Over the weekend, in a talk with family members, I brought up the habit of being sloppy with language. With social media I find myself throwing words at issues, topics or people without thinking through what those words mean.
This is beyond a grammar police matter, it’s more like dictionary police matter. When discussing emotions and issues close to people’s hearts, words mean things.
Using the wrong words gives your mind the wrong focus. You start looking at problems from the wrong perspective.
When it comes to guilt and shame the perspective matters.
Sloppy word use leads to confused thinking. I can express a wide range of emotions, but if it’s not clear, nothing is communicated clearly.
One area where this creates problems that pertains to affairs is confusing guilt with shame. Guilt and shame are two very different experiences.
Although often found in the company of each other, they are two distinctive things. They are not the same.
Each calls for a different remedy and each impacts your body and your thinking in different ways. Calling them by the wrong name fixes the wrong problem.
You can still find yourself bogged down in an unpleasant emotional state even though you thought you ‘fixed’ the problem. It’s likely that you fixed the wrong problem.
Confusing these two is especially troubling in that they are both painful and can drive you to extreme actions. Taking radical or extreme action that focuses on the wrong problem becomes a nightmare.
That guilt or shame you struggle with is a way of letting you know that the problem hasn’t been fully resolved. Sure, you did something, it may have been the right thing to do and you did it the right way, you just had the wrong focus.
Your mind is a powerful force. When given the wrong focus, it puts all your energies in the wrong place.
If you’ve ever struggled with this, there’s hope. In the special report entitled “Affairs and Shame” going out to members of the Restored Lifestyle site, I clear this up. The report is going out on the 15th.
You can finally address the guilt and shame confusion and settle these things.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
