If you’re feeling bad about yourself, you might as well do it up right. Make something good come out of it. You can do it three different ways, and though they all feel pretty much the same at the time, the way you think and talk to yourself determines whether you end up feeling better or worse in the end. Let’s look at three ways to do guilt and shame, each with its own self-talk approaches.
"I’m a bad person. I always seem to do bad." People who think this way were usually raised by parents who put them down: "Bad boy!" "Bad girl!" "You’re a spoiled brat!" "You stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing kid!" Kids who hear these remarks usually come to believe these words, and so they acted accordingly as children, and often still do as adults.
"My (spouse, child, loved one) has been unhappy and has messed up. This situation must be my fault. I must think and try harder now to help them feel better and do better." These are the thoughts of people whose parents were not very responsible for themselves. Some of these irresponsible parents may have been addicts, lazy bums, habitually helpless, or maybe they just never had to grow up. Often such people manage to get their parents (and later in life their spouse or children too) to be overly responsible, too conscientious. These enablers overcompensate and overprotect the irresponsible person by making excuses for them, lying for them, or cleaning up their messes.
If one of your parents was an overly responsible enabler who overprotected or overindulged, chances are that irresponsible people in your life today sometimes get you to feel and take responsibility for their feelings and choices. So when they feel bad or make bad choices, you somehow feel and believe these must be something more you can do to help them. That feeling is bogus guilt.
The more you trust that feeling and act on it, the less self-esteem, self-discipline, and wisdom your loved ones will show. That’s why I call this guilt bogus, because problems just don’t get solved this way.
"I’m a good person, smart enough to make good choices. I messed up there, but this will teach me to do better." You hang onto the guilt feeling as motivation to help you figure out where you went wrong, what you did wrong, what you should have done (and hope to do in the future) Once you’ve said all this to those you’ve harmed or disappointed, and taken actions to earn back their trust and make up for what you did wrong, you have no more need for the guilt as a teacher.
Your new motivation is love for others, love for yourself, and if you’re a believer, love for God. You don’t need to feel the guilt anymore. Save it for later, to motivate more character-building repair behaviors the next time you goof up.
In a nutshell, shame says "I’m messed up," bogus guilt says "Because you messed up, I’m messed up," and healthy guilt says "I messed up but I’m cleaning up my mess." Only the last one solves problems and leaves the world a better place.
This article is for readers who have a loved one who refuses to follow doctor’s orders for recovery from a medical problem. It assumes you have read first the article I wrote for your loved one, “Are You in Defiance of Medical Compliance?” And like the first piece, if you read the rest of this article and get turned off, I hope you will at least have the courage and wisdom to ask yourself the two questions in the last paragraph.
Anyway, let’s call your loved one “Pat” (short for patient, and for standing pat). You can initiate solution number one in the first article, by asking Pat to read it, and answer for you the questions it poses. With or without Pat’s help, you can learn a lot, and find some new peace of mind in both these articles.
If your efforts to help Pat have been going on for years, you are probably doing Pat more harm than good. If you are starting most of the conversations with Pat about unhealthy behavior, if you seem to be trying harder than Pat to produce healthy behavior in Pat, or if you are showing stronger feelings about Pat's unhealthy behavior then Pat is, these are clear signs that you are actually doing more harm than good. Your efforts to help encourage Pat’s healthy behavior are backfiring, because without your knowing it, Pat is likely to be using them to excuse or even provoke unhealthy behavior.
If your helping behavior is backfiring, and if you are a part of the problem and instead of the solution, the most accurate way to describe your help is to say that it is enabling Pat’s unhealthy habits. Here are twelve of the most common enabling behaviors to avoid:
Just imagine the time and energy you will be saving by not doing these things anymore! So what would work to help Pat learn to stop unhealthy behavior and start making healthier choices?
What if Pat doesn’t do anything, or worse still, gets worse? Remember that like surgery or remodeling, things often have to get worse before they get better. Give it time. Tell Pat that by treating Pat as someone who could change, you are showing that you respect and care about Pat more now. Pat can use this same approach with the unhealthy friends in Pat’s life, by telling them, “I am giving you more of myself, now that I am taking better care of myself and inviting you to do the same.”
No matter what happens between you and Pat, one thing will be the same for both of your experiences. If you change and make healthier choices, you will find that your social circles shift. Imagine those who care about you as sitting in circular rows of seats around you, with the rows closest to you giving you the most time, communication and respect. You will soon notice that people will start standing up and shuffling around to find more comfortable seats. Some close supporters won’t like your new choices and will take seats further away from you. But others will move in closer and take those seats, and your circle of closest friends and family will have some new faces before long. They will help you see very soon that all of your efforts are worthwhile.
Two last questions for you: if you have trouble making any of these changes, if you are scared to risk rejection by Pat, perhaps you have some unhealthy habits in your own life, and you need to read the first article. If not, perhaps you have an unhealthy dependency on Pat. If so, admit to your other family and friends that before creating a better life for Pat, you first need to get one for yourself.