The process of responsibility, self-inquiry, and letting go of the past renews and deepens self-respect. It is called forgiveness. Forgiveness creates a shift in perception that permits us to see our mistake as an opportunity to learn rather than as proof of how “bad” we are. Healthy guilt opens us up to increasing self-knowledge, compassion, empathy, and spiritual growth, and by letting go of healthy guilt’s pain, we keep the deepened self-knowledge, compassion, empathy, and spiritual growth. On the other hand, unhealthy guilt keeps us stuck in a continual restatement of our presumed unworthiness, and we live in the painful state of being in which we feel defective, phoney, flawed, or unworthy (the feeling of shame).

The spiritual search for meaning, wisdom, conncectedness, and love begins with self-knowledge. We need to understand the false self and its basis in shame before we can let go of the fear that sustains it and begin to reorganize our personalities around the true self. The Catch-22 of the shame-based personality, however, is that we are too ashamed of ourselves to engage in honest introspection! Knowing oneself would mean admitting the normal weaknesses and fears that every human being has, but a shame-based person tries to hide these from himself out of shame.

The first step in my own ongoing recovery from unhealthy guilt and the shame that underlies it was recognition of its symptoms…. Admitting how we feel, without getting down on ourselves for feeling that way, is how we learn to listen to emotional messages, free ourselves from the past, and start our psychospiritual healing. (From the book “Guilt is the Teacher, Love is the Lesson” by Joan Borysenko, p. 27 & 32)