Shame. Guilt. Regret.

As much as it hurt — to be hurt, and then blamed for it — I saw myself in her.

I remembered all the times when I, too, have employed the same technique in conflict resolution. Or more accurately — conflict suppression.

I could so vividly remember the flooding of "I did something wrong." So unbearable that my psyche would do everything in its power to stop the feeling.

The first time I heard Gabor Maté's distinction between guilt and shame — guilt saying "I did something bad," shame saying "I am bad" — I felt understood. And that gave me a framework to separate one from another and be able to stay a bit more present in a conflict.

Years later I noticed that for me both sensations actually feel the same. Cognitively, I knew the difference. Somatically, they felt like one and the same. 

Completely blended.

I started looking into why and how this got formed, so that I could untangle it. Was it because society places enormous importance on what you do, so much so that it has merged doing and being into one? Was it because of the shame we inherit from our family systems, which conflates being and doing in the same way?

I just knew the realisation that I had done something wrong or hurtful made my temperature rise and my thoughts race.

"Is that it? A proof that I am a bad person. I always suspected that I might be. I didn't want to be. But now I know, and so does everyone else. I can't let that happen. How am I supposed to live with myself if that is true."

This, I suspect, is the sophisticated survival mechanism present in each of us — thinking, acting, protecting.

Because the very next moment, I would hear myself doing exactly that — looking for an explanation, any other explanation of why the person is hurt because it can't be because of me. Because that would mean that I am a bad person.

Instead of accepting that I have caused hurt despite not intending to, I would try to rewrite what happened.

As I developed my ability to stay present with my shame, its grip started to loosen. I had more capacity to listen to it and to even start a conversation with it.

I regret having done that in conflict. It's unfair. It erodes the connection, and the sense of sanity of the other person, and my own integrity.

In a conversation with one of many great women that I am fortunate to know, she gave me a present that transformed my relationship with shame and guilt — regret.

While shame says: "I am bad," and guilt says: "I did something bad," regret says: "I did something hurtful, and next time I will choose differently."

I didn't have to pick between shame or guilt anymore — and even if I wanted to, I couldn't, they still feel the same to me. There is now a third option — one that asks a completely different question: what can I do differently next time? Instead of: am I a bad person, or did I just do a bad thing?

And this opened the door for me to sit with my own fallibility — to see it without judgement. To start to accept it.

We know we are human and we know it's human to make mistakes. But do we actually feel it — in our bodies, not just in our minds?

If this is something that feels familiar — the gap between knowing and feeling — I'd be glad to explore it with you. You can reach me here.