January 11, 2016
Hi and welcome to this video. In this video, I want to talk to you about the emotions of guilt and shame. And these two emotions, I bring them up now because, well the new year just started last week and I do know about you but I had a few resolutions that sorta went by the wayside! But that that’s a different story!
Anyway the reason I wanted to bring some sort of lightness into this is- You know when I work with my clients and we’re working with emotions, I’ve noticed that there is a real heaviness to it. Because you know we’ve been running these emotions in our lives for long time that we just feel that that’s- that’s the be all and end all of it. And so there some sort of seriousness attached to it.
What I want to invite you to consider is to approach the work with emotions in the emotion of lightness, in the emotion of curiosity. And the reason curiosity works well is that well curiosity is about getting to the bottom of something, getting to the heart of something. And that’s the invitation here, especially when you work with the emotions of guilt and shame.
So what are guilt and shame exactly? Well these two emotions, what they do is they serve to keep us protected. In fact they serve to show an image of ourselves, to project an image externally, to the community, and internally to us. This image are the standards that the community measures us against. And also the standards that we measure ourselves against.
And the real interesting work is to understand where guilt begins and where emotion begins and what the differences are between the two. And I want to approach this from a linguistic perspective because I find that when you understand exactly what it is that guilt is protecting, and what it is that shame is protecting, then we can tease apart these emotions and actually have a better idea of what it means to us so that we can create some sort of satisfaction and even resolution around them.
Understanding The Emotions Of Guilt And Shame
So what is guilt? Guilt means we have violated a standard internal to us. So obviously, the opposite of guilt in some sense, is violating a standard of the community. And that’s where shame comes in. Shame is violating a community standard.
Now when we mix these two together, we don’t know whose standards we actually violated. In most cases, a lot of us, we’ve been brought up from childhood with certain expectations, certain standards and we’ve sort of adopted them as our own. So the invitation I want to share with you here is:
- Which standards have your actions violated?
- Were they standards that you actually embody?
- Or were they standards that were given to you by other people?
- By the community you surround yourself with and that you’ve adopted is your own?
And this is really crucial because sometimes we may not even know which standards we actually are adopting as our own.
The Community Creates Standards
Every community that you are a part of has its own standards. And of course you by participating in these communities will adhere to those standards. And that’s where shame will work to keep you in line with the standards of the community.
If you are going to move your body to another community, to another group of friends perhaps, or even coworkers or other peers that you engage with, you get to move into a different community standard. And that can have some sort of impact.
Now guilt on the other hand, this is the emotion that you really have to be careful of. Because what guilt does, especially if you violate it is: the assessment is made that you have violated something deep, and core and integral to yourself. And so the tendency comes to punishment, to punishing of your self. And that can be detrimental to growth, to personal satisfaction, to personal maturation, and of course to the satisfaction and happiness that you can derive from life.
So these emotions once again, guilt and shame, they allow us to protect our image in the community. And that’s what shame is there for: to the standards that we adhere to within the community. And guilt is the internal standards that we adhere to.
When you tease these apart and you understand where guilt starts—or where it ends—and where shame starts and where shame ends, then you have a better idea of how to deal with it.
Components Of Emotions
Guilt and shame our emotions and emotions have four components. Emotions have a component of a story. That means there’s some sort of inner language, it could even be external, that says there are certain—you know—codes of conduct that you have to follow. So that’s a story. That story predisposes each of us, each individual, to a certain kind of action.
And not only that, certain actions are taken—obviously with the body because without your body you cannot take action. That body shape, that body disposition, is going to be determined by the quality of your language, the clarity of how you describe that emotion of guilt or shame, nd how well you describe the story.
And of course with the body there’s also a breathing pattern. And that breathing pattern is unique to every emotion. But it’s also unique for the way you interpret that emotion.
