Guilt and Shame in Recovery

You just made a mis­take. How do you respond?

Some­one feel­ing guilt may say: “Oh, that was not what I want­ed to do. I feel bad about that choice. I need to make it right.”

Some­one feel­ing shame may say, “This is just anoth­er exam­ple of me not being enough. I’ll nev­er be per­fect; I’m nev­er going to make it through this. I must be a bad per­son.” 

Shame shows up a lot in recov­ery, more than most peo­ple may acknowl­edge or even admit. It doesn’t arrive with a big announce­ment. Shame can just slip in. Chances are, it hap­pens when you’re doing some­thing mun­dane and then, boom, you’re think­ing about some­thing you said or did all those years ago and how bad of a per­son you are because of that action. It can be incred­i­bly uncom­fort­able, and you might even feel like oth­ers are still judg­ing you for it. It can be easy to equate shame as a sign that change has­n’t occurred at all. But that’s not how it works. Shame tends to hang around you for a long time, even when your life looks very dif­fer­ent from how it used to. Metaphor­i­cal­ly, shame is like a shark look­ing for an easy meal. Shame is gen­er­al­ly just a choice or a few away, lurk­ing, and wait­ing. Wait­ing for those moments where you are tired, bored, com­pla­cent, feel­ing down, or lack­ing direc­tion. Shame is that voice that whis­pers, “What’s the harm in it?” or “Nobody will know,” or “No one will be affect­ed by your choice” or “Just this once,” because as soon as you make that choice and after the dopamine (i.e., high, plea­sure, escape, etc.) has passed, shame is there. Shame focus­es on the worst moments and acts like that’s the whole pic­ture. 

Most peo­ple don’t behave per­fect­ly when they’re strug­gling. That’s not news. How­ev­er, shame has a way of ignor­ing every­thing that led up to those moments. This com­pli­cat­ed feel­ing doesn’t care what you were going through or what kind of pres­sure you were under. It doesn’t care if you were scared, over­whelmed, stressed, or exhaust­ed. Instead, it only pulls out the parts that hurt to remem­ber. And because shame doesn’t give you the full sto­ry, it’s easy to let it define who you think you are. You are not that sin­gle inci­dent or mul­ti­ple of inci­dents. You are you, not your choic­es. While those choic­es may be moments that you’re not proud of, shame does­n’t have to define your sto­ry in recov­ery. But the truth is sim­ple: one peri­od of your life can’t explain every­thing about you, and it doesn’t define your recov­ery either, even if you’re in the ear­ly stages of sobri­ety.

Peo­ple try to push shame down because they’re afraid that acknowl­edg­ing it will make every­thing worse. It usu­al­ly does the oppo­site. Talk­ing about your per­son­al strug­gles with some­one you trust often makes those feel­ings of shame feel small­er, more man­age­able. Often, peo­ple may also rec­i­p­ro­cate your vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and share their own chal­lenges or rough chap­ters, too. Shame tells you your sit­u­a­tion is unusu­al, that you’re alone. But it’s not unusu­al, and you’re not alone. Every­body makes mis­takes, and it’s not all your fault. But some things are. Being hon­est about what hap­pened isn’t the same as excus­ing it. Hon­esty is just hon­esty. It’s noth­ing more.

Shame and guilt in recovery

One thing peo­ple strug­gle with is believ­ing they’re allowed to rebuild their iden­ti­ty. Shame likes to argue against that. It tells you that change doesn’t count because your past is still there. And in ear­ly sobri­ety, this gets even loud­er, because you’re try­ing to fig­ure out who you are with­out all the old habits, and it feels like you don’t get to change any­thing yet. But iden­ti­ties shift all the time. It’s not unusu­al. It is not dra­mat­ic. It’s just what hap­pens when you learn new ways of deal­ing with life. This is also where inner resilience becomes impor­tant. It might make sense to focus on cre­at­ing strength with­in your­self because it helps you see the progress you’re mak­ing, even on days when things feel slow. These tiny improve­ments in how you respond to stress or han­dle con­flict mat­ter more than peo­ple real­ize. They’re proof that things are chang­ing, even if you’re tak­ing baby steps. This fur­ther shows shame doesn’t have to define your sto­ry in recov­ery, because, as you grow and devel­op from your past self, you take con­trol of your sto­ry, your choic­es, and your life. 

