hey there everybody welcome to this video on getting to know anger's buddies shame and guilt
and anger has a lot of buddies anger is a response to a threat remember we've talked in other videos
about the fight-or-flight response and anger is the fight part it says I don't feel safe and I
need to fight in some way now shame is anger at yourself for feeling like you are not okay like
you are a bad person guilt is anger at yourself for something that you did or that you shouldn't
have done or you should have done that you didn't do so they're similar but different
shame is about you as a person guilt is about a behavior but they're both anger at yourself and
it's important to recognize that in what ways remember I said anger represents a reaction to
a threat in what ways um does your behavior in terms of guilt represent represent a threat to
your self-esteem or represent the potential that you will be rejected by somebody else
when we feel guilty a lot of times it has to do with should Shoulda Coulda Woulda and
exploring number one whether that's even accurate but the likelihood that we will be rejected
um or that that behavior is incompatible with our self-esteem is really important and we'll
take a simple example guilt about taking a break guilt about relaxation a lot of
us who've been taught that sitting on the couch watching TV all day is not okay you're supposed
to be up doing something and when we allow ourself to rest and relax and restore we feel
guilty for it we feel like we should be doing something else so we need to look back and go
where did I learn that message and do I deserve to be rejected do I deserve to reject myself
or do I deserve to be rejected for this behavior for taking care of myself and I have other videos
that are specifically dedicated toward guilt but it is important to evaluate all of those
big and little guilts that we experience because that's a lot of unnecessary anger
shame as I mentioned is anger at ourself for feeling like we are not enough like we are broken
we are not good enough so it's anger at ourself for who we are not what we've done and many times
when we step back we figure out that we learned that behavior we learned that message from people
when we were growing up because instead of saying you did a bad thing they said you're a bad person
and yeah I feel bad when I do a bad thing I feel bad when I make a mistake but I can fix that
if I'm a bad person I don't know how to fix that I don't know how to fix me if you will I can fix my
behaviors and it's really important that we look back and evaluate the things that we feel ashamed
of are those things core parts of us that make us quote bad people or are are we feeling ashamed of
behaviors things that we did and a lot of times like in addiction for example people when they're
in active addiction will often do things that they have a lot of guilt for they feel bad about
um but their behaviors when they're in active addiction don't make them a bad
person it makes them a person who made bad choices and I know it's semantics but
I think it's important when we start trying to figure out the recovery process
if you don't believe that you are lovable if you don't believe that you are worthy it's going to be
a lot harder to move forward if you believe that people at their core are lovable and worthy even
if they make bad choices then that's something different because you can make different choices
that is my brief little introduction to anger shame and guilt and maybe in
the next uh video we will talk about jealousy and envy which are also two of anger's buddies