You’ve probably heard clients use guilt and shame interchangeably to describe their feelings.
But as practitioners, we know that shame and guilt are two very different emotions, each with its own purpose and path to healing.
That’s why we created this free infographic designed to help clients understand the key differences between these two emotions – and to understand why they may be experiencing a shame response after trauma.
Have a look.
Click the image to enlarge
Shame is feeling bad about yourself as a person. Guilt is feeling bad about what you did.
Why Do We Experience Shame?
Shame is a defense mechanism. It is a way we learned to keep ourselves safe from harm in the past. It served an important purpose in the past – it kept us safe. But now it may cause problems in our lives and relationships when we no longer need that shame to keep us safe. Shame can be a way we blame ourselves for something that happened to us that wasn’t our fault. When we feel ashamed, we may feel we can control our safety by controlling our actions and beliefs.Why It Matters
When we understand the differences between these powerful feelings, we being to understand and eliminate negative self-judgments and self-talk.
What To Do When You Experience…
Shame: Exercise self-compassion, recognize shame as a survival tactic, seek healthy connections with others, and talk to your therapist.
Guilt: Admit you are wrong, take responsibility, seek forgiveness, and change your behavior.
(If you’re sharing this infographic, please attribute it to NICABM. We put a lot of work into creating these resources for you. Thanks!)
If you’d like to print a copy, you can use one of these links:
In the Advanced Master Program on the Treatment of Trauma, we take an in-depth look at how to work with trauma-induced shame. Take a look here.
You’ll get the experts’ best techniques for working with shame. And we’ll be getting into how to treat a number of conditions that can present alongside shame – including self-harm, moral injury, and difficulty tolerating positive emotion.
You’ll hear from Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Peter Levine, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Stephen Porges, PhD; Janina Fisher, PhD; and other leaders in the field.
Now we’d like to hear from you. What are some effective ways you work with guilt and shame in a session? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.
If you found this helpful, here are a few more resources you might be interested in:
A Simple Metaphor to De-Shame a Client’s Trauma Response
Helping Clients Talk About Shame
Questions That Can Help Your Clients Talk About Shame
Regarding the contrast between shame and guilt, I do not completely agree, guilt is a feeling that often involves one’s perception that what he/she has done hurts somebody, whereas shame is more about a bad feeling toward self inwardly, although ultimately both are feelings which can lead to feeling bad about himself/herself
That actually makes more sense to me to be fair. As a young child I actually did not do anything bad, yet percieved/believed I had. So there is nothing that I can put right. Hidden danger here that could quite easily keep me trapped, just logically thinking this bad is just shame due to me not actually doing anything bad.
CPTSD and severe dissociation.
Thanks for your input. Nicola.
Thank you so much for this and all that you do!
This is a very deep and detail based Approach of therapy,which is useful for practitioners as well as to the clients to cope their pains up.
Professionally and individually I have got a lot of advantages to develop my professional capacity and personal wellbeing.
Thak you for your soft heart approach towards me.
Abiyu
From Ethiopia.
This is absolutely evocative and profoundly moving. It is also instructive and can be helpful in training and treatment. Velandy Manohar, MD
From schema therapy perspective i really miss the parent of nduced guilt in patients, who did nothing wrong and still feel very guilty so this is not a paper i can use with most of my patients. There’s a difference in true guilt when the steps described can be helpfull and so called guilt coming from parent modes
Agree
Agree too. Guilt becomes especially problematic when someone still feels guilty about something that is healthy behaviour. For instance important self-care.
What’s schema therapy?
Thank you Mark
I agree too, strong feelings of guilt can come from a parent’s projection of their own guilt onto the child (splitting etc)
Thank you for this.
Shame and/guilt is not self protective or for safety when we were young.
And note that we can be made to feel shame and guilt when we have not done anything wrong. When someone in authority repetitively does/says something that blames+/shames us.
This may be a contentious example but
for example the corporate govt media has implanted a white shame meme where the white person ( and this can be a child that is conditioned )is suppose to feel guilt and shame for their skin color due to Central banking Govts (and their companies) wrong actions hundreds hundreds of years ago.
The same old divide and conquer technique is in full swing.
Psychology is use by govt( authority). But thats a big rabbit hole very few psychologists go down, (unless they work in govt).
Feeling shame for the perception of self and one’s skin colour is very common and I agree with you that psychologists rarely have the skills or ability to face their own ingrained racism and race based relating patterns . When society attempts to shame groups for how they show up in the world , well that is racial trauma perpetuated by the social system . Of course when one looks at race itself , one can see it’s an irrelevant distinction and no race is better or worse than another , however one must get through the shame and guilt first . Some racial groups are struggling with past actions of their racial group and the guilt that their societies embed racism into their laws , statutes , policing and psychotherapy . The whole area of race based trauma needs real attention especially in Western psychology where most of the psychologists are white.
