READ TIME: 10m
DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 8 months ago
In all probability, you've had some moments in your life where you felt shame or guilt.
Both shame and guilt can arise within you, when you subordinate to some outer, presumed, moral authority and potential hypocrite, who promotes a one sided expectation and ideal on how you are “supposed to” be or act in a certain impossible or improbable way, i.e. - to be always supportive, not challenging, always good, not bad, always nice and kind, not mean and cruel, always positive, not negative, always giving, not taking, all one-sided instead in a more balanced manner that is more possible or probable, which is with both sides.
You feel SHAME when you perceive that one of your actions or inactions resulted in you having more drawbacks than benefits, more losses than gains, more negative than positive, more disadvantage than advantage. This occurs again when you did not live up to the expectation you injected into your values from some other outer authority.
GUILT is when you assume that an action or inaction on your part has led to somebody else having more losses than gains, more negatives than positives, more disadvantage than advantage, more drawbacks than benefits.
Both of these are self-depreciative, and both of them likely lead to signs or symptoms in your life.
For example, some of the symptoms of shame and guilt can show up in the form of overconsumption. This could be the overconsumption of food or shopping in an effort to feel better about yourself – to fill that which feels empty.
It can also show up in the form of feelings or unworthiness where you have difficulty receiving wealth or rewards because you don’t feel worthy of receiving them.
Your shame and guilt can be revealed in the form of a compensation - an altruistic act where you sacrifice for others in an effort to try to feel greater about yourself.
These are often signs and symptoms of guilt and shame. And, if you diminish yourself with guilt and shame, you hold yourself back from actualizing your magnificence. You also block your ability to receive.
To assume that there have been drawbacks to actions, events, or behaviors without any corresponding benefits is not entirely true.
For example, you may have experienced instances in your life where someone else's actions seemed terrible at the time, but days, weeks, months, or years later, you looked back and felt grateful for the experience, when you finally realized the hidden benefits of their actions.
Similarly, the perceptions of some of your behaviors may make you feel guilty or ashamed, but you might not be seeing how those actions equally served either others or yourself in some way.
These imbalanced perceptions can have a powerful impact on your resulting behavior and actions.
By holding onto shame and guilt, you may find yourself wallowing in those polarized emotional feelings, overindulging in food or spending in an effort to make yourself temporarily feel better, avoiding others, overreacting to situations and viewing them subjectively, and perhaps even experiencing feelings of depression or anxiety.
These are all powerful symptoms that offer feedback to let you know that you likely have imbalanced perceptions and emotions that you would be wise to address and balance.
Your shame and guilt can result in physical symptoms in the form of autoimmune reactions, where you essentially self-attack due to these negative emotions directed at yourself. These physical symptoms can also be valuable feedback to address the imbalances in your mind and in your life.
So taking the time to clear these emotions can be advantageous for your overall health, financial well-being, and relationships. If you're in business, releasing stored shame and guilt can also prevent you from undermining your business and profit margins.
So where do you begin?
In my signature 2-day online Breakthrough Experience program, which I've been teaching for almost 4 decades. I have a specific science on how to dissolve imbalanced emotions such as shame and guilt.
I talk about how, whenever you feel shame and guilt, you're likely making the assumption that your actions have caused more drawbacks than benefits.
But how can that be true when there are two sides to an event or action, even if you are not conscious of one of the sides at first.
So, in the Breakthrough Experience, I take you step-by-step through this scientific process, called the Demartini Method.
Here is an abbreviated adaptation of the process:
- Make a list of everything you feel guilty about because you perceive you have affected somebody else or shame because you affected yourself. Be thorough in listing everything that brings up feelings of shame and guilt, even unconscious aspects that may surface later.
- Next, consider who was impacted by these actions, as shame and guilt sometimes affect both ourselves and others. Write down the names of the individuals involved.
- Explore how your behavior served them. Look for the upsides, advantages, and gains they actually also received. You may at first perceive there aren’t any benefits. But once you stop and look more thoroughly at how it has helped them spiritually, intellectually, in business, financially, socially or physically, you will uncover the correlating positives. As John Milton emphasized, it is our minds that make a hell out of a heaven or a heaven out of a hell.
- Explore how, if you had done at that moment the exact opposite action or inaction that you feel guilty about, how would it have been a drawback to that individual?
As long as you have an assumption that your behavior or actions have resulted in more drawbacks than benefits to somebody, you’re likely to carry it as guilt. This then tends to affect your behavior, self-worth and immune system. You may even beat yourself up, think there's something wrong with you.
Resentment towards others often stems from your own feelings of shame and guilt. What you perceive in them is reminding you of what you have perceive lies within you.
Clearing your inner shame and guilt allows you to cultivate more loving and appreciative relationships with others, reducing your reactive responses when they trigger feelings of shame or guilt within you.
