Shame versus Remorse - Going to the garden to eat worms!

Many people I work with confuse shame with remorse to their detriment.  I have to show them the difference like I'm going to do for you.

Shame is about feeling overly upset or sad about a behavior or about yourself as a person.  Someone says something to you, or you do something you are unhappy about, and you get down on yourself.  You start thinking poorly of yourself, and you attack your inherent worth.  It feels awful; you want to go into the garden and eat worms.

In the most extreme forms of shame, you ask others to care for you rather than mending things with them even if your behavior was hurtful.  The example I use is: I go home and pick a fight with my husband.  I feel bad about the fight, beat myself up, and return to my husband.  When I see him I say, “Oh my God, John.  I feel so bad I fought with you; hug me and tell me you love me anyway.”

At this point, people always ask me, “Shouldn’t I feel bad about things I do wrong?”  My answer is an emphatic “Yes, but…”  Yes, you should feel appropriately badly about behaviors that hurt yourself or others, but don’t take it too far.

Appropriate level of feeling bad represent remorse rather than shame.  When you feel remorse, you feel bad, reach out to the person you hurt, and you work on repairing things.  In the previous example, remorse would look like:

• I realize picking the fight wasn’t healthy.  
• I feel sad, but I don't beat myself up.  
• I go to my husband and say something like, “John, I feel badly about the fight.  I’m sorry I picked it.  Is there anything I can do to help us be better right now?”  

The words might vary, but the intent is the same; I am working on repairing things between us.  I’m trying to find my way back to connection.

The major difference in shame versus remorse is the direction of focus.  In shame, the focus becomes about you.  Your feelings, negative self image, and behaviors revolve around yourself.  You make yourself feel worthless, less than, and unworthy.  In remorse, the focus is on the behavior and making repair, specifically repair of the person you hurt.  In remorse you are standing on the ground as a healthy person, not wallowing in the garden eating worms. (That's only healthy if you are a robin!)

The second difference is the intensity of feeling bad.  In shame you almost wallow in it, you get stuck in it, it hurts so much you get caught into yourself.  With remorse you feel bad equal to the behavior you did.  A small infraction leads to small discomfort while big damage may lead to heavy levels of sadness.

However, you never take remorse to the point of becoming self-centered.  Remorse is about fixing, healing, repairing and reconnecting.

So your courageous work is to stop shaming yourself and learn what real remorse is.  Don't go to extremes, don't get trapped into yourself, focus on fixing and connecting.

By the way, in case you were wondering "eating worms" came from a rather strange song from my childhood.  Here are a few of the lyrics:

"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I'm going to the garden to eat some worms
Big fat juicy ones, little bitty skinny ones..."

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