Guilt Versus Shame 

ber3@vementAdmin Uncategorized

By: Steve Keller 

Guilt and shame are profoundly different emotions. In essence, guilt is the feeling that you have done something bad. Shame is the feeling that you are bad. Guilt relates to your behaviors. Shame connects with your very identity. 

Guilt is a common and normative emotion experienced by grievers. Grievers often engage in self-deprecatory woulda, shoulda, coulda thoughts regarding the circumstances of their loved one’s death or regrets about the relationship itself. Guilt arises when you actually did something hurtful to your loved one, whether large or small. Guilty feelings also emerge due to the perception that you did something hurtful, whether true or not. Therefore, your guilty feelings could be irrational, albeit equally painful. Some grievers are reluctant to relinquish their guilt due to the human need to find something or someone to blame for the loss. In other words, if you can find “a target” to blame, you don’t have to consider the scary notion that life is fraught with risk and ultimately out of our control. 

Shame is perhaps the most painful of all human emotions. It usually develops during childhood resulting from repetitive punitive and hypercritical messages imparted by caregivers. The child internalizes and embodies these messages which result in a pervasive sense of being flawed, unworthy, and ultimately undeserving of love and connection. This shame is carried into adulthood and adversely affects self-esteem, functioning, a healthy sense of entitlement, and relationships. Ashamed people are tormented by their inner critics which can result in insatiable perfectionism.  

For the bereaved, thoughts and feelings of guilt are painful and can be all-consuming, however, they can also propel the griever toward adapting to the loss. The griever may never be able to repair the damage they caused the deceased. However, through processing the guilty thoughts and feelings, the griever can broaden his or her perspective. This can allow the griever to work toward eventual self-forgiveness and healing.  

The self-punitive and pervasive nature of shame complicates the grief process. In response to the death of a loved one, ashamed people don’t even feel permission to grieve. Their punitive inner voice tells them “Get over it, crying is for weak people, I deserve it, or other people have it worse”.  

If you are bereaved and not feeling entitled to grieve, or are experiencing rigid and persistent guilt, it is likely that deep-seated chronic shame is underlying. In this case consultation with a therapist is recommended. The purpose is to explore and process the childhood messages received that are the basis of your shame. 

The following resources elaborate on the subject: 

Brené Brown: Focus on guilt instead of shame

Where Toxic Shame Comes From and How to Work Through It

Guilt and Grief: coping with the shoulda, woulda, couldas

 

 

 

On the power of storytelling

ber3@vementAdmin Grieving Styles, Helping

By: Steve Keller

Language and storytelling are intrinsically human and essential to the mourning process. Storytelling serves to organize our disparate thoughts and feelings into a structured, coherent, narrative that makes sense. Generally, storytelling promotes a culture of community, decreases isolation, elicits support and empathy, promotes emotional catharsis, reduces stress levels, broadens perspective, and strengthens continuing bonds with the deceased. Storytelling is essentially an exercise of meaning making. This is the process by which the mourner explores what has been lost, how life will be different, and how to survive and reinvest in life.

A central task of meaning making is for the mourner to understand and make sense of the nature of death itself. This includes its cause and the mourner’s imagined or mental pictures of the suffering and death of the deceased. In a case of traumatic death, this process can be extremely painful and dysregulating and may warrant a supportive therapist.

A principal aspect of mourning is to develop and share a coherent story of the life of the deceased. This means revisiting their life – the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the words of grief expert Alan Wolfelt, “you have to say hello before you can say goodbye”. Repetitively telling the story of the deceased helps the mourner to accept the reality of the death. This coherent narrative allows creation of an internalized representation of the deceased, enabling the mourner to “carry the relationship forward”, i.e., to maintain continuing bonds.

The life story of the deceased is frequently intimately intertwined with that of the mourner. The mourner must contemplate the meaning of the relationship, what was lost, and what, if anything, should be retained. How has the identity of the mourner been changed? How does the mourner’s story change?

After the death of a cherished loved one, the vacuum can be so overwhelming that the mourner cannot conceive of a life without the deceased. The mourner’s “assumptive world” has been violated, and she is forced to “rewrite her story” in absence of the deceased. The new story entails a renewed sense of purpose and investment in life in which the deceased is not forgotten. This adaptation occurs painstakingly over many months and even years and is perhaps the most difficult task of the mourning process.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

The following are in-depth resources on the subject:

 

 

 

Anxiety

ber3@vementAdmin Anxiety
Grief Briek.png

Did you know that May has been National Mental Health Awareness Month since 1949? The observance has been instrumental in increasing awareness, education, de-stigmatization, and early intervention for those suffering from mental illness.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the US. If you are bereaved, you have likely experienced anxiety. Psychologists and grief researchers posit that not only is it “normal” but expected to experience some degree of anxiety in the days, weeks, and months after the death of a loved one.

