done all of that by now. Could have launched that podcast. I could have written that book. I should have done that. I should have done this. And then it never happens. That's what's really interesting about guilt, is that guilt blocks growth. Guilt can be used as a launch pad. It can be used as a great incentive for change, which I'll come on to in a moment. But at the same time, guilt blocks growth if we just grow guilt. If we keep just growing a sense of guilt, it will block our growth because we get so negative about who we are, what we do, how we behave, and we feel we have missed so much time. We feel we have missed so many opportunities that we now feel that we can't turn it around.
Jay Shetty: But we won't accept that we are them. We're not going to accept that we're defined by them because our life shows us that we have a bit of both. We've all won and failed. We've all been stuck and focused. We've all made mistakes and got things right. Please recognize that. Now, the first type of guilt that we experience that I want to talk about today is guilt over a past mistake. How many of you replay your past mistakes in your mind? Maybe it was in a relationship, and you think to yourself, well, if I didn't do that, they'd still be here. If I did do that, they'd still be here. I ruined that. I messed that up. I had such a good thing going, but maybe if I just didn't open my mouth, maybe if I didn't set those boundaries, maybe if I didn't push so hard. We all experience guilt over past mistakes. And sometimes these guilts get so deep-rooted that they start to impact all of our lives afterwards. They start to impact everything. What ends up happening is that when you feel guilt over a past mistake, you now reflect and project that guilt onto new people at work, new people in your relationships, friends, anyone that comes across your way. And so it's so important to address this. It's so important to accept it.
Jay Shetty: Now, how do you start creating that distance, you ask? The first way is to watch your inner dialogue and make that difference. The second is to recognize and go back to when you have felt guilty. Reflect and write down the top three times or even one time that you have experienced guilt and shame. and when it really started leaning into shame. And now in hindsight, I want you to look back and recognize, is it true that you have also been not responsible in certain challenges? Is it true that you've also won as well as lost and failed in different things? Is it true that there is more diversity in your experience than there is consistency? Is it true that if you think you are a mistake, that you've also got certain things right and done things well and made people feel good? Noticing this discrepancy is what helps you accept that, yes, I have made mistakes, but I am not a mistake. And even repeating that, recognizing and accepting, remember, we're not shunning our mistakes. We're not trying to push them away. We're not trying to pretend that they didn't happen. We're not trying to be in denial. We're accepting they happened. We're accepting we made them. But we won't accept that we are them. We're not going to accept that we're defined by them because our life shows us that we have a bit of both.
Jay Shetty: Now, the second thing that people felt guilty about, or the most frequently stated reasons for feeling guilty, was not spending enough time with family members, not taking enough care of family members, and not being there for family members. I think we can all identify with that type of guilt, and we will be coming onto this moving forward in this podcast. The reason I'm sharing these with you is always to help you recognize that you're not alone, to help you recognize that we all have these emotions and experiences, that there is no one, including me, who has perfected this, figured it out, mastered it, and gets everything right. I think it's often our desire for perfection that creates so much of the guilt and shame we experience. Our desire for getting everything to line up, be perfectly balanced, be fully aligned, centered, grounded, it doesn't exist. The third thing that we most frequently state that we feel is a reason for being guilty is misbehavior towards someone or thinking bad about someone. And this comes from feelings of guilt related to other people. But this could be anyone from the person you bumped into on the street all the way through to the person you cut off in the traffic and later on you're thinking, oh, I wish I didn't do that. They didn't deserve that. It's really interesting, right? It could be anything. Misbehavior towards or bad thinking of someone. Maybe you said something gossipy about a friend. Maybe you said something that you wish you could take back. Maybe you shared someone's private information with someone else, right?
Jay Shetty: And so it's so important to address this. It's so important to accept it. It's so important to focus in on it. If there's a guilt over a past mistake, if you can, if the person is alive and accessible, when you prepare or when you feel prepared, the best thing you can do is actually reach out and try and solve it. If you have done something that you don't feel proud about, if you feel you've done something that you don't feel represents who you are, and there's a past mistake that is haunting you or lurking there behind you, it's important that you can reach out and set the record straight. And that's a really beautiful thing to be able to do. So now let's say that you are going to reach out. I think it's really important that you prepare before you do. Often we have this knee-jerk reaction to just pick up the phone and say, I'm sorry. And we're not thinking about how it may affect the other person. We're not thinking about what it may mean for us. And often, if the person is not accessible or you may actually in your preparation realize, I don't think talking to them directly is going to do any good, It's important to check in with yourself and share that apology. You may share that apology energetically. You may share that apology as a healing practice if you don't feel that person is accessible or you may not be connected to them anymore.
(someone): How's that New Year's resolution coming along?
Jay Shetty: If we keep just growing a sense of guilt, it will block our growth because we get so negative about who we are, what we do, how we behave, and we feel we have missed so much time. We feel we have missed so many opportunities that we now feel that we can't turn it around. It's almost like negative math working against us. It's like we're like 10-0. Right? We're losing 10-0 in the world of guilt. And now we're like, well, even if I do one thing, it would still be 10-1. I'm so far away. That's what it feels like. You're like 10 goals down. Then it continues with unfavorable health or self-indulgence. We guilt ourselves over what we eat. And if we do or don't work out, And it's really interesting, right? Those are the top categories of guilt that we as humans experience. And I think all of us could agree that we've all experienced them at one point or another. So now that we understand the difference between guilt and shame, I want to focus in on the different types of guilt that we experience in our lives and what we can do about it. Remember, guilt is, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame is, I'm sorry I am a mistake.
Jay Shetty: Remember, guilt is, I'm sorry I made a mistake. Shame is, I'm sorry I am a mistake. And I want to shift us away from believing that we are a mistake or that we ourselves as an entity are wrong, are lost. We say things like, I am a failure. No, I have experienced failure. And that's what I want you to do with the inner critic in your mind. I want you to start making that switch. where instead of every time you catch yourself saying, I am a failure, I am a mistake, start replacing it with, I have experienced failure. I failed at this. This particular event failed. I think it's important to start disconnecting your identity from an emotion and a statement. Right? The mistake we make is when we mesh together our identity with a word. We start to identify with that word, and that becomes a belief. Once that becomes a belief, it becomes a repetitive habit in our lives, and then it feels like normal. It's almost like when someone says something in your head, you think, well, I'm a loser anyway, so what's the point? Right? So I want you to start creating that distance. Now, how do you start creating that distance, you ask? The first way is to watch your inner dialogue and make that difference.