Guilt is Inevitable, Shame Is Optional

What is wrong with me? Everything, and nothing

Guilt is the feeling of having done something wrong. Shame, by contrast, is the feeling of being something wrong. 

Guilt is the pain of burning your hand on a hot stove that you remember in the future and which guides you to maybe not repeat that pain-bringing behavior. It’s just a simple byproduct of having some kind of moral awareness, and it is also limited in its application. If you’ve done something wrong then I hope it hurts exactly enough for you to never do it again, no more and no less. 

Shame is the useless, all-consuming feeling of being unworthy of love. It’s useless because it doesn’t inform any behavior beyond total paralysis or thrashing attempts to escape. It’s all-consuming because it seems to be the most significant feeling of all, dulling the vitality of all other emotions. 

Guilt is sometimes warranted to the exact extent that it helps us change. Shame is never warranted.

To be human is to be finite, to forever fall short of any ideal and to someday die. We wallow in ignorance and weakness of will, and somehow get confused into thinking that this is some sort of deformity. We are doomed to torture each other and to hopefully make some sense of the mountain of pain that we feel and cause. 

Shame tells us that we need to deal with all of the above by ourselves - that there is something wrong with us, that our human finitude is disgusting and preventable and that nobody in their right mind would ever want to know us and love us. Shame tells us that all of our guilt, our inevitable and helpful guilt, is evidence of our unworthiness. 

Guilt and shame operate on two utterly different planes of conversation, the former of action, the latter of existence. No amount of accomplishment, moral or material, can make anyone feel like they are worthy of love if they don’t aren’t willing to believe that they are. All of us will die without ever knowing the perfect version of ourselves. Freedom from shame is a grace that we give each other, a grace that we give ourselves - it is an interruption in the predictable conversation that we have with ourselves and with each other about what we are worth and what we are. 

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, you are every bit as human, every bit as worthy, as the best person you know.

Guilt is inevitable, shame is optional.