Worry Guilt Regret and Shame
Worry, guilt, regret, and shame.
What do these have in common?
They’re all negative emotions that I find people try really hard to outrun with varying levels of success. But if emotions are information, what might these be trying to tell us? Are they emotions that serve a purpose? Are they all just different versions of the same things? Should we just avoid them?
The short answers are yes these serve a purpose, no they’re not all the same, and no we shouldn’t only avoid them. Now, let’s get deeper.
What are these emotions trying to tell us? Worry, guilt, regret, and shame all give us slightly different pieces of information. Worry tends to come hand in hand with anxiety and as we talked about in earlier posts, anxiety is an alarm bell- something in your environment is a threat. Very adaptive and Guilt, alternatively is an emotion that signals “I have done something bad”. Again, very adaptive and part of the way that we learn. Now regret is related to guilt but with a slight twist. It’s not only, “I have done something bad”, it’s “I have done something bad/wrong and I should have done something different.” Again, this is something that has the ability to be very adaptive and part of how we learn. And finally, shame, shame says “I am bad.” Shame is the least adaptive and helpful emotion in this list. Shame does not leave any room for change. Shame is damaging.
An important note here is that while worry, guilt, and regret can be very adaptive and help us learn and help us do things differently, it’s also entirely possible for all of these feelings to run amok and reach a level where they are no longer serving us in a healthy way but become a negative feedback loop that impedes your life.
Given all of this, the answer to “what do we do with this” and “how do we navigate these feelings” is a bit nuanced, but there is a general internal script you can follow.
First, feel the feeling. As you can see above, these feelings are closely related but have key differences. You have to invite them in to determine what you’re feeling exactly. Is it guilt? Is it worry? Is it shame?
Second, examine what’s motivating them. If you’re feeling shame, for example, is it actually guilt that has gone too far? Is there something that you’ve done that maybe wasn’t the right thing? If the answer is yes, take responsibility for the wrong thing that you’ve done and externalize it. You did a bad thing, you are not bad at your core. If it’s worry, is there an immediate threat in your environment? Can you see where it is coming from?
Third, repair and let go. If there is something that you have done wrong like in the case of regret, take responsibility, engage in repair attempts with the injured party, take account of the lesson, and move forward. If it’s worry and you’re finding that you’re worrying about things that are not an imminent threat and out of your control, acknowledge the feelings and discomfort, sit with it, and them move forward. If there IS an imminent threat and it’s out of your control, move yourself as much to safety as possible, acknowledge the worry that you’re feeling, and find a way to make peace. Regret is a bit trickier, if you can repair and do a version of what you “should” have done, do that. If you can’t, forgive yourself for not doing differently and for being a human and making a human mistake. Note how you want to feel in the future. Then let go and move forward.
If you struggle with worry, guilt, regret, or shame (or any of the combinations of these), give me a call. It’s normal to go through parts of your life when it’s tough to tease these out. We can disentangle these together and help you to move forward.