Shame and Guilt Worksheet
Explore our comprehensive Shame and Guilt Worksheet guide to process and manage these complex emotions effectively for better mental health.
Fact Checked by Nate Lacson.
What are shame and guilt?
Shame and guilt are complex emotions that everyone experiences at various points in their lives, each with distinct characteristics and impacts.
Shame is often linked to the perception of failing to meet specific standards or expectations. These expectations might be personal, imposed by authority figures, or perceived societal norms. When individuals experience shame, they often feel a deep sense of inadequacy or inferiority. This emotion can lead to feelings of worthlessness and a desire to withdraw from others, as it fundamentally challenges one's sense of self and value.
In contrast, guilt arises from actions or behaviors one perceives as wrong or harmful. It is closely tied to regret or remorse over specific actions, particularly those that may have negatively impacted others. Unlike shame, which is about self-perception, guilt is more about one's actions and consequences. Guilt can be a motivating force for change and making amends, as it often leads individuals to reflect on their actions and seek ways to rectify any harm caused.
Understanding the nuances between shame and guilt is crucial, as they can significantly influence an individual's emotional well-being and behavior.
Printable Shame and Guilt Worksheet
Download this Shame and Guilt Worksheet for therapist to establish the necessary trust and rapport for their patients to share their trials and tribulations.
What are the possible impacts of shame and guilt on one’s mental health?
Both these emotional states are intense, and if they’re left unchecked and unmanaged for too long, they can result in numerous problems, like the following:
- They can whittle down a person’s self-esteem and make them feel unworthy.
- Their decision-making ability becomes impaired by low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness because they fear the results and responsibility.
- They can also strain a person’s relationships because they might start fearing criticism, even for the most inconsequential things. This and the previous point can lead to the development of anxiety.
- If they fear being judged or rejected by others, they might withdraw and isolate themselves. This could lead to depression.
- They might also develop harmful coping mechanisms like substance use and abuse or self-harming behaviors.
- They might engage in self-criticism and other forms of negative self-talk.
How can you manage shame and guilt?
If shame and guilt result from one’s actions that have offended others, one way to move past it is to apologize and make amends with the wrong people. Whether or not they accept the apology, one must accept things and take responsibility.
Speaking of acceptance, someone who feels shame and guilt must also learn to acknowledge and accept these emotions as a normal part of life. What’s important is to learn lessons from mistakes so they can make the necessary changes in their lives to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Self-compassion can help people become more willing to accept how they feel and work to move past it. They can treat themselves like a friend treating someone else in a similar situation and tell themselves that their shame and guilt don’t have to define their whole person and the rest of their life. They can even remind themselves about their best qualities and use those qualities to take responsibility, make amends, move forward, and avoid making mistakes that bring shame and guilt.
For some people, this is easier said than done, so it would be best to seek support and help, like enrolling in a psychotherapy program (dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, or cognitive behavioral therapy).
Through therapy, they can pick up skills that can help them reconfigure the way they think about their shame and guilt. Treatment is especially effective for trauma survivors, some of whom feel shame and guilt after going through a traumatic experience.
How to use this Shame and Guilt Worksheet
Suppose one were to take psychotherapy for help. In that case, their therapist will likely issue worksheets to them to help them process their emotions and apply specific skills like cognitive restructuring and de-catastrophization.
For this Shame and Guilt Worksheet, a person will be asked to detail their feelings and thoughts about their shame and guilt. They just need to answer the following questions:
- Try to remember one experience that made you feel shame and/or guilt. Describe that experience. What happened?
- What did you think about in that situation? What did you do?
- Did this experience motivate you in any way? Or did it do the opposite?
- Are you able to notice when other people feel ashamed or guilty? If so, what do you think about when you notice them? What do you do?
- Was there ever a point where your feelings of shame and guilt have affected your relationships with others? If so, how did it affect your relationships?
- OPTIONAL: Do you have any coping strategies for your feelings of shame and guilt? It’s okay if you don’t. If you do, please share how you went about them and if they worked.
Each item has space for 14 lines. This will allow people to be as detailed as possible about their shame and guilt.
Shame and Guilt Worksheet example
Now that you know the gist of shame and guilt and what to expect from our Shame and Guilt Worksheet, we’d like to show you what it looks like when filled out.
Please note that what’s written here is based on a fictional person trying to process their shame and guilt. It’s done to give you an idea of how the worksheet is supposed to be answered:
Here it is:
Download this free Shame and Guilt Worksheet example here:
If you like what you see and believe this will help you or your patients process feelings of shame and guilt, please download our free Shame and Guilt Worksheet PDF template!
Why use Carepatron as your therapy software?
Thanks for reading this guide! We hope this was an excellent refresher about shame and guilt. We also hope that our worksheet helps you or your patients think about and process your feelings of shame and guilt.
While we still have you, we’d like to ask for your time to check more of the Carepatron platform if you haven’t. We have various nifty features that will help you streamline and improve your work, and we’re confident they’re cool enough that you’ll consider us your number-one psychiatry EHR and therapy practice management software. We won’t get into these features here, but we’d like to highlight one related to this guide: our resource library.
Our resource library is a treasure trove of clinical and non-clinical healthcare resources. It covers numerous fields, topics, and practices, especially mental health!
We have various worksheets that you can take advantage of that are similar to our Shame and Guilt Worksheet. We have worksheets that help people unpack negative emotions like anger, despair, and spite. We also have worksheets that help them reframe automatic negative thoughts to more positive ones.
We also have various assessments like scales and inventories that can help you assess the severity of specific mental health problems your patients might have.
What’s great about all these resources is that they’re free, so feel free to read as many guides as you want and download as many templates as you need!
Commonly asked questions
Practicing self-compassion and positive self-talk can go a long way. Setting realistic goals can also help temper expectations and prevent you from setting yourself up for disappointment if you don’t meet specific goals.
They are similar but not the same. Shame revolves around feeling inadequate and not meeting expectations. Guilt revolves around the regret of doing something perceived as wrong.
Self-forgiveness can help people let go of harsh self-criticisms. It can also help them realize that they’re human and they’ve made mistakes. Once they recognize these, they can take the steps to move on and do better.
