Usually, we view anger, guilt, and shame as feelings we would rather get rid of. We find them uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing, and so we push them away—often before we are even aware that we have them. But what if these very feelings are the keys to connection?
“Never do anything to avoid guilt or shame”
– Marshall Rosenberg
Feelings as signposts
Within nonviolent communication, we see feelings as signals: they show us what we need. Anger, guilt, and shame are no exception; on the contrary. It is for good reason that Marshall Rosenberg calls them our four friends (among which he also includes depression).
Liv Larsson describes in her book “Anger, guilt & shame: reclaiming power and choice” (2012) that there are sometimes situations in which we do not succeed in transforming anger. She discovered that shame can then be an entry point to clarity about our needs, helping us take responsibility for our feelings.
We often see anger, guilt, and shame as problematic feelings we want to get rid of. As a result, we sometimes do not even recognize them—we have already pushed them away unconsciously. When we welcome them as signals, they can help us gain clarity on what truly matters so that we can be compassionate toward ourselves and perhaps toward others as well.
Where do anger, guilt, and shame come from?
By nature, feelings are waves of energy that last briefly and eventually disappear once they have achieved their purpose: pointing to a need. However, anger, guilt, and shame often remain present for a long time—sometimes for years or even generations—preventing them from disappearing in this natural way (Arnina Kashtan during NVC Global festival 2020).
The reason it can be so difficult to deal with anger, guilt, and shame lies in our thoughts, our way of thinking, the stories we tell ourselves, and our interpretations. These feelings are interwoven with our learned ideas about right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, normal and abnormal. In short, our conditioning.
Essentially, anger, guilt, and shame stem from the story we tell ourselves. We stay stuck in them because we believe these stories are true. The challenge is to detach these feelings from the stories we tell ourselves. In this way, we can shorten periods of anger, guilt, and shame and gain clarity about what we need.
As long as we believe that someone else is the cause of our feelings, we cannot hear the message they carry. As soon as we connect with the underlying needs, anger, guilt, and shame can transform into power, and freedom of choice emerges once again.
Systems of power
Marshall Rosenberg sees anger, guilt, and shame as the result of the power-over systems in which we were raised. Guilt and shame are maintained by our conditioning—upbringing, religion, social norms—and are used to teach us to “be good” through fear of rejection or punishment.
We learn to resolve conflicts through punishment. As long as we continue to believe that violence can be solved with violence, these systems will persist. Only when we also change the systems can our way of living together change.
Shame and empathy
Shame is seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. We think we are not good enough, that there is something wrong with us. To avoid shame, we adapt at the expense of our authenticity. Consequently, the need for “acceptance as I am” cannot be met. Empathy is an antidote to shame.
During a theme day, we delve deeper into the subject, discovering in which situations we experience shame, how we experience it in our bodies, what our default escape routes from shame are, how we can transform feelings through our needs, and we make a request. Would you like to participate? Then click here.
“Shame stifles us, preventing us from saying what we need.
Guilt makes us afraid, preventing us from doing what is necessary.
Anger blinds us, so that we do things we later regret.”
– Liv Larsson