Shame and guilt are typically negative emotions that cause people to feel bad about themselves, which may lead to negative consequences. The two are often confused but there is an importance difference. Guilt helps you to see how your actions affect others, but shame and guilt are internal emotions that reflect your feelings about yourself. In particular, studies have shown that shame and guilt affect someones feelings of responsibility, feelings of empathy, and anger management differently. Researchers concluded that shame, with its broad cultural and social factors, is a more complicated emotion; guilt, in contrast, is associated with a persons learned societal standards alone.

The difference is that guilt seems to prompt individuals to behave more morally in order to alleviate guilt, while shame seems simply to cause an individual to feel worse about himself or herself (although, under certain circumstances, shame can also prompt individuals to behave in more moral ways). To put it another way guilt says "I did a bad thing," while shame says "I am a bad person." Guilt often feels uncomfortable because we acted in a way that is inconsistent with our ideal self . In a more severe case, however, in which the harm seems to be less reparable, guilt and shame make a person feel worse, but guilt alone makes a person want to fix the harm (or so far as it goes) whereas shame leads to avoiding the harm. Guilt can often be a positive thing as it motivates us to repair the harm we have caused or learn from our mistakes. However, not taking action but dwelling too long on your guilt eventually leads to shame.

Like guilt, shame may encourage behavioral changes, as frustration with yourself may keep you from making the same mistakes again. Shame is a difficult emotion, but feeling ashamed does not mean that you are morally flawed or an otherwise substandard human being. Shame is about your sense of self, and can be piercing, which is why those feelings may persist long after you have apologized or made amends. Shame is not healthy, particularly when unresolved, because over time, it leads to loss of self-esteem and a distorted belief about one's "badness," i.e. "I might as well jut keep doing harmful things because I'm a bad person."

It has been proposed that the myriad of dysfunctional consequences attributed to shame are dependent upon global negative views about self, and may also relate to shame and blame, whereby negative self-evaluations are generalized across the entire self. On the other hand, guilt is not necessarily restricted to one action--it can involve self-blame; and shame does not necessarily involve a global negative self-view. There is no reason why guilt must only be felt for ones own actions, and we it may be felt for the persons identity, too; whereas shame is not necessarily centered on the whole self.

Shame comes from negative self-evaluation (I am bad, I am worthless, I am broken), while guilt comes from negative self-evaluation of ones own behavior (I did something wrong, I shouldn't have done that). A negative appraisal of ones behavior may be generalized back to the self and trigger guilt, without necessarily merging into shame.

Guilt and shame both describe a negative emotion in reaction to our actions, but have vastly different implications. Guilt and shame are sometimes closely related; the same actions can trigger feelings of both shame and guilt, with the former reflecting our feelings about ourselves, and the latter including an awareness that our actions hurt others. This is important, as self-forgiveness is one way of moving past feelings of guilt and shame, while not overlooking the actual harm one might have caused, which led to these feelings of guilt and shame.

Relieving ones own guilt is often easier than dealing with shame, partly because our society offers a variety of ways of expelling sins triggered by guilt, Legally, there is pleading guilty, paying a fine, and serving time in prison. Morally, you could apologize to the person you've harmed, work on yourself to avoid future errors, make a contribution to the person/people you've hurt, etc. Yet Tangney and others have argued that shame diminishes ones tendencies toward socially constructive behaviors; it is instead guilt, the cousin of shame, that fosters socially adaptive behaviors. Some types of guilt may be just as disruptive as proneness to shame: that is, guilt about free-floating events (not tied to any particular events) and guilt for events that ones lack of control over.

Shame is much harder to heal. A good start is to share bits of our shame with trusted people. Shame thrives on secrecy but it cannot survive when brought to the light. We also must practice self-compassion-being tender with ourselves as we acknowledge that we have flaws and make mistakes, but are still worthy of love and kindness. We must do the opposite of what shame tells us to do and respond with love, acceptance, and understanding. When we get in the habit of doing this shame will lose it's power and we can reclaim our humanity.

Further Resources:

Shame: The Power of Caring by Gershen Kaufman – The best single book. Short and powerful. John Bradshaw borrowed freely for his popular book Healing the Shame that Binds You. Central concept: Shame is caused by “the breaking of the interpersonal bridge.” I like this better than Kaufman's next book, The Psychology of Shame, because it is more personal.

Shame and the Self by Francis Broucek – A good supplement to Kaufman. Central concept: Shame results from being seen in a way you very much don't want to be seen and/or being seen as an object, not a person. Also, exploration of the shaming quality inherent in most therapy, where one person "needs help" and is prodded to reveal and the other is "the expert" and interprets.

Shame and Pride by Donald Nathanson – A brilliant tome. Describes all of Sylvan Tompkins’ theory of affects—Tompkins' affect theory is the main influence on all of these authors. Very fine work on shame. Available inexpensively (used) on Amazon.

Shame, Exposure and Privacy by Carl Schneider – Schneider, a therapist and minister, looks at the positive importance of shame in a shameless society. Also looks at shaming in therapy.

Shame and Neurosis by Helen Block Lewis – A psychoanalyst, who, in trying to determine why certain patients relapse, writes the first book by a psychoanalyst on the importance of shame. Working with shame also shortens treatment time to about two years instead of six. Some interesting transcripts. Written in the '70s and very expensive used.

Almost Magic: Working with the Shame that Underlies Depression in the Imaginal Realm by Sheila Rubin – This is an excerpt from Sheila's chapter in the book The Use of the Creative Therapies in Treating Depression, edited by Stephanie Brooke and Charles Meyers and published by Charles C. Thomas Publisher.

Shame and Countertransference by Sheila Rubin – This article was published in CAMFT's The Therapist Magazine, volume 28, issue 6. November 2016.

Embodied Life Stories: Transforming Shame Through Self Revelatory Performance by Sheila Rubin – This chapter is from the academic drama therapy book The Self In Performance: Autobiographical, Self Revelatory, and Auto-Ethnographic Forms of Therapeutic Theatre edited by Susana Pendzik, Renee Emunah, and David Read Johnson.