Guilt vs. Shame: Torture vs. Tool

Posted on April 19, 2013 in Guilt Mania Therapy

Coming out of a manic episode can be a struggle when we start to consider or hear about the things we did while we were in episode. I have many sorrows to relate: there was the time, for example, when I decided to have a race down a crowded city street in Palo Alto with another person — possibly also bipolar — who cut me off.

I put the pedal to the metal and swerved around several vehicles, cutting them off as I had cut off the jerk who — in my mind at least — had started it all.

My wife was in the seat next to me, clutching the handle in front of her and all but screaming for me to slow down.

I did manage to realize what I was doing after a few cars honked at me and flipped me off.

No one got hurt, but afterwards I felt badly — I had lost control — that I had come so close to the point where I might have ended up in jail or on a slab in the morgue next to my wife.

There’s a scene in The Silver Linings Playbook where the main character is so frantic looking for his wedding video that he knocks his mother down by accident. This is the kind of violence that people with bipolar disorder are mostly known for. Like the Bradley Cooper character I never set out to harm people, but I came too close for their comfort. People were afraid of me.

Therapists often tell us to forget about such things, to write them off as “things we did in mania”. They are trying to save us from the daily self-torture known as guilt. Every time we are reminded, we think we must put ourselves on a rack and stretch until we cry out.

But I don’t think that is a very good answer because I have seen people give themselves too much license. “I did that in one of my episodes, so it is OK.” They miss the point: many of the things we do in mania are harmful. A few of us have spent large amounts of money — run up credit cards and stolen to feed the rampant materialism of mania. We may choose to ignore the anger that overwhelms those around us. Or the acts of vandalism — one guy I know put a hole in the wall with hist fist — that frighten those we love.

I don’t think the answer is feeling guilty but part of my recovery has been to feel a proper amount of shame for the demonic releases that I perpetrated while I was high on my illness.

Guilt doesn’t do anything except make us feel awful. It is torturing ourselves over and over again for the things that we did.

I prefer to engage in shame. What is the difference? Guilt punishes us repeatedly. Shame reminds us that the thing we did was harmful. We don’t muse over it, we don’t spend our time getting the high again or inflicting emotional damage like an experimental psychologist might electrify the floor of a cage to punish a rat.

In guilt, we keep revisiting the scene of the crime. In shame, we simply say “What I did was wrong. And I will not go back there.” This means that we take steps to prevent future episodes of mania and live as responsible human beings. Our episodes are no longer an excuse: they are things we avoid.