How To Deal With Guilt and Shame?

Previously, we have talked about David R. Hawkins’ map of consciousness that identifies different states of growth ranging from shame and guilt at the bottom to peace and enlightenment at the top. Since shame and guilt are so prevalent, let’s look at where they come from and how they affect us, so we can figure out: How to deal with guilt and shame?

What is guilt vs. shame?

Many people use the words “guilt” and “shame” interchangeably, but they refer to somewhat different experiences. Here is one way to differentiate them:

Guilt focuses on an action or a behavior that we judge as being wrong. We say: I did something bad or I made a mistake. It may be associated with blame or remorse.
Shame focuses on the self or how we appear to others. We say: I am bad or I am a mistake. There is a sense of feeling defective, unacceptable, damaged or humiliated.

Are there cultural differences in guilt vs. shame?

Anthropologists classify cultures based on people’s primary moral response to “sin,” which may be guilt, shame or fear. The bar graph (below) shows the proportion of each response in different cultures:

The results (based on “The Culture Test“) suggest that individualistic western cultures (e.g. US, Europe) feel more guilt than shame, whereas collectivistic eastern cultures (e.g. Asia, Arab countries) feel more shame than guilt. This is interesting, but there is more to it.

How do guilt and shame affect us?

Robert Masters, PhD (“Spiritual Bypassing“) said that shame is probably the most neglected emotion in psychotherapy and spiritual practice. He differentiates unhealthy shame from healthy shame, stating that without the capacity for healthy shame, we would be devoid of conscience. He explained:

The moral hub of healthy shame is responsibility, which has heart. It is wide awake conscience without self-flagellation, groveling or other versions of self-blame. When our conscience is empowered and activated, we can make amends, come clean, let go and heal. Healthy shame frees us.
The moral hub of guilt, which he defined as unhealthy shame or shame polluted with fear, is blame. It has no heart. When we are busy blaming, we have no compassion. Guilt keeps us small, stuck, divided and safely tucked away from truly taking charge of our lives.

“Guilt often masquerades as ‘conscience’ as does the inner critic (or superego). The inner critic plagues many of us, masquerading as the messenger of healthy criticism, but it is just a loveless loudmouth, the relentless voice of self-deprecation in morality’s robes.” – Robert A. Masters

He said guilt at its core is a stalemated parent-child relationship, which stunts our growth. We childishly cling to and also react to outside parental forces that we have internalized. It is a refusal to sanely parent ourselves or to be accountable and responsible for ourselves.

Brené Brown said shame is an unspoken epidemic. We all carry some shame. Most of us don’t realize how pervasive it is in our lives. We are prone to being shamed and to shaming others in many ways.
When we feel shame, we fear it and quickly try to obscure it by compensatory solutions, such as people pleasing, withdrawal, depression, avoidance, dissociation, narcissistic behavior or aggression toward self or others. These overlays arise secondary to shame, according to Masters.

Shame that is not acknowledged, felt, shared and worked with will contract or mortify us and pollute any relationship. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide and eating disorders, according to Brown and others. We need to deal with it.

Anodea Judith (“Eastern Body, Western Mind”) said that guilt and shame map to our second and third chakras, respectively. The chakras function by programs that were given to us as children (from our parents, teachers, authority figures, religion, culture) to control us. We didn’t write all of them. She explained:

The guilt program tells us we don’t have the right to feel and have pleasure (self-gratification). It inhibits us from the basic pleasures of being alive via our second or sacral chakra.
The shame program tells us we don’t have the right to act and be an individual (self-definition). It inhibits us from being free to access our personal power via our third or solar chakra.

Nora Herold said these programs were built into our operating system as part of the enslavement game, which expired at the end of 2012. We were programmed to feel shame as a way to dim our light, to keep us from accessing our power and to keep us as slaves. Our job is to rewrite these archaic programs. She said:

Guilt is not an emotion. It’s a mental thought-form you put on yourself, when you go into judgment. It’s like a big metal band of energy over your head that lowers your frequency. But shame is an emotion, a feeling of worthlessness. They are simply programs you use to control yourself and be controlled by.
For instance, when we hear the word “slave,” we may get angry and say: Screw that, I’m not doing that any longer! Then we feel shame about our anger, because that’s the old program.
Don’t feel shame that you feel shame. Of course you feel shame, because you were programmed to feel shame. But you don’t have to do it any longer, you get to release it completely. Our job is to sit and comfort those aspects of ourselves that feel shame and guilt, saying:

“Look at that, I’m not broken, I’m repairing, because it’s not THIS you that needs repairing, it’s that other you, who on that other timeline is sitting in the dark, where you’re holding dark, nasty, awful stories about yourself.”

Here is a simple technic given by Herold to help you transmute trauma as it happens. It just takes a couple of minutes to do this FOAL technic to shift yourself:

FEEL — simply feel what you’re feeling and own it (using “I” statements): Ah, I’m feeling shame, I’m feeling worthless. Or I’m feeling angry (but don’t associate the shame program with it). Feel what you must, don’t push it away.
OBSERVE — while you’re fully feeling, begin to observe yourself from a balcony, while you’re still feeling the intensity of your experience without judgment. Then you’ve got the 3D self feeling away, and your 5D consciousness observing, which gives you a blended 3D/5D experience.
ACCEPT — step into acceptance saying: I totally, completely accept myself and this feeling state in this moment exactly as I am.
LOVE — what happens next is an automatic activation of unconditional love within your energetic system that gets sent to all versions of you that have felt that trauma — wherever it sits, on whatever timeline it sits, and whatever moment in this lifetime and any other lifetime you experienced that trauma going back to the origin of that trauma. You will feel lighter right away. Smile!

When things get intense and you get triggered by something external to you, just FOAL more often. Be more gentle, loving and compassionate with yourself during this highly polarized time on Earth. The more loving you are with yourself, the more loving actions you take.

Final Thoughts

Why would we play this crazy game? There are many reasons why we all chose to play the enslavement game. As Nora Herold said, we’ve all played every role: the big, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the hero, the victim, the villain, etc. We are at peace with a lot of it, but there are some pieces that we still haven’t healed. They’re usually the “monsters,” the lives where we crossed the line and abused our power. Those are the aspects of ourselves that the FOAL technic helps us heal.

When we take more responsibility for our lives and creations, we start to own our reality, instead of beating ourselves up with guilt and shame for what we’ve created. As Nora so delightfully put it: “I’m perfect, exactly as I am, sitting in this pile of poop that I created!” 😉 And then we get to feel all our power, joy, love, compassion, peace and harmony inside of us and start to create from that place anew again and again.

You may be wondering what happens to society’s morals or ethics, when we lose guilt and shame? Lyssa Royal (“The Golden Lake”) explained that the difference between external ethics and internal integrity is related to states of consciousness. In third density, ethics and rules are imposed from the outside. We try to live by them, but the ego fights against them and that creates conflict. In fourth density, we don’t need external ethics or rules, because our actions are guided by internal alignment rather than ego desires. Being ethical becomes a very natural process that creates harmony in a society. What a relief!

Lose the guilt, lose the shame and lose the fear. Operate from JOY instead! 🙂