As the old biblical statement in Romans 2:1 suggests, whatever you judge in others, you have also done yourself. The Breakthrough Experience has shown this to be true for tens of thousands of participants, that whatever you see in other people that you resent, you've also done in your life in your own form. As such, you tend to feel ashamed and guilty about it and these people remind you of that.
Subordination to outer moral authorities and moral hypocrisies can result in this.
Once you clear and dissolve the shame and guilt, you won’t feel resentment or anger anymore. Instead, you are free to realize and appreciate that these people are teachers brought into your life to help you clear your own shame and guilt.
Every weekend in the Breakthrough Experience, I witness individuals dissolve stored emotions, whether they felt proud, ashamed, self-righteous, or self-wrongteous.
As I mentioned earlier, shame and guilt are both self-minimizing positions. It's a persona or mask you wear when you assume there are more drawbacks than benefits to something you've done. And pride is an assumption in the other direction, where you perceive more benefits than drawbacks.
In actuality there are both sides and that everything has a pair of opposites.
So if you don't take the time to balance the equation, you’re likely to store those imbalanced perceptions and emotions, and be inauthentic. These may affect you narcissistically when you're proud and altruistically when you're feeling guilt or shame.
Whenever you minimize yourself, you tend to sacrifice for others. And when you exaggerate yourself, you tend to sacrifice others for you. Both of which are futile and non-sustainable relationship dynamics.
The truth lies in acknowledging both sides, as everything has its pair of opposites.
By balancing your perceptions and their resulting emotional equations, you can transform your decisions, and actions.
During the Breakthrough Experience, I've witnessed profound changes as individuals neutralize emotions such as pride and self-righteousness or shame, guilt, and self-dereciation.
You are most likely to become authentic when you neutralize and thereby dissolve or let go of these polarized emotions, and do the work to uncover and balance both sides to bring your perceptions into balance. In doing so, you become more neutral, objective, and proactive, instead of polarized, subjective, biased and reactive.
The Demartini Method is a powerful tool to help you thoroughly identify the specific traits or actions that evoke feelings of shame and guilt within you.
I believe that there is no reason for you to hold onto shame and guilt.
You may have been taught moral ideals and hypocrisies, unrealistic expectations to be one-sided - always nice, never mean, always kind, never cruel, always positive, never negative, always peaceful, never wrathful. These unsustainable monopolar illusions often disempower people, often leading to shame and guilt when they don't meet these unattainable standards. True perfection lies in embracing both sides of life, not one-sided utopias.
I am inspired to teach people, including you, to free yourself from the unsustainable and unfulfilling pursuits of one-sided living. I am inspired to show you how to break free from moral hypocrisies and recognize that everything has two sides so that you're not burdened by shame, guilt, pride, or resentment, all of which undermine your power.
If you would love to master your life and learn to dissolve guilt and shame, it is wise to take the time to list everything you've been judging yourself for, likely influenced by injected moral hypocrisies and unrealistic self-expectations. Then, write down all those affected.
Next, explore how your actions truly benefited them, not speculations, only stopping when you have a tear of gratitude as you liberate yourself from that emotional baggage. This process is an integral part of the Breakthrough Experience, the starting point that has many more components to it, but that all involve quality questions to help you become fully conscious of what you may have hidden in your unconscious or the “missing” information.
As I so often say, the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask yourself. By asking quality questions that balance the equation, you can liberate yourself from guilt and shame, and embrace the full magnificence of your whole, balanced, and authentic self.
To Sum Up:
- Shame and guilt are self-depreciative emotions that tend to arise when you assume your actions have caused more drawbacks than benefits for yourself or others.
- These emotions can manifest in various ways, such as overconsumption or over-altruistic behaviors, and may lead to autoimmune reactions.
- I am certain that there's no reason for you to carry unnecessary emotions. Polarized emotions are simply states of incomplete awareness.
- You don't have to wait weeks, months, or years to dissolve your regret, shame and other emotions that are weighing you down. I've watched people who have been beating themselves up and regretting things for decades clear it in minutes during the Breakthrough Experience.
- Balancing your perceptions by recognizing that every action has two sides is a powerful step to dissolve shame and guilt, leading to profound transformations in your life.
- Liberating yourself from shame and guilt allows you to experience greater authenticity, gratitude, and love.
In conclusion, I would love to show you how to ask questions to liberate yourself so that you’re freed from carrying around unnecessary emotional baggage. I'm certain they can be dissolved and it is way more simple than you might imagine.
If you would love to dissolve any guilt, shame or self-blame that you have in your life, join me at my signature seminar the Breakthrough Experience. This is where I can help you transform it. I can show you the exact steps to follow in any situation for the rest of your life.
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If you’re seriously committed to your own growth, if you’re ready to make a change now and you’d love some help doing so, then book a FREE Discovery call with a member of the Demartini Team so we can take you through your mini power assessment session.
You’ll come away with a 3-step action plan and the foundation to empower your life.
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