Judy, contemporary psychologists find it useful to distinguish between guilt which is healthy and shame which is toxic, where shame indicates feeling that one is fundamentally wrong, bad, defective.
On Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:31 PM, "authfri...@yahoo.com" <authfri...@yahoo.com> wrote: It's still an arbitrary distinction, Share. Shame need not involve the sense that there's something wrong with you rather than that there was something wrong with what you did. And anyway, the sense that there's nothing wrong with you is delusionary. If there were nothing wrong with you, you wouldn't have done anything wrong in the first place. It's just a faux distinction. Psychologists don't want you to beat yourself up endlessly about what you did, and that's fine, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't feel shame at all, ever. My last sentence is what I mean--and what most people (including the dictionary) mean--by "shame." Judy, my distinction between shame and guilt comes from contemporary psychology and I agree with your last sentence. On Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:03 PM, "authfriend@..." <authfriend@...> wrote: That's your personal definition of "shame," Share. You're making an arbitrary distinction between feeling guilt and feeling shame. My dictionary says shame is: "a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety" I'd say if you are unable or refuse to feel pain about having done something wrong, there's something wrong with you. << emptybill, I think it's appropriate to feel guilt about wrong doing and to make amends. But imo shame is toxic. It says that there's something fundamentally wrong with the person rather than that they did something wrong. >> On Saturday, January 18, 2014 12:42 PM, "emptybill@..." <emptybill@...> wrote: > Judy - it was a play upon and between words and meaning. You should've gotten it. And finally, I find the notion that one should never feel shame for one's mistakes contemptible. I feel shame that your mistaken notion is contemptible.
