Many emotional states we habitually describe as feelings are actually closely bound up with judgmental thinking. Anger, guilt and shame certainly fall into this category. These are not what one might call ‘pure’ feelings, like sadness, grief or joy; they are emotions contaminated with right-wrong thinking. So there is pain, and there is also an internalised judgment tied up with it. There is a social or moral dimension to guilt, shame and ‘righteous’ anger, which has been promoted by the great monotheistic religions since their founding and is the basis of the criminal justice system today. Anger, guilt and shame are all intrinsically involved with the practices of judging, blaming and punishing.
In a nutshell:
Anger – and all its variants, such as annoyance, irritation, fury, aggravation and disgust – include a moral judgment that someone else is ‘wrong’ or ‘at fault’. There may be a welcome release of tension when we explode in anger, but it’s not actually pleasant in itself to feel angry and it’s certainly no fun for those on the receiving end; indeed it is the driving force behind most interpersonal physical violence. The fact that expressing anger is often not socially acceptable, especially for women, does not mean that it’s a Good Thing!
Guilt is the same blame + pain combo as anger, but turned inwards instead of outwards. It’s the way we criticize and judge ourselves in relation to our actions. Guilt is there whenever we tell ourselves “I shouldn’t have done that”, “I was wrong to speak when I did” and so on. Whereas the flare of anger tends to burn out quite quickly, guilt lingers inside us, maybe for months and years. Nevertheless, as with anger, we have an internal sense that tells us this is not a place we want to be.
If we are frequently feeling guilty about something, then it is likely there will also be shame connected with the guilt.
Shame is how we beat ourselves up not just about ‘what we did wrong’ but about ‘who we are’. In short, we tell ourselves “I’m a bad person” or “I’m not good enough”. It’s more insidious than guilt: harder to acknowledge, harder to let go of and even longer lasting. It may be created or reinforced by others ‘shaming’ us, but it’s still part of our personal journey. Fuelling the shame there is always (in my experience so far) a core belief: a negative conclusion about ourselves or about reality, usually formed in early childhood. For this reason, suffering in shame can feel ‘justified’ and appropriate even for people who would not want to be stuck in a place of anger.
+Explore The History of Anger, Guilt and Shame
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