#628 Dr. Nicole LePera: Rebuilding Identity, Childhood Patterns & Self-Worth

You take a long part to sort of, you take the time to slow down and separate shame from guilt.

Educate us, please.

And also, why is this so important to recognize it?

So shame, guilt, right? You'll often hear me acknowledge that emotions, I will say, are important, right? They have messages for us.

I will even go as far to say that emotions, some of them are evolutionarily driven, meaning they have a value that has helped us through generations to survive.

And shame is one of those.

Because humans, because we're born dependent on And also because we're actually not the biggest, scariest animals that are here on this earth plane, right? There's bigger, scarier things.

So we're smart enough to understand, and this is, you know, well into our ancestors have understood this, that we are safer in a group of people.

We're safer from predators.

And also when children come along, division of labor, we're safer.

Everyone wins right when we exist in a community, which is where villages, groups, and all of that was born out of.

So, belonging in a group right is connected to our increased likelihood of survival because if you couldn't find the group or were kicked out of the group for whatever reason and you had to go on the tundra by yourself your chances of survival were much less than the people inside the village so shame is the emotion that indicates it's evolutionarily driven right because all societies have certain rules right that everyone supposedly needs to follow to be a part of society.

And when you don't follow the rules, what happens? You're kicked out.

You're ostracized.

You don't belong anymore.

And so shame is an evolutionary driven emotion that is activated in moments where we sense through direct or indirect messages that our belonging is being questioned, that we are not worthy of being a part of this community.

So shame to some extent is an assessment of our own value where we feel less than or unworthy as a person.

Guilt is the emotion that we feel when our behaviors, the thing we did or didn't do, caused hypothetical harm, hurt for ourselves or someone else, then typically we say we feel guilty, we feel bad about our action.

So guilt is a label that we apply more to the actions that we do.

And shame is the label that we apply to the person that we are.

Now, again, shame has a function because it keeps us within the bounds of society so that we can feel like we belong and we can be safe.

What I think is so important to understand is I didn't fully understand what shame was, what it looked like, because I had this more traditional idea that unless I had moments where I felt embarrassed, where my cheeks got red and I could tune into feeling that self-consciousness that I typically assumed was more of a shameful experience, then I imagined that I'm just not someone that really feels shame.

And

Boy, was I wrong, because what I've come to understand is that shame for so many of us is so baked in to how we understand ourself and the habits that we've then created as an attempt to gain a sense of worthiness in protection to feeling that shame.

Why? Because our first group, believe it or not, is our family.