Why Guilt Is Not a Virtue

Your brain has been running a very specific and very convincing story about your shame. The story goes like this: the fact that I feel terrible about this thing is evidence that I am a good person. I must care. I must have values. I must be morally serious. Because if I were not, I would not feel this bad.

This is a lie. A sophisticated, well-constructed, emotionally convincing lie, but a lie nonetheless.

The feeling of shame is not evidence of goodness. It is evidence that your ego has found an extremely comfortable place to live. Because shame — specifically the kind that is carried long past the point of usefulness — keeps you at the center of your own story. It is a loop that plays on repeat: the memory, the feeling, the self-judgment, the evidence of how seriously you take your own moral failures, the confirmation that you must be someone who cares. Around and around.

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