Indeed for NICAMB offering their work as free view for a limited period is a first to assist ethnic groups and countries and individuals that do not have their countries currency strength . Once one sees the trauma perpetuated through race , feels and admits the shame of that , then one can then act in ways that whilst honouring ones own needs seek also to reduce by ones own actions the harms caused by racial trauma .
I disagree that “race”/skin color needs more attention.
It is the media creation of victim vs perpetrator based on skin color that has created more problems( racism ).
We dont pay any attention to our sameness as human beings.
There is no such thing as “racial trauma” there is truama there is human unconsciousness ( there is discrimination). Disabled people suffer it and so do ALL people of all colours that are perceived as different and so feared. Corporate media is not a source of truth, it deals in selling memes like this one. Memes of racism where the skin colour of one person is publicaly blamed and shamed for the past actions of Govt (or human unconsciousness) . Its divisive and its racism its not healing nor has it anything to do with “justice”.
hope no people of color are ever put in your care. jeez.
I agree. Smh
The shame “I am unlovable” thought comes from a dialog that the mind creates to make sense of (childhood) abuse/neglect/abandonment. Essentially the dialog of the unloved.
(*But I would add that no one that is is unloved) .
As both neg thoughts come from being mind identified and disconnected from source the only true healing is to reconnect with your Self.Mindfulness+/meditation .
True Self compassion practices .
When knowing that whoever made you feel that way about yourself by withholding love could not have behaved any differently due to their own conditioning( childhood or life circumstances)they suffered lack of love, this understanding also allows the opportunity of forgiveness.
Thank you for the infographic. My clients will be helped by tis simple visual.
I disagree with this common depiction of guilt. You are assuming that someone feels guilty because they did something objectively wrong. But trauma survivors often feel that they did something wrong even when they didn’t do anything wrong. (Sometimes this can be due to perfectionism; other times it’s just a knee-jerk cycle of self-blame.) Guilt and shame are much more intertwined than these popular infographics make them out to be. (Here’s an example of this overlap: “My husband seems annoyed. I must have cooked a lousy dinner. I’m such a fool. I’m sure he’ll leave me soon.” The second sentence is an example of unnecessary guilt, whereas the third sentence represents shame.)
In addition to working with a client’s shame-riddled self-concept, therapists also need to examine the concrete, day-to-day ways that clients take too much responsibility for perceived wrongs. If you don’t realize how important this is, think of Gabby Petito, who was racked with guilt and over-apologizing about having wanted to tidy up her living quarters. The last thing these clients need is to “admit wrongdoing and seek forgiveness”—quite the opposite, actually.
Thank you for making this distinction between perceived wrongdoings and actual mistakes so clearly. The quagmire of trauma induced shame and guilt is quite challenging to climb out of. These important emotions need recalibrating in therapy.
I work in both a guilt/innocent culture and a shame/honor culture as well as helping the mix. When guilt culture tries to solve people “problem” through the guilt innocent paradigm we dont reach the “root” problem. We need to make sure we are not using one system to solve the other. We need to deal with both but there is a primary motivator in different cultures (or improper ways we motivate). One uses guilt the other shame.
The defining characteristic of shame, as presented here, is feeling “I AM bad”. Can you say more about how it’s possible to have a mild version of that feeling that is beneficial?
Is it possible that the other literature you’re referencing uses share to encompass a range of feelings including both what’s called shame vs guilt here; whereas this model is trying to make an explicit distinction that separates OUT the “I AM bad” feelings (in my view, always unproductive) from the “I DID bad” feelings, which serve a social purpose, may be mild or severe, can be soothed through restitution and behavior change as noted above, etc.
(And as a later commenter points out, feeling guilty does not ALWAYS mean you even did anything bad…however if you can separate out what is potential guilt, you can explore the facts of the situation…if you’re working with shame, it’s all about the subjective, internal feelings…)
A milder form of shame where one feels “I am bad” that is not necessarily traumatic (if trauma is defined as an overwhelming experience that could not be integrated) would be breaking social norms and being chastised for it. Shame keeps us connected to the tribe (tons of research there). Experiencing a low level of shame signals to reconnect to the tribe and would not be traumatic if the scenario allowed for repair and the person was not overwhelmed by it.
Pretty interesting comments. I see a big difference when coming from the perspective of BELONGING. Having a community who sees our potential to act differently, and won’t give up on us no matter what, is restorative.
Shame is identifying with the harm we caused and being cast out. Our culture has no rituals for being welcomed back into the community or ways to restore ourselves, that I can think of.
It makes me think of that Nigerian proverb, “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”
Kate, thank you for this reflection. I agree that an alternative to isolation and shame is community and belonging.
Thinking of rituals, what do you think one may look like?
