The Therapy Edit - On the difference between guilt and shame

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

In this solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna unpacks the emotions that are guilt and shame and helps listeners understand how guilt can (occasionally) steer us to be better mothers but shame serves us no purpose at all. She also offers practical advice about how to recognise each emotiion and make sure you're not beating yourself up unhelpfully.We hope it's a helpful episode and as always ask you to rate, review and subscribe.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Welcome to a solo episode of the Therapy Edit today. It is me coming at you with a little bit more on one of my favourite topics in motherhood, which is guilt. Now, I love talking about guilt because I think when we don't address guilt, it, oh my gosh, guilt has a lot to say for itself, doesn't it? When we don't address guilt, we can start feeling undeserving of our good things. We can start feeling undeserving of support.

There are moments I look back and reflect on in parenting that I feel so much guilt towards that just make me want to continue kind of paying off this guilt, making up, making up for things that I'm ashamed of, that I've done moments that I've reacted in a way that I feel really bad about. Guilt can find me just wanting to people please, wanting to really give myself as if it's a way of earning just deservedness for the good things that are in my life, deservidness for rest, deservedness for support, deservidness for like and love that come towards me. Guilt just can make us feel bad.

And the one thing I want to share with you about guilt is one thing that I feel you really need to know about guilt that you experience in motherhood and life in general. But the next time guilt rises. this up in you the next time that you recognize that you are feeling guilty. I want you to think about this. Now I've got a line from my new book, Raising a Happier Mother. It's actually got child crossed out in the cover. So it's like raising a happier child crossed out mother is all about recognizing that I have a whole bunch of parenting books on my bookshop. So many books.

And they're all absolutely fantastic. I would love to just be able to draw upon them in the moments that I need them. However, when we are burn out as moms, when we're feeling depleted, when we're feeling guilty and we haven't addressed that, when we're criticising ourselves and we're struggling to accept support and we're struggling with anxiety, it's really hard to access the info and the gems that are in those brilliant parenting books because it's really hard. to mother when we're not mothering ourselves. It's really hard to nurture our children when we're struggling to nurture ourselves. So the book is all about turning some focus back towards you and working on your general well-being. So that in those moments, when you're grasping around for tips and tools and things that you remember that were useful, you're not in that fight or fright stress response. So they're much better to access. And also, as moms,

we deserve not to feel laden with guilt and anxiety. And that's another reason I love talking about guilt so much, is that we can address it in a way that just frees us up, that it frees up headspace, that it frees up that feeling of badness. So I've got a line out of my new book where I talk about this feeling. And I've written this. I've paraphrased it a little bit.

So it's more extensive and more in depth in the book, but I've shortened it. At the end of the day, once the kids are in bed, I have sunk into the sofa with a bitter feeling sitting like bile in my belly. That sour, horrible feeling. It feels like failure. I sneak in and kiss my children before I head to bed. I whisper pledges to do better. Tomorrow I will be the mother. they deserve. Tomorrow I will be better. Tomorrow I will make it up for them. Tomorrow I will get it

right. But the cycle continues and I miss the bar again. Sometimes it's because that bar that I set for myself is too high. Sometimes it's because I'm underresourced and I've not been the anchor that I really want to be for them. I haven't been able to. This happens a lot. It's part of being human in our culture. It's part of juggling so much. It's part of the expectations that come towards us, the restrictions that sit around us. But do you know what? Guilt says, wow, that was a really challenging morning. How can I repair? How can I repair with them? How can I reconnect? How can I restore that sense of safety? Guilt says, how can I refuel myself so that next time I might respond differently. Do you hear you? hear that with guilt? Guild is proactive. Guilt prompts us. Guilt nudges us to act, to challenge, to change, to seek support, to seek resources. That's what guilt does. We need guilt. We need guilt to play that part. Otherwise, we'd erupt, we'd mess up, we'd hurt someone, we'd get it wrong on purpose accidentally and then we'd shrug our shoulders and we'd move on. That's life. Who cares?

It's all right. Let's move on. We want more for ourselves than that. We want more for our self-esteem, our confidence, we want more for our children than just to shrug our shoulders and move on. So that's the place of guilt. We need guilt. However, what often happens is that instead of this proactive nudging that prompts us to meet a need or seek a tool or a resource or take a step out or a step back or ask someone else to step in. Instead of that, often we landslide slippery sloping down into shame. So if guilt says, oh my gosh, that was a challenging morning, how can I repair? How can I refuel? Shame says, I'm a failure. I don't deserve them. I don't deserve the love of my kids. I don't deserve the

goodness in my life. I don't deserve the rest. I don't deserve the support. I am a failure. Gilt says, I got a little bit wrong there. Shame says, I am wrong. Gilt says, oh, that was an ideal. Shame says, I am bad. Gilt says, how. can I find ways to enjoy the goodness in my life, to relate better to the goodness and to deepen the connections. Shame says, I don't deserve this goodness. I don't deserve these connections. So the next time you feel that sense of guilt, welcome it. It's there. Sometimes it's unjustified and that's a slightly different process. Sometimes we feel guilty for things that we have not done wrong the guilt I felt around postnatal depression, the guilt I found around struggling

to bond with my baby that had silent reflux. That's not my fault. Sometimes we need to recognize where the guilt has just come in because the narratives we have around how we should feel. But notice guilt, welcome it, observe it. Ask what that guilt is flagging up to you. Ask what that guilt is prompting you to do in this situation. But just recognize when and if that guilt is slip sliding into shame. Shame chips away at our self-esteem and our confidence. Shame has us, instead of leaning forward and leaning towards support and tools and need meeting, shame finds us edging away, edging away.

always cowering in our badness, where we get stuck. Because if I believe that I am the failure, then that's all on me. It's all about me. It doesn't allow me to look at it critically. It doesn't allow me to look at it subjectively and think, hey, what do I need? What happened there? It doesn't allow me to move forward. Shame keeps us really stuck.

and moving away from the things that will help us. So next time you feel that wave of guilt, ask yourself, what's it prompting me to do? Notice when you're slipsiding into shame and try and pull it back from that place and move to that pace of what do I need to do here? What do I need here? I hope that's helpful. Don't forget my book Raising a Happy Mother.

where I can't wait to delve into these topics even more so with you and start relieving ourselves of more of that shame and more of that anxiety and all of those things that just get in the way of us thriving. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you have enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and review for me. Also, if you need any resources at all, I have lots of videos and courses on everything from health anxiety to driving anxiety and people pleasing. They are all on my website, anamatha.com.

And also, don't forget my brand new book, Raising a Happier Mother is out now for you to enjoy and benefit from. It's all about how to find balance, feel good and see your children flourish as a result. Speak to you soon.