2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
We often confuse guilt and shame. At what stage is shame instilled in us instead of guilt?
Is this familiar: “what have you done! And are you not ashamed? " Here it is! I did something wrong, I can come up and say: I'm sorry. And the situation ends. If at the same time they say to me: "Are you ashamed?" What do I feel? I feel like I need to be different from doing this. As a result, I begin to form an image of myself. This image avoids feelings of shame. When I am ashamed, there is a conflict between who I really am and how I manifest myself at the moment and in this situation.
A person can be ashamed not only of himself, but also of those with whom he identifies himself. A husband is ashamed of his wife, a mother for a child, a son for a mother or father if they behave inappropriately. Children sometimes go blind because they cannot bear to see their parents if they are ashamed of them.
How does the experience of shame for another happen? When I identify myself with some other person, I form a concept of how he should behave, how he should be. And if it deviates, what do I feel? - Shame.
The more a person creates an image of himself and others (the image of I and the image of We), the worse it is for him, especially if this image deviates greatly from the average level accepted in society.
So, when I talk about shame, I mean that my expectations of myself - for example, to be smart, strong, honest, or whatever - do not correspond to my words, actions, actions. This means that I am guilty before myself and others have nothing to do with it.
What happens to guilt. Guilt is the feeling we get when we don't live up to the expectations of others. We can be guilty to parents, children, friends, acquaintances, loved ones, to whom we feel attachment and with whom we identify. Their expectations regarding us are important to us, and we try to meet them. We are punished with guilt for the offense we have inflicted. We can fix this. We know exactly who we are to blame and what particular action has offended others. On the other hand, if you look at guilt from the point of view of responsibility, then I am not responsible for the expectations of others, it is their idealization of me and their image of me.
If I can ask for forgiveness for my act, and say that I am ashamed of him, then I confuse shame with guilt. I confuse expectations of myself with those of others. My expectations of myself, moreover, may not be mine, but others (parents, loved one, colleagues, friends). The feeling of shame is difficult to bear, and is masked behind other feelings (anger, fear, anxiety, etc.). Guilt is also not easy to handle, but easier to deal with. Shame is a defeat in personality, and if this is often pointed out, a person can at best be made weak, at worst broken. As a result, it will be convenient for everyone and easy to manipulate. Manipulation also arises on the feeling of guilt, but at the same time a person may not follow her lead. Guilt within one situation is temporary and disappears when the situation exhausts itself, or the participants correct it. This means that a person is not manipulated for a long time and is not engaged in “self-criticism”. And most importantly, in this case we are not talking about the personality and its qualities. It is about “expectation - reality” and here comes the symbiosis of relations between people.
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