Maybe this issue of understanding the difference between shame and guilt is a much bigger problem than it was in my upbringing. I must say thank you to my grandparents and especially to my dad & mother for being such good parents. The longer I live life the more I am realizing just how fortunate I am in that I truly did have an emotionally loving and extremely stable upbringing. And I am realizing more and more just how devastating and difficult the struggle can be for others who did not.
Too, I have come to realize those with the deepest wounds are often the best at covering them up and pretending they have it all together, that others have problems and not them. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Truth be told, such individuals are in intense emotional pain and fear there is no hope, but there is, there really, really is. Taken from personal experience “Angry Men and the Women Who Love Them: Breaking the Cycle of Physical and Emotional Abuse” was written by Paul Hegstrom.
Paul Hegstrom states “Shame is a perception that locks me into a belief system that says, ‘I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m no good.’ It comes out of a tendency toward perfectionism and leads to the expectation of rejection, rigidity, and despair. When I operate from a shame-based worldview, my value is buried under my dysfunctions, fears, anxieties, behaviors, mistakes, imperfections, rejections, feelings, powerlessness and sins. I am satisfied with nothing less than perfection. I live on a performance basis and place unrealistic expectations on my partner and those around me as well as myself. No matter what I do, I feel I’m never good enough. Shame and rage are interactive-where there is rage there is shame. Rage comes from helplessness. It hides shame. Rage keeps a person from being exposed. It is isolating and disconnecting”.
Forgive me for so heavily quoting the author, however I am hoping his words, carrying so much more value than my own, will effect a heart change in others, and if need be, in your heart as well.
I am in total agreement with Paul Hegstrom when he points out how an adult who was shamed as a child”…fears punishment, abandonment, and rejection. He…feels overly responsible for circumstances”. All the more this explains why these adults seem to try so hard, come up short, exhausted and angry so much of the time. And why they want to hope but fear hopelessness, why they live in pain and rage.
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