Overcoming Guilt & Shame
Overcoming Guilt & Shame
Deeply embedded/imprinted thought forms and how to free yourself from the masks these emotions take as well as their manifestations in life.
Helping clients access the choice point where they first felt these emotions; the reasons of choosing their expressions; how to let go of past and its emotional associations; dissolving the imprints or trauma associated with guilt and shame; building resilience; overcoming and adapting to new choices.
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Emotions are just expressions, a feedback that it expressed by the body through sensations and feelings. They are categorized, labelled and filtered through the mind and called anger; rage; worry; anxiety or fear. We have certain feelings which connected to thought and thought processes which in turn connect to somatic processes of emotional expressions. Through our state, the unconscious mind and its signals along with our thought patterns (and imprints) prompts us to have an experience of an emotion. The feelings and sensations are not the same as the label we assign to emotion but repetitive thought and automatization of our minds through habits and learning have created labels for each emotion and what they mean. What truly is felt, its intensity and extent along with the finer components of our internal reference structure may be far away from the label, what’s more every person experiences differently each nominalization, also known as emotions.
Basic Emotions
During the 1970s, psychologist Paul Eckman identified six basic emotions that he suggested were universally experienced in all human cultures. The emotions were happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger. He later expanded his list of basic emotions to include such things as pride, shame, embarrassment, and excitement.
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Guilt
Guilt can be termed to be a self-conscious emotion since it involves introspection and reflecting on oneself. There are many reasons why people feel guilty, it could be some acts they committed or acts which they think they committed. It can also mean failing to do something that is deemed necessary or even moral. Guilt has a high social relevance and has its importance in building and keeping interpersonal functions and relationships. However when and where guilt is contorted, mismatched or distorted due to deeply imbedded thought forms, patterns and imprints it can feel very dwarfing to oneself and life circumstances as well as people relations.
Both guilt and shame may have its roots in childhood experiences with immediate family and especially influence of mother. As before aforementioned, my work focuses predominately with women, upon numerous clients ive had, I came to see this as a somewhat hypothetical scenario. Whether it is due to the repressed inner child or the hurt inner child or even more prevalent- the lost inner child, there appears to be an underlining state that has been fixated with such emotions. What’s particularly interesting is that the emotion may not have been registered as guilt or shame by the individual and so has found its way coupling with other emotions such as sadness in addition to concepts of self, such as self-worth and self-esteem.
Shame
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A prevalent and basic emotion, which like guilt may not be easily registered especially when coupled with traumatic events or events where the individual felt like a victim and instead of their perpetrator feeling the shame, they would usually (though not always) feel shameful and even guilty. It is also worth noting that, shame and guilt may couple very easily together and be quite unconscious buried within self defence systems, layers of filters and many a times- denial. There is usually (though not always) a split that is felt, a sense of emptiness, when shame/guilt or both are tackled which is also why its very important to know how to overcome certain mechanisms and patterns which have been learned as efforts of self to avoid circumstances that will lead to these emotions displayed. By this statement what I mean to say is this: if the shame and guilt are invalid or emotions that have been labelled as such with the reasoning of a past event(s) that has falsely persuaded an individual to feel in such a way, then re-learning and overcoming is the ultimate goal. As with all emotions(nominalisations) they have a negative and positive attribute, more essentially so is that they are sensations and feelings stored in the body and mind as a submodality.
Submodalities
This is an NLP term, briefly stated it means the finer components that create structure of our internal representations- so how we encode our internal pictures, sounds and feelings to create meaning for our representations. The power here lies in change, if the structure can be changed, then so will the meaning.
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According to core NLP research, each person’s brain seems to code emotional significance differently through variations in mental “image” or representation. Examples found include people whose unconscious minds place black borders around bad memories, people for whom visual images seen dimly are less compelling than those seen brightly, people for whom a subjectively “good” memory is accompanied by one kind of sound whilst a “bad” memory is accompanied by another, and so on.
Submodalities listed according to the three representational systems:
Visual:
Black & White or Colour
Near or Far
Bright or Dim
Location
Size of Picture
Associated / Dissociated
Focused or De-focused
Framed or Unbounded
Movie or Still
If a Movie-Fast/Normal/Slow
3 Dimensional or Flat Loud or Soft
Near or Far
Internal or External
Location
Auditory:
Stereo or Mono
Fast or Slow
High or Low Pitch
Verbal or Tonal
Rhythm
Clarity
Pauses Strong or Weak
Kinaesthetic:
Large Area or Small Area
Weight: Heavy or Light
Location
Texture: Smooth or Rough
Constant or Intermittent
Temperature: Hot or Cold
Size
Shape
Pressure
Vibration
The Unconscious Mind and Emotions
Our unconscious mind expresses itself through feelings and sensations in the body, as well as habits and habitual practices, for example: feeling pain, feeling dizzy etc.
