Name: Understanding Shame vs. Guilt
Uploaded: 2024-04-22T13:30:22.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Understanding Shame vs. Guilt' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Understanding Shame vs. Guilt' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-22. Transcript available.

shame is such a huge magnet huh huge how does that how does shame start
is that a fair question about shame what's it i think it's
it starts with the parent-child relationship not being right right is shame
originally a positive
thing there must be a is there a certain value to a little bit of shame like
what is a little
bit of shame called it's like so some people have tried to make a distinction
around healthy shame
versus toxic shame right okay but to me healthy shame is actually guilt okay so
guilt is if i do
something that violates love i tell a lie hit somebody i cheat on them i should
feel guilty
right that's natural because that motivates me to get back to a loving healthy
situation because as
long as i stay in stuff that violates love i'm destroying relationships i'm
making a worse life
for myself so guilt is a good thing and i can resolve guilt so it's about what
i do that violates love
shame is about who i am it's nothing about what i do wow so that's huge to notate
those two things like
it can be okay to feel some guilt about things it's important that's me getting
a sign like hey man
this is a it's almost like a u-turn sign it's like a good road sign really
exactly even though it hurts
some you need that because it helps you recognize you're going against love
exactly you're doing
something against love but then shame is unhealthy and i can do nothing about
it so shame is about who i
am that i'm not good enough right shame i then attach whatever i did
immediately and that feeling
and that's where the two then feed each other so soon as soon as i do something
wrong right that proves
my shame right that i'm useless and that goes back to that child that child
doing something wrong
something's wrong in his world in her world and they they they don't know how
to solve it because
they're a child so the and all the only person in the world is them so if
something's wrong in their
world or they're not getting what they need or their needs met then of course
it must be their fault
so that's where shame builds exactly so that's where we say that a key part of
complex trauma is
false guilt so you're made to feel guilty though you've done nothing wrong
which then feeds shame so
dad says i'm mad because you're a terrible kid well no that's not why dad's mad
or i drink
because you're a terrible kid yeah dad's mad because he's a lions fan you know
exactly and so it's it's
you're you're now feeling i did something wrong therefore i am wrong right
right yeah man and so
to help people heal they got to deal with legitimate guilt and they can fix
that they got to correct all
the lies that led to false guilt so every time that somebody's impatient with
them they go what am i
doing wrong you're not doing anything wrong that that's the other person's
problem um or somebody's
upset with them because they said no no you set a good boundary you shouldn't
apologize for that but
they feel guilty or they relax for a few minutes i'm lazy no you're not you're
relaxing so you got false
guilt from lie after lie after lie so you got to reprogram that then you got
shame that i'm therefore not good
enough which is all based on lies and that's all got to be reprogrammed and
that takes a ton of work
does it yeah what does some of that work look like if even yeah i would say
shame to me is the biggest
healing journey that comes out of complex trauma and it takes the longest and
takes years wow because
there's so many thousands of subtle lies that people develop that they don't
even realize yeah
um and the problem is they get triggered easily and then all of a sudden they're
spiraling downhill
that i'm a piece of and they don't know why but it's something's triggered an
old lie that's led to
that proves that i'm useless um and so there's a big journey in self-awareness
and beginning to
understand the lies that i believe that are below the surface that are
subconscious beginning to
understand the things that trigger that begin to understand the patterns that
take place once i'm
triggered and where i spiral to and stopping those patterns that's the work and
so if i can give one
other piece of teaching yeah okay so it's so key with complex trauma to
understand the two parts of the
brain that are kind of the main things that motivate our behavior so the limbic
system which is the
emotion center that's the child's brain that's that develops first yes then the
cortex that keeps
growing to our 35 ish the thinking the executive function that gets called that
processes information
the key thing about the limbic brain the child brain is its instant gratification
focus
so child do you want to do your chores or do you want to sit here and watch tv
well whatever makes
me feel good right so that determines what i want to do and then whether i want
to do something i don't
feel like it i don't feel like doing that or i want a new puppy i feel like
feeding the puppy until i
don't feel like feeding the puppy so emotions guide my behavior and everything
is instant gratification
focused wow and a lot of that if you're if you had trauma as a child then you're
still even that even
that can be a pattern so still continue because yeah that's a lot of addicts so
the key with that is that
when fear is triggered that's limbic brain so if you're in complex trauma you're
in constant fear so you're
constantly in your limbic brain so your cortex doesn't develop properly so an
adult or a teenager they're
going through gradually switching to their cortex and learning to think stuff
through complex trauma
you're still in your limbic brain still thinking only of instant gratification
what do i feel like what
everything is about emotions even though you're not aware of your emotions and
so a huge part of what
happens with shame when it's triggered is i could be living as an adult today
out of my cortex making
good decisions healthy decisions when my shame gets triggered it triggers my
limbic brain again
and i go back to a child and i think like a child and i believe the lies of the
child
and so what you realize is the br the battles in your brain between your cortex
and your limbic brain
they believe two different things depends on what gets triggered wow it's
almost like you have a
heaven and hell right there kind of exactly oh my god so that's where people
with shame they can be
doing wonderful great in relationships and their shame gets triggered and all
of a sudden they're
destroying everybody calling their kids terrible names calling their partner
terrible names yeah and it's
like what just happened there well you went to your limbic brain and you acted
out of that shame lie
that's when the damage gets done those triggers huh those things it's wild you
had to go back to that
yeah so you can you can imagine though how long that would take to heal because
when that trigger hits
like it hits with an intensity of a locomotive um because it brings with it
cortisol it brings with
all the chemicals drugs yeah and how do you stop that like the trains out of
the station here buddy oh yeah
if somebody pulls up with a train full of drugs dude it's gone i'm getting on
exactly i'm gonna tell you
that right now and i'll probably sit in business class but um yeah my my
brother sometimes would
say uh trying to locate that shame and stuff it was like taking pennies out of
a bathtub that's what
he talks about it like sometimes yes some days you get a couple and sometimes
you you just you don't even
know you're in it yeah so as a person grows in healing so let's say you would
get triggered and you
start spiraling but you've got enough self-awareness you'd catch yourself right
and you i know what's going
on here then you ground yourself you regulate your emotions and you get back to
your cortex and you go
hey i'm believing lies there i'm not that useless person right and i don't have
to do that and you
get and so what you find is all of a sudden that spiral just stopped so instead
of being in it for four
days you're now only in it for 15 minutes and you caught yourself now there's
going to be a bit of a
hangover effect as you kind of keep working through emotions with it but within
a day you're back to
being in a pretty good place and you've grown a little bit and then because of
that you probably
won't get triggered as intensely in that area again because you've grown so
that next time something
happens the trigger won't be intense and it won't be as frequent and so over
time you're growing with
greater in frequency and less intensity until you don't get triggered there
anymore um but that can
take a few years but it can happen it can happen wow it's really it's really
possible it is yeah
Thank you.