Living Up to Your Values: Guilt, Shame &/or Antisociality | Dr Frank Yeomans

again i'm going to sound perhaps a little simplistic and corny but research and clinical experience show that to find satisfaction in life once one's basic needs are met of course we have a lot of people in the world who are struggling at that level but it's living up to your values and that's where we have the difference between guilt and shame the person who experiences shame worries about if they'll be caught i took this when i shouldn't have did anybody see me am i going to get in trouble are they going to consider me a bad person that's shame if you feel like you know as long as nobody saw me and thinks badly of me i'm fine with it if you took something when maybe you shouldn't have and you feel i've really disappointed myself that's not who i am i have to think of why i did that that's not the person i want to be that's not those aren't the values i hold that's guilt it's not what the other person thinks it's what you think it's a big distinction you're saying guilt is you're i'm confused guilt is you're worried more about what you think versus shame where you're worried about how you appear to others and how that will damage your reputation or shame is do i look bad guilt is do i feel bad because i didn't live up to my own values if you have done something to someone where initially you felt shame over what you did and didn't want to get caught for having done that and you want to make amends to them isn't um i was told by my shrink that the better space from which to operate in that effort to amend is from a space of guilt because you're thinking about how they felt and how it impacted them versus you know getting caught or how you appear so you're more other or you become also more other oriented or other focused that was my translation of what he was saying but i don't know well i think that's taking it another step because i see the first step of guilt is i feel bad within myself i didn't live up to my standards and then you might think did it have a negative impact on somebody else and reflect concern about how the others feeling in contrast to concern about how the other sees you those are two very different perspectives in relation to the other right do they think i'm bad do they you know did they catch me in something that's very different from thinking oh did i harm them now as we talk about shame and guilt you can feel both shame and guilt the problem is if you only feel shame and do not feel guilt why does that become a problem if you only feel well it might if you only feel shame i mean it might be not be a problem from the individual's perspective they might be happily anti-social if you feel shame but not guilt then i would say you're not functioning with an intact moral value system because that's interesting and you're not the only you only care about how you appear got it so then you're also saying uh shame and anti-sociality are linked in the sense that you only care about how you appear yeah does that mean that people who would be identified as antisocial feel shame or not necessarily it one is sort of leads you to a disconnected space from others if we're talking about if we're talking about anti-social it's really a focus more on a lack of guilt than a presence of shame the anti-social person is not capable of guilt whether or not they feel shame it's another thing if they're brazen enough they might not even feel shame but antisocial is lack of guilt possible experience of shame possible i don't give a damn i see just one side question if an anti-social person who has a semi-anti-social personality disorder diagnosis feels shame do they have a better shot at some level of improvement versus those that don't even feel shame i would assume yes but maybe shame can't necessarily be transformed into guilt well at least it's a discomfort so um let's put it this way the shame implies some relational element to the emotion whereas lack of shame it's like the relationship doesn't even count for anything i don't care what that person thinks about me if you care what that person thinks about you at least there's a little germ of a relationship there

Channel: BorderlinerNotes

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Id: p_-n6X5lW1o

Length: 5min 24sec (324 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021