This kinda blew up so I want to add something that’s also related to Kai Cheng’s earlier commentary about shame, how shame and guilt are different, and what we should do about it.

What helps me is to understand that shame is essentially social pain. https://twitter.com/maidensblade/status/1260601373982425091

This is what Kai Cheng was talking about earlier that I’m referring to:
https://twitter.com/razorfemme/status/1260283259361153025?s=21 https://twitter.com/razorfemme/status/1260283259361153025

I think of emotions, all of them, as being a very central form of awareness. In the same way pain tells us something may be dangerous, and that hunger tells us we need food, fatigue tells us we need rest, emotions all tell us we need something.

Shame is like the social pain trigger—it says something can be harmful, but specifically harmful to our relationships. Physical pain is about the body’s safety, but shame is about the safety of the relational self. It’s about the self-image.

The eventual form of shame is loneliness, which we can think of as like social hunger. It says “I need connection.”

Because connection is also the thing that heals shame. Shame says “connection may be in danger” and makes us interpersonally hungry.

Guilt is different, and I think the difference is important. Guilt is more related to anger. Anger is the system that says “something is in violation.” Something was done wrong, but wrong morally.

Guilt is anger toward the self—it says “I’m acting in violation”

In the same way that physical pain is about the body and shame is about the self-image, guilt is about the will. Shame suggests we need to be something else in relation to others. Guilt suggests we need a different code of action.

You can see how they’re connected. I often find that I feel bad about an act in that I’m ashamed (I feel isolated and unworthy to others because of it) and I feel guilty (I feel the act was wrong by own standards) and I’m afraid (I feel vulnerable to harmful consequences).

Three different emotional responses, but they’re like dominoes. And they are resolved in different but related ways.

Fear: find safety
Guilt: correct your action
Shame: find connection

We often find ourselves in situations in which we are urged to correct our actions but we don’t have good ways to both feel safe and get connection to relieve and process that fear and shame. As such, the whole emotional ecosystem is thrown off. It’s like a bottleneck.

Like Kai Cheng said, shame is most effective when it passes through us, leads to better connection, and also links with the anger/guilt/fear responses to model better actions and safe environments.

But let’s go back to hunger, pain, fatigue.

We know people can have wounds or illnesses that cause pain, hunger, or fatigue in a way that is out of their usual balance. We can be constantly hungry even after eating, exhausted even with rest.

Shame and guilt can also form these kinds of wounds. If we feel our will is defeated over and over, making us feel helpless, the guilt doesn’t heal. If we feel we can’t connect and are never quite good enough or accepted, the same doesn’t heal.

They become trauma wounds.

Now imagine marginalized people who spend decades of formative experience mired in drowning shame, guilt, fear, and anger. The emotional ecosystem is devastated and wounded. The flow of those connected emotions can’t effectively reach satisfaction.

So we often end up in a situation where most attempts to connect, or receive connection (such as through getting praise), trigger the other pain emotions and we don’t know why. We don’t have an effective flow. The shame doesn’t resolve.

Praise feels untrustworthy. Friendships feel suspicious. Socializing is exhausting because of unreleased anger (frustrated will). Nothing feels safe because of unreleased fear. So we are ashamed all the time and nothing heals it.

Healing doesn’t just require action, it requires an environment that allows the healing. It needs to be safe, to allow adjustment of your own actions, and to allow emotional connection and mirroring. Otherwise you can push yourself forever and never get anywhere.

What we need is the kind of community in which correction of action, creation of safety, and interpersonal acceptance are connected together and they happen organically as a continuous process.

Not enough accountability (which stymies the recognition of and relief of guilt) or not enough warmth and shared connection (which stymies the relief of shame), which both lead to a lack of certainty and safety (which stymies the relief of fear)

This is why I think it’s really wise to emphasize things like room for forgiveness and mistakes, which isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the same as lack of accountability. Action correction needs to be coupled with the emotional healing of interpersonal connection.

Otherwise you get excess entitlement to control (lack of appropriately processed guilt response) and/or some mix of arrogance, dishonesty, and inferiority, which are kinds of self-image armor that spring up fron lack of appropriately processed shame