Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide. This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving.
Now that we have a much better understanding of shame from the last two episodes, we are going to take the next step.
This episode will stand alone, I will give you the context.
Many people use them interchangeably they don't recognize a difference. I feel bad with both of them because something is wrong.
Important psychologically 2. 1. Important spiritually 3. 1. Not just an idle curiosity, the kind of thing philosopher like to debate about 4. 1. But a real world concern
Can be conscious or unconscious 2. 1. Held by a part of us. -- part of us burdened with shame. Doesn't just come and go in waves 3. 1. Also a self-conscious emotion 4. 1. Also a moral emotion. 5. Shame as a bodily reaction not under bodily control -- bodyset
Hyperarousal -- this is where our sympathetic nervous system revs us up, gets into fight or flight mode in response to shame
Heart starts racing 2. 1. Breathing quickens 3. 1. Pupils dilate 4. 1. Blood rushes to arms and legs 5. 1. Face can flush red 6. 1. Get ready to defend ourselves or attack or run away 7. 6. 1. Hypoarousal, when the parasympathetic nervous system shuts us down -- freeze response, like a deer in the headlights
Shut down. Numb out. Dissociate 2. 1. Head drops 3. 1. Breaking off eye contact 4. 1. Tightening up of muscles, curling up in a ball (spine) -- hunching to protect vital organs. Making one's body smaller, less visible 5. 1. Feeling like ice water in the veins, cold freezing sensation 6. 1. Fluttering in belly. 7. 8. Shame as a judgment -- a negative, critical, global judgment of who I am as a person. -- mindset 1. Part of me holds this disparaging perspective of myself 2. Part of me accuses me of being incompetent, inadequate, worthless, unlovable, bad or even evil, 3. A judgement about who I really am originally picked up from the perspective of an important other who was perceived as critical or rejecting. 9. Shame as a signal. Shame has a function as a signal to us, as a warning. 1. Shame is a signal that there is a lack of attunement or an even more serious threat in one or more of our important relationships. It has important function 2. Shame functions as a "social threat detector" that signals us to modify or avoid behaviors that will cause us to be rejected by those we need. 3. 10. Shame as action -- a verb -- “shaming” is an action that is intended to cause someone else to feel inadequate, worthless, unlovable, a loser, etc. for being or doing something that the shamer feels is wrong or undesirable.
It is a quick way to control another person, especially one in a dependent positions 11. 1. It is a quick way for us to control ourselves. Part of us is forced into the role of shamer to anticipate consequences. 12. Shame has five dimensions: shame is a primary emotion, shame is a bodily reaction, shame is a signal to us, shame is an internal self-judgement, and shame is an action -- a verb (review).
Three primary classes of definitions of guilt -- Moral State, Legal State, and Self-conscious, moral emotion.
Objective moral state
Moral state: Fr. Hardon's Catholic Dictionary: A condition of a person who has done moral wrong, who is therefore more or less estranged from the one he offended, and who is liable for punishment before he has been pardoned and has made atonement. 2. 1. Focus on the objective moral state of a person. Guilt is a moral condition 3. 1. Soulset -- condition of our soul 4. Legal state -- court proceedings. Someone is found guilty of a crime. 5. Guilt as a self-conscious and a moral emotion -- but not a primary emotion:
American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology
We need to distinguish feeling guilty (as an emotional experience) from being guilty (as a legal or moral judgment).
Better defined that shame 9. 1. Simpler -- only three dimension rather than five. 10. 1. Moral state -- that has been emphasized by the Church 11. 1. Also a self-conscious moral emotion characterized by a painful appraisal of having done (or thought) something that is wrong and often by a readiness to take action designed to undo or mitigate this wrong. 12.
I want to take us back to January 1976
Shame and Guild are both Moral Emotions and self-conscious emotions
Haidt (2003) defines moral emotions as those “that are linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent” (p. 276).
Shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride are members of a family of “self-conscious emotions” that are evoked by self-reflection and self-evaluation.
Three ways to distinguish shame and guilt (List them) Type of eliciting event, public vs. private nature of the transgression, failure of self vs. failure of behavior. Mythbusting.