So just to recap this. Guilt and shame are emotions. Guilt and shame protect each of us from the standards from the community, or from ourselves. Every emotion has four components. And the components of every emotion are:
- A story
- A predisposition to action
- A physical posture or a stance as well as
- A breathing pattern
What do you make of all this? How can you resolve guilt and shame in your life? How can you actually work with these emotions and notice how they show up in your life?
Overcome Guilt And Shame By Noticing
I invite you to consider that noticing is perhaps the first step. When you understand these emotions of standards—that’s from a linguistic concept—then you can actually work with the story. So for example, the story of guilt is that, “I violated my own standards.”
Because of that story, because of that loop inside your head, “Oh! I violated my own standards! I violated my own standards!” You’re going to take an action which is going to be detrimental because the story and the predisposition will invite you to hurt yourself.
The story of shame is that, “I broke the community standards!” And naturally that’s going to lead toward the action, the predisposition to await judgement and face the punishment of the community.
So guilt and shame are simply emotions. And the way that I’ve shared with my clients, the way to work with emotions, is to approach them from a linguistic perspective. Because then we know what the story is behind that. Then we can actually engage in conversations to create some sort of resolution so that the outcome becomes satisfactory for us.
Begin With Conversations
And here’s something important I want to invite you to consider. When I mention conversations, I’m not talking just about you having a conversation with somebody else. Or you have in conversation with the community. But I’m talking about the conversations you have with yourself. When these emotions of guilt and shame are taken to excess, that is to say, when the conversations on guilt and shame, internally as well as externally, aren’t resolved, that leads to problematic situations in the future.
We get low self-esteem, low self-confidence, low self-worth. And these emotions, or at least the resultant emotions that are produced by ineffective conversations around guilt and shame, lead to a quality of life that is not really desirable.
Within the Vedic frameworks life is meant to be lived joyously. And when emotions—it doesn’t just have to be guilt and shame! When emotions are taken to excess, it create situations that result in something less than optimal, that result in something less than joyous. And so approaching emotions, approaching these situations from the perspective that life is meant to be lived joyously, life for that unique observer that you are, the unique observer that looks up from your eyes, is meant to have a joyous experience on this planet.
So what do we do now that we understand that perspective. Well here’s the simple part. And the simple part is to just have conversations so that you can declare satisfaction with these two emotions of guilt and shame. How do you do that?
Who Creates The Standards?
Well first of all you find out who is responsible for setting those standards.
- Was it you that set the standards?
- Was at the community that set the standards?
- Were those standards clear?
- If you set the standards are you sure you set them for yourself?
- Are you sure they were not externally imposed on you?
- Are you sure they are congruent with who you are as a human being, and the way you want to show up in life, and the way you want to experience life?
And within these conversations, I invite you to consider how you can set satisfaction. Or at least the conditions that will generate some sort of satisfaction, some sort of resolution around a conversation. It could be that you might need to have a series of conversations. And every single one of those conversations has within it conditions of satisfaction, conditions of resolution, and desirable outcomes that have meaning and value for you.
It could be that the very first conversation you have leads to some sort of resolution that allows you to have the second conversation. Which allows you to explore the subject in a deeper way.
Guilt And Shame - In Summary
I hope this is been helpful for you and if you want more information- You know this is one of the things that I love to do! I love to work with my clients to approach this topic of conversations, to go deep down.
And if this is something that you are considering; if you are looking for a life coach, or leadership life coach, who uses this- in this case, this particular Ontological Coaching methodology with the Vedic frameworks, then perhaps I invite you to come by and contact me and let me know what it is that you are looking for to create some sort of resolution or satisfaction in your life.
And I also invite you to consider that once again that life is meant to be lived joyously. There is—at least from my perspective—there’s no sense in continuing this sort of cycle of reinforcing these patterns of thought, reinforcing these patterns of language, and reinforcing these predispositions to action which have no satisfactory outcome for each of us.
So once again I hope this is been helpful for you. If you do have any questions or comments please share them below and I will get to it as soon as I can.
Take yourself, have a beautiful day and I’ll see you in the next video!
Bye-bye for now!