Unfortunately, the Covid 19 pandemic has significantly exacerbated the stress and anxiety levels of grievers and affects the general population. Over the course of the pandemic, the threats to our safety have included racial strife, civic unrest, political polarization, economic losses, rampant unemployment, virtual schooling, social distancing, and disrupted social routines.

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Mindfulness

ber3@vementAdmin COVID, Mindfulness, Stress
Mindfulness

By Steve Keller 

So… Is it over yet? After five months of the pandemic, now complicated by seemingly worsening societal unrest and political polarization, many Americans are growing weary. We are bombarded daily by reports of soaring death tolls, traumatic imagery, and conflicting information from our government officials. Although we have attempted to re-establish a sense of normalcy by ending lockdowns, reopening the economy, etc., it has become evident that we must maintain extreme vigilance.

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Managing the Stress of Lifestyle Changes, Grief, and Uncertainty

ber3@vementAdmin COVID, Stress
Managing the Stress of Lifestyle Changes, Grief, and Uncertainty

By Steve Keller

The great majority of us are acutely and profoundly affected by the coronavirus pandemic. To protect us from the spread of the virus, all levels of government have responded by mandating severe lifestyle changes for us personally and societally. Perhaps the most difficult of these are lockdowns and social distancing. This disruption in day-to-day routines and lifestyle imposes great hardship and necessitates drastic adaptive measures. Read more

Art Therapy 

ber3@vementAdmin Art, Helping
Art Therapy 

What Is Art Therapy? 

Through the use of art-making, discussion, reflections, and relationship building, art therapists support individuals in a variety of life struggles, helping draw out – sometimes both figuratively and literally – deep-rooted feelings or stories that often can be challenging to express otherwise. This is especially true in processing grief and trauma, yet art therapy can also be a means of developing of coping skills, increasing self-awareness, strengthening self-esteem, managing stress, and engaging in a positive social interaction. All of these are useful tools in addressing the comprehensive work of rebuilding one’s life following a devastating experience of loss. This adaptive, healing strength found in creative expression often results in a meaning-making process that transforms into emotional wellness. 

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Adolescent Suicide

ber3@vementAdmin Helping, Suicide, Teens
Adolescent Suicide

By Steve Keller

In recent years our country has been increasingly affected by this tragic epidemic, and not surprisingly, our Center has been supporting a great deal of these bereaved families. The numbers are staggering: according to the CDC, more than 5000 teenagers attempt suicide each day, making it the second leading cause of death, behind accidents. Almost 90% of teen suicides are attributable to a diagnosable and potentially treatable mental illness. Four out of five of these teens give clear warning signs, but not all.

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Opiate Overdose Epidemic

ber3@vementAdmin Addiction, Opioids
Opiate Overdose Epidemic

By Steve Keller

Our staff is acutely impacted by this current and deteriorating scourge in our society. One cannot avoid being saddened and moved by ubiquitous reports in the media of the suffering of addicts as well as their loved ones.

The current opiate addiction epidemic has been fueled by a paradigm shift in the way people initially become addicted. Yes, heroin addiction still results from young people experimenting with “gateway drugs” which eventually progress to trying heroin. However, in recent years, a high percentage of people get addicted to heroin after having become dependent on prescription opiate medications. These people come from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic circumstances. They typically sustain a benign acute injury, such as a toothache, sprained ankle, or chronic pain that necessitates a prescription of oxycodone, for example. It often doesn’t take long for dependency on such medications, which have been overprescribed by doctors. Eventually, the patient has difficulty obtaining the medications, or cannot afford to sustain their use, typically due to expensive insurance co-pays, etc. This often leads to purchasing the meds online or illegally, which also becomes expensive and problematic. Tragically, the patient turns to heroin which is much cheaper, stronger, longer-lasting, and accessible.

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Pet Bereavement

ber3@vementAdmin Bonds, Pet
Pet Bereavement

By Steve Keller

Our last newsletter reported the death of Clara, the beautiful and cherished Golden Retriever who served cheerfully and dutifully as the mascot and therapy dog for Camp Millie for several years. The impact of Clara’s death has prompted us to say a few words on this important subject.

Psychologists have long known that the level of suffering that pet owners endure after their pet dies can be as devastating as the death of a person. Similar to humans, each relationship with a pet is unique, therefore so is each grief process. It is normal and expected to grieve after any attachment relationship is severed, whether due to a sudden accident or prolonged illness. Grieving pet owners sustain physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and social changes as they adapt to the upheaval in their lives presented by the loss. As with grief for a human, these normal signs of grief gradually wane with time, and the griever eventually maintains a relationship of warm memories of the pet.

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