Guilt and Shame are Human-Created Constructs

Why do I want to talk to you about guilt and shame? First of all, because they are the lowest vibrating emotions that we can feel. That gives it reason enough to spend some time on them.

Emotions are energy in motion. Because they are energy, they have a measurable frequency. What you see here on this emotional vibration chart are the frequencies of a selection of common emotions and their frequency.

Emotions have measurable frequencies impacting your energy levels

As you can see enlightenment, peace and joy are very high-frequency emotions. Next, we have love, reason and acceptance, followed by willingness, neutrality and courage. This is where we are in a middle ground of our emotions. Then we move into pride, anger, Desire, Fear, Grief and Apathy. And last but not least we have Guilt and Shame.

You might ask now: Linda, what does this all mean? Why would I want to care about the frequency of emotions? Well, if you care about your energy levels aka how much energy you have available to live your life, then you want to care about the vibration of your emotions.

Very simplified and in a nutshell, low vibrational emotions mean lower energy levels and less energy available to you. Higher vibrational emotions mean higher energy levels and more energy available in your everyday life.

My own history with guilt and shame

I have a long history with the emotions of guilt and shame. Only recently have I discovered that I‘m subconsciously addicted to feeling shame and making myself feel guilty. I would use nearly every situation or circumstance in my life to feel ashamed, so my addiction to this low-vibrating emotion gets its fix. But now more of that! I am getting out of that pattern now!

For me, such a realization is not a threat or a worry, it’s an enlightenment. It’s a revelation and a win to discover it because then I can do something about it. Feeling guilty and ashamed is so energy-robbing and dysfunctional to the flow of your life and your life energy. That’s why these 2 emotions are a huge topic for me.

I wanted to do this article to help you make a similar realization if you struggle with guilt and feelings of shame. I just had a friend asking himself this week, if he was guilty of causing a difficult situation within his family. And I immediately had to jump in and share with him my thoughts about guilt. And what I shared with him resonated and made him stop looking at the situation like that. That gave me the idea to create this article so I can help you, too.

Let’s get to know guilt and shame better to understand

Before I share my perspective on guilt and shame, let’s briefly get to know these 2 emotions better. We learned already that they are very low in vibration and therefore very low in life energy. They are among the most painful human emotions we can experience.

Like with everything else, in small doses, they are not truly harmful. They are just on the spectrum of emotions we have at our disposal to feel. But if we spend a lot of our time and energy on feeling guilty and ashamed that’s where it can cause harm. A life filled with guilt and shame can lead to mental and physical illnesses. But even if it doesn’t, it has a direct impact on the energy that you have available to enjoy your life, do what your heart desires and spend quality time with your loved ones.

The difference between these two emotions for me is that guilt comes first when I perceive that I have done something wrong. But nobody else knows yet or might never know. Shame is a step further. I now feel ashamed for something because others are aware of it and I was found out.

For example, I can feel guilty for having taken the last piece of chocolate cake that I did not even bake. If no one really realizes or finds me out, I probably stop feeling guilty pretty soon. But if I get found out and someone calls me out on it, in addition to the guilt I already felt, I feel now ashamed, too. I feel shame about my behaviour and not having been honest before.

So for me, shame is more harmful than guilt which the emotional vibration chart confirms, as shame is even lower in vibration than guilt.

Guilt or Shame is Human-Created Constructs

Now let’s come to what I think about guilt and shame. And why it helps me to look at it that way.

The feeling of guilt or shame is a human-created construct designed to control and make us behave better. No other life form out there feels guilt, only humans feel guilt and shame.

Only humans are capable of creating the perfect human in their minds. And based on that creation we create societal norms and expectations. And then humans spend the rest of their lives trying to live up to the norm and expectation of that perfect human construct. And if we don’t live up to it, we feel guilty and ashamed.

No other life form feels guilty or ashamed

But no other life form cares about made-up norms and expectations of society or others. A dog does not think each day if its owner is worthy to be loved or not. No! It loves its owner unconditionally. A lion is not considering which Zebra to chase based on their former behaviour but rather which one is closest or looks the weakest. A bird sitting on a branch does not worry if it’s allowed to fly over to another branch over there. It just flies over to the other branch.

A lot of people believe that guilt or shame stops them from doing something bad or harming someone else, and so it’s a really great selling point to have guilt and shame in our lives. If I just feel guilty enough, I’ll never do a bad thing. It’s gonna keep me in control of myself when in actuality, it doesn’t do that. It doesn’t prevent it at all, and let me show you why.

Guilt or shame does not stop you from doing something you don’t desire to do

There are people out there that commit crimes, who feel guilty during the act and/or after the act. And then you have people who feel zero guilt about what they’ve done, or while they’re doing it. Guilt isn’t the factor that prevents them from committing the crime. Guilt didn’t stop them. So why would it stop you from doing anything right or wrong? In some cases, guilt very much contributes to it.

Often it is guilt or shame that keeps someone in a vicious cycle of doing something that they don’t desire to be doing. They are giving that behaviour so much attention and energy, that they keep it alive. The emotions of guilt or shame keep them stuck in this perpetual cycle.

What you focus on expands. Where you put your attention, you put your energy. The more you focus on the behaviour that you feel guilty about, the more energy you give it, and the more likely you repeat it.

By feeling guilt or shame you keep the past alive

Guilt is one of those things that ties us to the past, wanting to change the past about something that we did, or that we think we shouldn’t have done. But it’s not possible. You can’t change the past. So keeping the feeling of guilt and shame alive for a long time does not change the past – it just keeps it alive in the present moment.

The next time you catch yourself feeling guilty or ashamed, ask yourself if these emotions are truly warranted. Do they serve a purpose or are you stuck in a cycle of thinking and feeling about guilt and shame?

Learn how to stop the guilt and shame cycle

I have lots of articles on how to change a thought, belief or your emotions. So check them out. And if you are looking for more support in overcoming these cycles of guilt and shame, then join the waitlist for my new program launching in January.

You will learn how to release more energy back into your life and how to process and transmute low-vibrating emotions that you feel stuck with.