Lena Dunham is an American actress, writer, director, and producer, best known for creating, writing, and starring in the HBO series Girls. She was the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America award for comedy directing. Controversial, yes. But, nonetheless, she is one of my sheroes. I love this quote of hers:
“Guilt and shame can eat away at smart girls, but remember that mistakes create smart girls.”
Shame and guilt can eat away at all of us, and yet – ironically – it’s the mistakes we make that can make us smarter. How can we reconcile these seemingly-opposite truths? Let’s take a quick look at shame, guilt and see how we can use our mistakes to grow, not beat ourselves up.
Shame is the inner experience of being “not wanted”: feeling worthless, rejected, cast-out. Guilt is believing that you’ve done something bad; shame is believing that you are bad and there’s nothing you can about it
When we feel guilt, it’s about something we did. When we feel shame, it’s about who we are. When we feel guilty we need to learn that it’s OK to make mistakes. When we feel shame we need to learn that it’s OK to be who we are.
Lena would approve. You do remember her, don’t you? Her television series, Girls, followed Hannah Horvath (portrayed by Dunham), a 20-something writer struggling to get by in New York City. The series was a huge success: after the first season, she signed a $3.5 million deal with Random House to publish a collection of her essays called “Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned”. One of her early films, The Fountain, depicted her in a bikini brushing her teeth in a public fountain. It went viral on YouTube. Her blithe willingness to disrobe without shame caused an outburst of censure from viewers.
Poor Lena. Poor us. Guilt and shame are a problem for all of us – famous or not – from a very early age. Guilt kicks in from around the ages of three to six. Shame occurs much earlier – from fifteen months to age three.
Guilt is considered a “healthier” emotion than shame, and easier to work with. Healthy Guilt tells us that something we did or said – according to our own moral code – wasn’t kind, skillful or helpful. Healthy Guilt can also be defined as our conscience. However, this “conscience” is not always a reliable barometer of good or bad. When we hold unreasonably high standards for ourselves and inevitably fail to meet those standards, Unhealthy Guilt is the result.
When we feel Healthy Guilt, we are motivated to make amends or apologize. We feel bad about what we did (or didn’t do), but we don’t feel bad about who we are as a person. Healthy Guilt shifts our focus externally (i.e. toward the person or people we have hurt), motivates us to acknowledge the harm we’ve caused and to repair the damage. We feel relief from guilt when amends has been made.
Shame is self-critical blaming, from which there seems to be no escape. Guilt is about taking responsibility. When we make amends, guilt fades. Shame takes a lot more work to be freed of/from.
Mistakes are not intrinsically bad; they’re natural learning experiences. When you make a mistake, consider your responsibility for the mistake and whether there were any harmful consequences. If so, figure out how to correct the mistake and its consequences. Make amends, as the 12-step folks say.
Despite their downsides, shame and guilt can keep our behavior in check. However, excessive shame and guilt adversely affect our self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, and our relationships with others.
Those of us who’ve been deeply shamed need to be fully loved, accepted and valued. Some of us find a partner/mate who deeply accepts, loves, and values us, others find a group of friends who do the same. Many of us would benefit from working with a therapist who can help us see our value and show us how to stop our negative self-talk.
However you do it, don’t let your mistakes push you into shame and guilt. Be a smart girl (or boy), learn from your mistakes and be true to yourself.
