Heather Bellamy spoke with psychotherapist Peter Mockford about the difference between guilt and shame, looking at the importance of guilt and the toxic nature of shame.

Peter Mockford

Struggling with a lot of guilt and shame can make us angry, lack personal value and self-esteem and it can lead us to blaming others. Do you feel more deserving of punishment and less deserving of happiness? Heather Bellamy spoke with psychotherapist Peter Mockford to find out how guilt and shame affect us and how we can move on with our lives.

Heather: So, first of all, what is guilt and what is shame? Are they the same thing?

Peter: They're not the same thing, although one can lead to the other. Guilt says I've done something wrong. Shame says I am wrong. If you continually feel you've done something wrong, it can easily get translated into shame, where it's not that I've done something wrong, but it is that now I am intrinsically wrong.

Heather: They both sound terrible when you put it like that, but can they ever be a good thing? Are either ever an indicator of having a conscience and knowing we've done something wrong, which helps us to put something right?

Peter: Yes. Guilt is really important within a social environment. We all need guilt, because we need to know when we've done something wrong. We need to be able to feel remorse and we need to be able to put it right. I think shame is a slightly different kettle of fish; shame is highly toxic, because it massively effects our own sense of self-image. If we have high degrees of shame, we often try and push it away and we try and hide it. We often don't recognise it, but it still operates.

Heather: So what would be the things to look out for, to know that's what you're struggling with?

Peter: Classically if ones got shame, it will be low personal self-esteem and certainly not a good self-image, continually putting oneself down. You see the interesting thing about guilt and shame is that they develop in childhood. They develop to help us survive in the environment we're in, because as kids we have to survive in the environment that we are in. Sometimes the only way we can survive is to take what's happening around us and make it our fault, even though it isn't. The really important thing with shame, is to realise that we often have deep roots of shame because that was the way we learnt to survive in the environment in which we were in. So the first way through to dealing with shame, is to recognise that that's the case and that it played an important role in our life to enable us to live in the environment in which we were in.

Heather: Why do those things help us to live in certain environments?

Peter: Well, take a situation in a theoretical family, where the parents are for some reason continually shouting at one another and the relationship is not good, with a lot of anger around. Now, what the child can't do, is stand up to its parents and say, "Get your act together and start being decent parents; start loving me" and so on. A child can't do that, so a child has to make sense of the incredibly fraught emotional environment that is around. The way the child does it and the way we do it, is to say, look this must be my fault. That's the only way you can stay in the situation, because you can't turn around and shout at your parents, because that would mean abandonment. So we learn to absorb it and make it our own fault, that we are the bad ones and that is why this is happening. Often we try the best that we can as kids to try and make it better, but the difficulty is it leaves us with very toxic levels of shame.

Heather: So what is the best way to process guilt and shame?

Peter: Processing guilt is relatively straight forward in the sense that, we know if we've done something wrong; 'That's my fault, that's ok.' I can express remorse and say to whoever I need to say it, "I'm sorry".

Shame is a different kettle of fish, because that's much more toxic and evasive. The first way forward is what I've just said, to recognise that shame plays an important part and enables us to survive. So instead of beating ourselves up and saying, "I'm dreadful, I'm a worm. I really shouldn't think I'm a worm, but I do think I am a worm", so the shame increases; instead we should realise that the shame is the way I survived. That's the very first step to starting to move shame. From then on in it's about processing why that's the case and it will often mean facing some of the truths about our upbringings and that is not easy.

The first thing in psychotherapy is to recognise the role that it plays and the second thing is to create a safe environment that allows people to explore what that shame's really about and why they had to have it. That can be a long process and people can get stuck in it at any point and sometimes it's just too painful for people to face the reality of what their parenting was generally like. Sometimes people don't get very far processing shame to be honest.

Heather: Because then you have to accept that you were rejected or abused, rather than being in denial, is it something like that?

Peter: Yes. It's something along those lines. I think one of the hardest things is for us to lose the fact that we idealise our parents. The reality is, of course we idealise our parents, it's natural to idealise your parents, they are the only parents that you've ever had, so, of course they're marvellous. But are they? And it's getting people to actually see that parents are human, but it's not the easiest thing to do.

Heather: Going back to guilt, often that guilt is there because there was something that has happened that maybe you have to put right. Do we need to humble ourselves more and say sorry to people, or make restitution on things and do an action and not just to talk something through?

Peter: I think that's very important and it's very true. Certainly in Alcoholics Anonymous this is one of their key steps. You need to look at it and you need to put right what has gone wrong. You need to go and meet people and try and clear the air as much as you can. Certainly with guilt that is important, to make sure that you have cleared the decks as best as you can. Sometimes it's not possible, for whatever reason. So also, one of the key things is forgiveness and this is where being a Christian really helps, because forgiveness is always possible from God, irrespective of whether they do the process in the here and now.

Heather: So if somebody is struggling with shame, what would you want to say to them today?

Peter: First of all, you develop the shame base for a reason and the odds are it was not your fault, in fact, it wasn't your fault that you developed that level of shame. The important thing is what you decide to do with it. There are ways and means of addressing it. You can either address it through counselling, or the other way of looking at it is to be in a community. This is where faith communities really help. It's looking for communities that say, "You're ok". People need to experience the love and grace of God. And people need to experience one heck of a lot of love and grace from God for the shame-base to start to dissolve.