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Shame is one of the most painful experiences, and it is shameful even to talk about. People who carry a lot of it become defensive, and the defensiveness tends to take the form of blame. A psychoanalyst who hears someone blame others constantly listens for the shame underneath.
Saying it's not my fault protects against the feeling of having done something bad to someone. The difficulty is that a person who blames often denies that they do it, so the evidence tends to come from other people.
Hearing a partner or friend say you blame me all the time can be a signal. It can mean that taking responsibility for having hurt someone is too painful to tolerate, and the accusation that it's because of you that I did that stands in for the shame.
Why does shame turn into anger so often?
Psychoanalyst Helen Block Lewis described humiliated fury in her 1971 book Shame and Guilt in Neurosis, a rage that follows an experience of being shamed. Psychologist June Tangney later tested the idea in questionnaire studies. In a paper from 1992, her team found that people prone to shame were also prone to anger and to blaming others for their troubles. Guilt-prone people showed no such link.
What do psychologists say separates shame from guilt?
Tangney and Lewis both drew the line at the object of the feeling. Guilt attaches to a specific behavior, as in I did a bad thing. Shame attaches to the whole self, as in I am bad. Tangney's research found that the global focus of shame tends to bring a wish to hide or run, while guilt tends to bring a wish to repair.
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