Very interesting. Going further into this questioning, I wonder about… when the community as a whole has a set of “social norms” which is shaming based on long standing traditions of victim blaming. For example, shaming a woman who was wearing certain clothes when she was raped. As opposed to shaming the man who caused violence on another human. If the community has establish those “social norms”, then at what price does the “welcomed back” come to the woman versus the man?
I wonder if shyness in children (not all types of, but some of) may be also related to that. Feeling unloved or unseen or not wanting to be loved and seen. I really would like to hear from you.
Yes, I believe that shyness is correlated with having a nervous system that is hypersensitive to feelings of self-conscious embarrassment. Shame is an extreme version of this.
And as you said, it’s cyclical: Being unloved/unseen leads to perceived unworthiness, which leads to attempts to become invisible.
I’m a Yoga Therapist. I am aware of children who are greatly loved and seen and yet are crippled, socially, by their shyness. From my distant perspective (not as the therapist in this situation) both parents put gentleness and patience ahead of all other emotions. The child did not experience rough play, safe expressions of anger or frustrations from the parents, and a whole host of what many would feel are normal, acceptable human emotions. So the outside world was uncomfortable and full of unexpected interactions the child’s nervous system had not learnt to self regulate in. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about this topic because my yoga community is also sometimes losing sight of the importance of activating the sympathetic nervous system. Leaning into our boundaries in a consciously chosen and contained way is wonderful for the NS. Many of my yoga and trauma peers have tipped the scales a little too far toward the parasympathetic as though its activation is the sole goal eg Yin Yoga without Hatha Yoga. As this series clearly shows, sympathetic allows mobilisation and growth. The window of tolerance can grow from both ends.
That’s interesting. As a painfully shy child myself, I feared everything: food, people, new places. My mother was volatile and unpredictable, certainly not loving. I wonder……..
I often use Compassion Focussed Therapy to address issues of shame or guilt, and the Trauma Cascade Model, to make sense of these emotions. Responsibility pie charts are also useful, to help target feelings of guilt.
This infographic makes the underlying assumption that a person will only feel guilty when they have actually done something wrong. If so, yes, take responsibility etc. The problem is that people can also feel guilty when they haven’t done anything “wrong”. The infographic takes no account of this, and assumes that if a client is feeling guilty, it must be because they have actually done something “wrong” and need to deal with it. Not always the case.
This is especially the case in race based trauma perpetuated by society through its actions I unconscious and conscious actions on specific groups .
These professional comments are fascinating! Thank you for providing this resource and this space for comments. I am a speech therapist and I sometimes notice signs of shame when I work with people who stutter. I introduced them to examining thoughts and beliefs and questioning distorted thinking.
I think it’s really important to acknowledge the pro-social advantages to emotions like guilt and shame. I found it helpful to recognise that for a social species, guilt and shame have an important role to play in group dynamics. For example, we do something that hurts someone else, we feel guilty and ashamed and this helps us to learn to be kinder in future, both because we don’t want to hurt other people but also because we don’t want to feel guilty or ashamed again (and potentially to be kicked out of the group where we feel safe). I know the infographic touches on this but it makes it all about the individual rather than the interpersonal that it relates to.
Literally guilt and shame kept us alive as a species and have evolutionary advantages.
I think what we call guilt is actually the feeling of shame about our guilt, guilt is not a feeling, you are guilty or not when you did something to other people they didn’t like.
There is healthy shame, when you tresspass boundaries, it informs you that you did that. Than it is part of our social system.
And there is unhealthy shame when you are being shamed to discipline you. What happened often in our upbringing. And we can let go of the burdens that provoke shame.
This infographic is much to simple, to understand shame and see how to work with it you need a broader view of shame.
This is a good point, but I think guilt has become shorthand for a feeling of healthy detachment and potential to do better? I wonder if it is “when you did something to other people they didn’t like” or when you do something that goes against your values or self-identity. I do think the infographic is helpful as a tool to introduce people to the difference between “I am bad” and “My actions were harmful but I can do better.”
They still seem linked to me. Not that different. Hard to separate .
One thing I feel the infographic leaves out is “shame that’s caused by guilt”, shame that’s caused by something we did or something we failed to do. A lot of people can’t/don’t say to themselves, “I did something really bad but I’m a great person.” It might not be a false belief that we are unlovable that causes shame. We have failed to live up to our own self-expectations (or the expectations we have internalized from others). It’s not then as simple as seeking forgiveness and changing behaviour.
Shame _because_ we did something bad or failed or “should have stopped it happening ” (if it’s abuse) really is a Thing. Self-compassion is more relevant, but real healing from this shame might require something more searching, a more difficult existential quest about our self-understanding or something…
I guess I feel “what I am” and “what I did” can’t be so neatly separated for most people. I’m not even sure I think it should, in every case …
This feels, for me personally, to hold so much truth. Thank you.
I believe Guilt is applicable to addiction and other behaviors. Both shame and guilt are very often indeed interchangeably, without exception, aren’t they?