Type of eliciting event -- lying, cheating, stealing, failing to help another, disobeying parents -- some acts lead to feelings of shame, others to feeling of guilt
-- no prototypical shame-inducing vs. guilt-inducing behaviors. 2. 3. Public vs. private nature of transgression
Shame arises in public -- due to the exposure and disapproval of others because of some shortcoming or transgression 4. 1. Guilt happens in private -- an experience arising from the disapproval own's own conscience 5. 1. Not much research basis for this distinction
systematic analysis of the social context of personal shame- and guilt-eliciting events described by several hundred children and adults (Tangney et al. 1994) indicated that shame and guilt are equally likely to be experienced in the presence of others. 2. 1. Solitary shame experiences were about as common as solitary guilt experiences. 3. 1. Even more to the point, the frequency with which others were aware of the respondents’ behavior did not vary as a function of shame and guilt
First proposed in psychological literature by Helen Block Lewis in 1971, updated and revised by Tracy & Robbins (2004) appraisal-based model of self-conscious emotions 8. 1. Lewis: Shame involves negative evaluation of global self. Guilt involves a negative evaluation of a specific behavior
Listen to the difference:
Guilt -- focus on the other person -- empathy, reaching out, wanting to make it ok.
Shame -- Across individuals of all ages, proneness to shame is positively correlated with anger, hostility, and the propensity to blame factors beyond the self for one’s misfortunes
Shame as a disposition:
Helen Block Lewis saw this in case studies in 1971 -- Humiliated Fury. 2. 1. In fact, compared with those who are not shame-prone, shame-prone individuals are more likely to engage in externalization of blame, experience intense anger, and express that anger in destructive ways, including direct physical, verbal, and symbolic aggression, indirect aggression (e.g., harming something important to the target, talking behind the target’s back), all manner of displaced aggression, self-directed aggression, and anger held in (a ruminative unexpressed anger).
For example, in a study of anger episodes among romantically involved couples, shamed partners were significantly more angry, more likely to engage in aggressive behavior, and less likely to elicit conciliatory behavior from their perpetrating significant other (Tangney 1995b). 2. 1. Empirical evidence for the shame-rage spiral described by Lewis (1971) and Scheff (1987), with (a) partner shame leading to feelings of rage, (b) and destructive retaliation, (c) which then sets into motion anger and resentment in the perpetrator, (d ) as well as expressions of blame and retaliation in kind, (e) which is then likely to further shame the initially shamed partner, and so forth—without any constructive resolution in sight. 3. 17. 1. Guilt: 1. Stuewig et al. (2006) examined mediators of the link between moral emotions and aggression in four samples.
Tangney, Steuwig and Mashek 2011 Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior Are there intrapersonal or intrapsychic costs for those individuals who are prone to experience shame vs guilt?
Shame
Research over the past two decades consistently indicates that proneness to shame is related to a wide variety of psychological symptoms. These run the gamut from low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety to eating disorder symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal ideation 2. 1. Robust findings The negative psychological implications of shame are evident across measurement methods, diverse age groups, and populations. Both the clinical literature and empirical research agree that people who frequently experience feelings of shame about the self are correspondingly more vulnerable to a range of psychological problems. 3. What about guilt
Although the traditional view is that guilt plays a significant role in psychological symptoms, the empirical findings have been more equivocal. Clinical theory and case studies make frequent reference to a maladaptive guilt characterized by chronic self-blame and obsessive rumination over one’s transgressions 4. 1. Recently, however, theorists and researchers have emphasized the adaptive functions of guilt, particularly for interpersonal behavior 20. 21. Illegal, risk, and otherwise ill-advised behaviors
Because shame and guilt are painful emotions, it is often assumed that they motivate individuals to avoid doing wrong. From this perspective, anticipated shame and guilt should decrease the likelihood of transgression and impropriety. 22. 1. Guilt
Tibbetts (2003) found that college students’ guilt-proneness was inversely related to self-reported criminal activity. 2. 1. Among adolescents, proneness to shame-free guilt has been negatively correlated with delinquency (Merisca & Bybee 1994, Stuewig & McCloskey 2005; although Ferguson et al.1999 found a negative relationship between guilt-proneness and externalizing symptoms among boys, the opposite was true for girls). 3. 1. Guilt-prone college students, too, are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol (Dearing et al. 2005). 4. 1. Even among adults already at high risk, guilt-proneness appears to serve a protective function. In a longitudinal study of jail inmates, guilt-proneness assessed shortly after incarceration negatively predicted recidivism and substance abuse during the first year post-release (Tangney et al. 2006). 23. 1. Shame
In studies of children, adolescents, college students, and jail inmates, shame does not appear to serve the same inhibitory functions as guilt (Dearing et al. 2005, Stuewig & McCloskey 2005, Tangney et al. 1996b). 2. 1. To the contrary, research suggests that shame may even make things worse.
Life Saving Information
Use the word shame -- not a perfect word but good enough
Telling usually doesn't work.
If you really knew me, you would feel exactly the same way about me. If you saw who I really was through my eyes, you would know how despicable I am
Tough topics -- can work through this critical information yourself, or you can join us and we can do it together.