I’ve been very anxious about the COVID-19 pandemic lately. I realized that a lot of my anxiety isn’t just about finances, or health, or anything tangible. Most of my anxiety is from shame. I didn’t even know I was dealing with shame or guilt.
My therapist explained to me, “guilt is the feeling you have when you violate your moral code.” Guilt isn’t good or bad. It's your internal compass making sure you pay attention to your choices and the consequences that will follow. It gives you the opportunity to make wise choices or to make amends for bad choices.
Shame isn’t the same as guilt. "Shame says that your choices aren’t the problem, but that you are the problem,” she said. Shame makes you feel inadequate, unintelligent, undisciplined, anything un-good. It takes the focus off the choices in your control and shines the spotlight on the impossible standards that you set, or allowed someone to set for you.
I feel ashamed that I am making mistakes this week. And because I’m not working in the capacity I did before. I’ve really not been able to do anything significant to further the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Lab, the nuclear wasteland near my home. I feel so frustrated and anxious and ashamed of that.
I feel like a bad person because my closet is still a mess. I haven’t lost my holiday weight. The novel that I promised I’d write remains an outline. I haven’t stopped COVID19 from spreading across America. I haven’t invented the vaccine. I haven’t raised the dead. I’ve been totally useless this whole time.
My shame tells me somehow, that if I just “ tried harder,” that I could do all of this. It’s absurd, I know.
I didn’t violate my moral code. No one could meet the impossible standards that I feel ashamed for not meeting. I just didn’t realize that I even had these standards buried in my subconscious or that my “failures” were making me anxious.
So please give yourself grace for being a human today. Make allowances for those around you. Don’t accept shame but instead work on the choices you have control of. Find the root of your anxiety and be brave enough to look it in the eye.
I just wanted to share that with you. I pray that it helps you as much as it helped me.
God bless,
Melissa Bumstead
* Photograph Copyright © 2006-2020 Gary Valle