There’s this idea in the world that being kind to your­self means you’re not tak­ing your recov­ery seri­ous­ly. When you think about it, on the oth­er hand, does being harsh help any­one stay con­sis­tent? No. It usu­al­ly makes peo­ple want to quit. Of course, self-com­pas­sion and self-love aren’t about pre­tend­ing every­thing was always fine. Most of the time, it’s about say­ing, “I’m work­ing on it,” instead of, “I’m ter­ri­ble.” In the end, recov­ery needs sta­bil­i­ty to suc­ceed. If there’s one thing it doesn’t need, it’s pun­ish­ment. You’ll always make bet­ter deci­sions when you’re not con­stant­ly pulling your­self down. 

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Where does the shame come from? Believ­ing you are bad because you made a mis­take is often some­thing you learned when you were a child, like­ly between birth and eight years old. You may have learned it lat­er, in your teenage years. Shame may have once been a pro­tec­tor for you–protecting you from the feel­ings of embar­rass­ment or vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty required to admit mak­ing a mis­take. Per­haps you did­n’t have par­ents who tol­er­at­ed mis­takes or expressed their love to you. In these cas­es, shame often comes from the lessons you learn from oth­ers, includ­ing your par­ents, about your worth and val­ue. In these sit­u­a­tions, you may have expe­ri­enced trau­ma, or child­hood trau­ma. Here is hope, in a ther­a­peu­tic method called EMDR. In this inter­ven­tion, we tar­get those dis­tress­ing mem­o­ries from child­hood to both desen­si­tize their impact and then to cre­ate new beliefs about your­self. In these cir­cum­stances, peo­ple will often turn to sub­stances, smok­ing, video gam­ing, gam­bling, pornog­ra­phy, steal­ing, shop­ping, and oth­er dis­tract­ing cop­ing strate­gies to “numb out” from their situation–to avoid feel­ing the asso­ci­at­ed emo­tions (i.e., I am worth­less; I don’t deserve love; Love is con­di­tion­al). Desires to numb out become choic­es. Choic­es can become habits and habits can become unhealthy or inef­fec­tive habits Unhealthy or inef­fec­tive habits can then become addic­tions.

When you begin on the path to recov­ery, you will like­ly expe­ri­ence sit­u­a­tions that acti­vate feel­ings from the past, shame, or feel­ings in the present. Where you once turned to your choice sub­stance, you must now choose a dif­fer­ent way to main­tain your jour­ney. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, recov­ery isn’t pre­dictable. Some days you feel steady. Oth­er days, every­thing feels hard­er than it should. That doesn’t mean you’re back at the begin­ning. It just means you’re human. Shame tends to exag­ger­ate set­backs and relaps­es. It takes one bad day and turns it into a sto­ry about fail­ure. But notic­ing a slip is actu­al­ly part of get­ting bet­ter at catch­ing your­self. It’s not a sign that noth­ing has improved. You have improved, and you are still improv­ing. Every day. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it, every day that you go, that you con­tin­ue your bat­tle, is anoth­er day won.

Ever feel tied to your old self? If so, it’s impor­tant to know that let­ting go does­n’t mean ignor­ing the con­se­quences. Sim­i­lar­ly, mov­ing for­ward doesn’t mean pre­tend­ing noth­ing ever hap­pened. It just means you’re not repeat­ing it. That you refuse to repeat it. And, in real­i­ty, there’s noth­ing irre­spon­si­ble about that. You’re allowed to change how you think about your­self. Believe it or not, you’re allowed to build a life that isn’t shaped entire­ly by the hard­est moments. You’re allowed to keep improv­ing with­out con­stant­ly prov­ing you feel guilty. And you don’t need to feel guilty to be wor­thy. You only need to be your­self, what­ev­er ver­sion you choose.

Shame will always have some­thing to say. It’s per­sis­tent. It doesn’t get tir­ing. But it also doesn’t know every­thing about you. Shame doesn’t have to define your sto­ry in recov­ery because it only focus­es on the worst parts. Recov­ery pays atten­tion to the whole pic­ture. The long-term effort. The will­ing­ness to try again. The qui­et, steady progress that’s easy to over­look because it doesn’t make a big scene. You’re still build­ing your sto­ry. That’s what mat­ters. You can write it and rewrite it as many times as you want. Shame is just one opin­ion, not a con­clu­sion. You are the one hold­ing the pen.

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