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This is http://www.essayz.com/a9007111.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %RESPONSIBLE SHAME GUILT RESPONSIVE HONEST BEHAVIOR 900711 Truly responsible people are responsive to true statements about the consequences of their behavior. To be responsible is to be truly responsive; i.e., honest in responses. It is useful to make a distinction between guilt and shame. When we behave in ways which unfairly pain, hurt and/or damage others we may properly be regarded as guilty in some way because of our behavior. We should accept the reality of such guilt in a responsible way; in honest responses to true statements about the consequences of our behavior. Yet we should not accept responsibility for other people's embarrassment, if we have spoken the truth with charity and they refuse to honor the truth which embarrasses them. Their refusal to honor the truth is not our responsibility, and we are not guilty of any fault in speaking the truth charitably. When people seek to shame us, they are going beyond speaking the truth with clarity about the consequences of our behavior. When people seek to shame us they are trying to get us to accept and affirm false statements about our worth as a person. To try to shame someone is to try to get them to believe that in some fundamental way they are defective, and not worthy of acceptance into communal dialogue and the affirmations which such acceptance implies. We do not need to accept shame when it is offered to us. We have no responsibility to accept the shame which irresponsible people try to dump upon us. People who offer shame to us are guilty of disintegrative behavior, and they need to be charitably confronted with the truth about their disintegrative behavior. Trying to shame people leads to personal pain, hurt and damage, just as physically abusing people does. The verbal abuse of shaming people can be just as debilitating as physical abuse. We have no responsibility to accept such abuse or to respect it. It is irresponsible for us to accept such abuse or to respect it. In accepting such shameful abuse we become co-participants with the abusers in their games of mutual self deception, whether they be recognized addicts, codependents, colluders; or generally respected and powerful citizens of leadership positions in the community. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================