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The Role of Shame In Addiction

16 Sept 2024 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:22

A short YouTube talk by Amber Hollingsworth explaining how emotions—especially shame, guilt, and remorse—play a key motivational role in prompting people to consider changing addictive behaviors. The speaker argues that, because addictive behaviors remain rewarding through dopamine and similar brain chemicals, sufficient experience of shame/guilt/remorse helps create the motivational balance needed to pursue change.

So these are very important emotions. In fact, without shame and guilt and remorse and those kind of feelings, people would never probably choose to change their addictive behavior, because in other ways, the addictive behavior is still rewarding through dopamine and other brain chemicals. It's when we get in the right balance of having that shame, guilt, and remorse that we begin to think about changing our behaviors.