The conscious mind tries to make sense of the environment internally and externally, naturally since its domain is language and structure, it assigns labels to these unconscious processes. Emotions felt in the body are sensations and through our mind and filters we nominalize this experience and express it as emotion. When this is done, we loose touch with the true feeling and may find ourselves too busy trying to explain an emotion and forgetting or even at times altering the original sensations/feelings experienced in the body at certain locations.
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The key to change lies within the unconscious mind restructure and bringing it forward as homework for the conscious mind.
The Self
The key consequence of consciousness is a sense of self and identity .Self is a result from self-consciousness joined with physicality, a recognition that ‘’I’’ experience and its my experience, ‘’I am’’
Self-concept is the sum total of the individual’s thoughts and feelings about himself or herself as an object (Rosenberg 1979).
Self-concept is composed of various identities, attitudes, beliefs, values, motives and experiences along with their evaluative and affective components (eg self-efficacy or self- esteem) in terms of which each individual define themselves.
Identity refers to who or what one is and the various meanings attached to oneself by self and others. From a sociological perspective, the concept of self -identity refers to the self- characterizations individuals make in terms of group memberships, social roles and categories as well as the various character traits an individual displays and other attribute to them on basis of her/his conduct. To put it in a nutshell, identity is the most public aspect of self.
Personality, in general refers to the various psychological traits, motivations, dispositions and patterns of thinking and feeling. ( Singer and Kolligian 1987).
The self is then a part of personality that is aware of itself and defines itself in terms of these qualities. Please note that we will not delve here into depth of personality theory or clinical psychology but rather the social structure and personality is selected of higher importance.
The Core of Self and Selves
Spiritual coach, Anne Matheson sees self -value and value of the self as a dance that flows in seven steps. These are self -awareness; self- worth; self -esteem; self -love; self -confidence; self -respect and self- realisation. Below we will look at self-worth and self-esteem since they are selected as relevant to emotions of guilt and shame. (see also article ‘I am more than my name’).
Self-Worth
Self -worth is an understanding as well as acceptance that you have a quality of being and this quality of worth is the same for everyone on our planet. Rather than being developed, self -worth is uncovered and discovered through being emotionally honest with oneself as well as an increased understanding of yourself and others in your immediate environment. The basis of this value develops at the ages of 2-6 years and through the influence of mother and mothering. That being said, if the mothering influence isn’t there or if the mother herself has low sense of self-worth, this trait will properly not develop very solidly. If self-worth isn’t developed well and correctly, it can lead to a person becoming self-centred, ego-centric due to loss of one’s own true power. This in turn can lead to the person never fully becoming an adult, avoiding or keeping away from true intimacy, preventing oneself to fulfilment of one’s goals/dreams as well as the source of emotional pain.
Self-Esteem
On the other hand, self-esteem unlike self-worth is a trait that is actively developed throughout one’s life. As Anne Matheson puts it, ‘’it is the compassion, caring and love for yourself that is established through evaluations of yourself and is based on the criteria you hold for how people should operate in the world’’. Here I will briefly note that the above trait is by far the most complex one since it holds a cluster of patterns that are acquired from early years as well as internal references and modes of sensations and perceptions of oneself and the environment. For this reason, I will further evaluate on this topic in other sectors.
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Self-esteem is reflective of one’s self honesty, self -responsibility, self- trust and integrity and it can be said therefore that without a solid sense of self- esteem, a person never feels ‘’good enough’’. This trait initially develops during the years of 7-10, through the aspect of love that comes from the influence of the father. The child at this age seeks to find validation and love, both externally and internally, from the father figure. If this influence is missing or not adapted correctly, self- esteem becomes self- importance and opens the door to a variety of possible behaviours such as: desire to blame others; criticism without basis; punishing the self and others; judgement and jealousy as well as self-pity through being a martyr and victim.
Its very interesting to note here, self-esteem and self-worth are assimilated and acquired through the parenting role as well as at early stages of a child’s life, under the age of 10 years. The two traits are the core within the core, the bud, if you may, that will open in bloom to other traits or wither.
Integration and Transformation
Wholeness
Through integrating the unconscious mind and the conscious; tackling the frame of reference, understanding the choice(s) to be made and the willingness to take the necessary steps to a whole and unified self.
Awareness:
When one is unaware, one is separate, in separation we build walls and defences and keep the loop of pain, emotions and other imprints, not understanding the prison we create unconsciously.
Choice:
What choices have we made to be here and what choices will we make to change
What is our intention
What is our goal and outcome