Coping With Guilt And Shame

Unglue the stickiness built up with guilt and shame by mindfully attending to your own body and offering yourself some compassion. This meditation is a longer immersion and includes some talking on how guilt and shame can affect us.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to this meditation led by Claudia Silas,

A mindful movement and meditation teacher.

Today we're going to be exploring guilt and the shame that we tend to carry around with our guilt.

To begin with,

I want you to find somewhere to settle down,

Either sitting or lying.

Just somewhere you can relax and be present.

Do any adjusting that you need to now and make sure that you're really comfortable.

Once you start to settle into your posture,

I want you to shift your awareness into your breathing just for a few moments,

Noticing your breath.

How it rises and falls in your body.

The pacing of your breath.

The quality of your breath.

And keeping that gentle awareness of your breathing.

I'm just going to talk a little about guilt and shame before we move into some work which addresses those issues.

So when we're feeling guilty,

It tends to show itself a lot in our thinking.

And kind of overplaying of events.

What we could have done,

What we should have done instead,

Or wishing that we'd done something differently,

Etc.

And it becomes a problem when we start to play over and over and continually go back into the past.

And it can create feelings of anxiety and depression.

And all this negative mental chatter can create a lot of tension and discomfort in our bodies.

A sense of resistance to the thinking,

Pain,

And even a numbness.

Because there's so much going on in the mind that we're not really able to feel and tap into our physical sensations.

So the guilt is the thing that's ticking over in our mind and really present in the forefront of our attention.

But we tend to have this emotional quality underlying our guilt.

A sense of shame.

A sense that I'm a bad person,

I'm not good enough.

I just want you to pause for a moment and recognise,

No matter what you've done or what you think you've done,

Just recognise your suffering.

You don't have to like it,

What you did or think you did,

But just recognise that you're suffering right now and it's really hard.

Perhaps you're spending a lot of time thinking about another person or situation and suffering you've caused to other people.

But I want you to acknowledge that you're also a human.

You've made a mistake,

Perhaps,

Or what you perceive to be a mistake.

And there can be a really deep-rooted shame that comes with that.

It's painful.

Acknowledge your pain,

Acknowledge yourself.

Remember that you were just doing the best that you could at the time with the tools that you had.

So I'm sure if you come back to think about a situation or possibly multiple situations that you're feeling guilty about,

If you really think about it,

What were your intentions in that moment?

Often our intention and thought isn't to hurt someone else.

And okay,

Sometimes it actually is,

But it usually comes from something deeper within us.

And it could be a sense of feeling disconnected,

A sense of longing,

A sense of feeling let down,

A sense of being wronged yourself.

So perhaps this action that you took was a way of saying,

Please,

Love me.

Please help me.

Please notice my pain and please be with me.

And when we come back to the true core of our intentions,

It's usually just to be loved and to love.

A conditioning that happens over the years and beliefs that we acquire early on in our lives prevent us from noticing this and being open.

So our actions tend to be aggressive or come out in other harmful ways.

Aggression's biggest driver is fear.

So I'm sure that some of you are thinking of a particular situation or maybe multiple situations,

Or maybe it's just a general sense of guilt and overriding feeling of guilt about something or someone.

Whatever it is,

I just want you to hold this in your awareness.

Start to notice,

Where do I feel this in my body?

And I mentioned at the beginning,

It may be that you don't feel anything or don't feel much and that there's a sense of numbness.

That's OK,

Too.

And if that's the case,

Just being present and noticing that it's numbness.

But for those of you who are experiencing physical sensations,

Maybe it's a tightening,

Some tension,

Aching or a hollowness,

Whatever it may be,

I just want you to rest your attention there or on the numbness.

And I don't want you to try and push it away or relax it out or shift it out.

Just observe it really,

Really closely.

What does it feel like to be tense?

And allowing whatever's there to be as it is without changing,

Trying to make it better or improve it in some way,

Accepting yourself wholly as you are right now.

Coming back to this idea of recognizing your suffering,

The suffering you're experiencing physically,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Spiritually,

And if you can,

Extending an arm of compassion towards yourself.

When we have a deep sense of shame,

Offering ourselves compassion can feel really strange.

You don't feel like we deserve it.

So if this is the case,

Maybe you could call to mind some words that you would say to a dear friend who is suffering in the same way.

What would you say to them?

Can you say that to yourself?

If there's aversion or resistance coming up,

Just noticing that too,

As well as the physical sensations.

Even if it's just pretending,

Offering yourself those words of compassion.

I love you,

I'm here for you,

I recognize you,

I recognize your suffering,

Whatever it is.

And as you're noticing the sensations in your body and offering yourself this compassion,

You may see that things naturally begin to shift and settle.

Not because you're forcing anything,

But just because you're bringing awareness and compassion to yourself.

What I really want you to think about moving forwards is instead of trying to make peace with a situation or a person,

Whatever is bringing up this guilt or shame,

I want you to prioritize making peace with yourself.

You are a human,

Humans make mistakes.

You may find it useful to make peace with the personal situation too,

If that's a possibility,

But it's not always.

Or perhaps you've tried already and you've gotten some resistance,

So it's important that you prioritize making peace with yourself.

Forgive yourself,

Recognize your suffering and give yourself some compassion.

When you're experiencing the storylines ticking over in your head about the things you feel guilty for,

I want you to remember that they're just thoughts.

They're just stories in your head and they will often bring up sensation or numbness in your body.

But these are just thoughts,

It's not the situation itself.

It can be really useful to journal,

To get out of your head with the stories,

Getting out on the page to help desensitize and unravel what's going on mentally.

We're going to gradually come out of this meditation,

So I want you to take some longer breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Two more big breaths like that.

Okay,

So after your third breath,

Just letting your breath settle and return to normal and bringing some awareness into your heart space.

It may feel useful to place a hand on your heart or not,

But bring awareness to this space,

Noticing the physical and emotional quality of your heart.

For some of us,

An emotional connection to our heart space can feel alien.

But if that is the case,

Just focus on your heart beating.

And as you connect to your heart space,

You may want to whisper to yourself or say internally,

I love you,

I forgive you.

Taking your time now.

Please feel free to pause a bit longer before opening your eyes and continuing with your day.

Thank you so much for practicing with me.

Reviews

This was so helpful, I have been experiencing a flood of guilt and shame over past actions and this helped me to settle and allow myself to feel it and to view my guilt and shame with compassion.

Thank you for your clarity and wisdom. I think you really understand what it's like to feel guilt and shame. Your words help me in my efforts to untether myself from these emotions so that I might move along a different path.

Wow that was so helpful. Thank you so much 🙏🏼❤️

Great meditation for me today. I was in a place of great shame for a few reasons and this helped me forgive myself some today. I’ll continue with this mediation as often as I need it. Thank you.

Thank you, this was much needed today and your words really resonated with me.

Very instructive and calming.

Very, very helpful. Thank you so much.

This is so powerful Thank you 🙏

Very helpful

Very healing. Thank you.