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The more sinful and guilty
a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy,
healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.
Dr. Albert Ellis
 Guilt is an alarm mechanism by which we become aware that we have
violated our values. It is the tension that is caused by the remnant of energy
that has not been expressed. The difference between our action and our
capability is equivalent to the distress that we feel. Similar to any other type
of restrained energy, this energy causes discomfort until it is released by
making amends or by apologizing.
 | It serves the purpose of human survival. The pain guides us away from
behavior that threatens that survival. Rather than being a negative
experience, it can be a constructive advisor that directs us toward social
harmony, accountability, and our ideals of self and community. |
| It encourages us to study our motivations and values. |
| It prods us to investigate our standards. It reminds us that our human
self is not perfect. This reminder is the basis of a realistic humility, a
knowledge of our human boundaries, and the sensible strategic decision to
rely on a source of power and guidance that is greater than our own. |
| It allows us to avoid the greater guilt. That greater guilt is the denial
that we have committed an infraction. Many times, parents will forgive and
forget when a child breaks a rule and then confesses to the wrong doing. The
more severe punishment awaits the child who is caught and then tells lies to
deny the act. |
Techniques for managing guilt.
| We can explore our values. Guilt arises when we violate those values. If the values are not realistic,
we can be feeling guilt needlessly. Inappropriate guilt can be caused by
idealistic perfectionism, personal or religious, an inflated sense of
responsibility, or pleasure that seems undeserved. If we develop reasonable
values, guilt provides an accurate and useful form of internal feedback. Guilt
can arise from various categories of values:
 | Religious belief. Our conscience notifies us when we have violated
the values that we have accepted from our religion or from inner prompting
that we sense are from our true self. |
| The psyche. Jung said that the conscience is an innate part of the
psyche. Its purpose is to sustain psychological balance and wholeness,
keeping us on track toward inner growth and individuation. |
| External rules. Freud believed that the conscience develops in
response to society's restrictions. We are externalizing the limitations
that have been imposed from outside. Young children are capable of feeling
remorse for acts that apparently violate their natural sense of right and
wrong, but one task in parenting is to teach additional behavioral guidelines that have been established by society's, and the parents',
expectations. |
| Our own standards. We can still be carrying unwarranted feelings of
guilt from our childhood when our parents used it as a way to control us and
punish us As adults, we can question the standards against which we were
judged and decide whether we want to use those same standards. In the
individuation process, we develop a personal conscience. We do this by
challenging the values that have been imposed by other people. When this
conscience becomes a sincere expression of our deliberated values, it does
not need to be justified to anyone. |
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| Don't feel guilty for having negative thoughts and feelings. Our thoughts
and feelings arise spontaneously and honestly. It is then our responsibility to
decide whether to act on them. If they seem inappropriate or disturbing, we must
still acknowledge them, and perhaps try to understand their source "Why do
I feel this way?". To feel guilty about the thoughts or feelings themselves
is to condemn and repress both our spontaneity and honesty . |
| Maintain your self esteem. Guilt is the result of a particular action.
A bad action does not make us a bad person. When we allow guilt to make us see
ourselves as bad, we are likely to play out this role by continuing the behavior. Our guilt is then compounded and our self esteem is further injured.
To regain our self esteem, we need to forgive ourselves, change our behavior,
make amends, and live up to the values on which self esteem is based. |
| Realize that the action was the best that we can have done at the time.
No matter what we did, it seemed like the best approach. We can not have done
anything other than what we did. This is not an excuse, and it is not a release
from the obligation of reparation. It is a realistically compassionate
acknowledgment of our imperfect humanity. We are always doing the best we can. |
| Understand why you did the action. Even the most violent, destructive, or
vengeful act is motivated by a constructive goal. For any deed, we can see
several motivations, all malicious, but if we keep looking, there is a reason
that is based on a desire to defend our rights, or to regain self esteem, or to
accomplish another beneficial intent. That was our motivation. The other reasons
were just the thoughts that we considered while trying to find the real drive.
The destructiveness of our act was caused by our inability to clarify the goal
and to devise a less obtrusive tactic, and perhaps by the intensity of the
emotion overwhelming our sensitivity and rationality. No motivation for an act,
from a stranger's rude comment to the atrocities of Adolph Hitler, seeks
brutality for the sake of brutality. There is always a positive goal. This
understanding, however, does not pardon the offense that has been committed. It
merely helps us to comprehend the underlying psychological dynamics. |
| Learn from your guilt. Guilt contains messages about our values,
motivations, social skills, emotional tendencies, and so on. As we study these
messages, we should think about how we can have handled the situation better, to
gain some insight and competence that will help us act in a more productive
manner when trying to achieve the same goal in the future. |
| Accept responsibility for your actions. This is respect for reality. We
did what we did, and we cannot change the past. Accepting responsibility can be
a simple acknowledgement when guilt's pain gives us a plain message of our
accountability. We recoil from this message if we know that we will use it to
attack our self esteem and to cause ourselves other types of additional pain. It
is not the guilt itself that makes us dodge the acceptance. It is the further
pain that we inflict on ourselves. Our psyche reacts to this assault
instinctively with a disavowal of responsibility for the act. The psyche can
accept the discomfort of the guilt itself, but it will not tolerate the
supplementary suffering, so it protects us through denial. |
| Repair the damage. Guilt is assuaged when we confirm our values by
resolving to change our behavior and by making reparations. These reparations
can include paying back any ill-gotten money, or offering an apology, or taking
another action that would restore the dignity of all involved including
ourselves. |
Next topic: Stress
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