Feelings of guilt are one of the most powerful and destructive feelings. It can be justified and unreasonable, caused by the wrong style of family education. Feelings of guilt tend to be the foundation of major addictions such as alcoholism and many mental disorders.
Guilt and shame
Guilt is similar to shame, they are often identified, but there are some differences: shame arises on the condition that an unpleasant event happened in front of witnesses, and a person experiences guilt even when alone with himself. Thus, guilt is a more personal concept, while shame is more social. The following points can be distinguished from the comparative analysis of the concepts of “shame” and “guilt”:
- Guilt is always associated with a specific event, caused by the feeling of harm or discomfort to someone. Feelings of shame are more powerful and broader, and are not necessarily associated with a specific event and causing harm to someone.
- Shame is the recognition and awareness of the general defectiveness of oneself as a person, a person. Guilt is a condition that accompanies actions or thoughts that are contrary to the norms of society or the attitudes of the individual, that is, remorse.
- In case of guilt, the emphasis is on an act, a thought (“How could I do just that?”). When you feel shame, attention is focused on your “I” (“How exactly could I do this?”). In this regard, shame is undoubtedly more dangerous. The person wants to disappear, not just fix the act or be forgiven.
- It is not only immoral acts, actions and thoughts that are ashamed. Someone is ashamed of their freckles, someone is ashamed of their height or weight. Shame is a vision of your worthlessness, insolvency. Guilt is a component of shame in some cases.
- Shame arises against the background of failure in life (unattainability of goals and awareness of failure), a sense of guilt – in case of failure in activity or violation of norms and values.
- Shame makes a person feel inadequate, imperfect, worthless, disgusting, worthless. Guilt is accompanied by anger and remorse.
- Shame can cause an unexpected and even small event or something mundane. Guilt is a consequence of violation by word or deed.
- At the moment of shame, the somatic function is first included in the work: redness, withdrawal of the eyes, head tilt, strong emotions and affective states. Guilt stimulates mental and behavioral activity: comprehending what happened, focusing on action, “resuscitation” measures.
- Shame makes you feel the fear of loneliness, exile, renunciation. Guilt makes you afraid of punishment and condemnation.
- Shame includes mental defenses such as denial, withdrawal, perfectionism, arrogance, exhibitionism, and rage. Guilt lurks behind rationalization, self-forgetfulness, meditation, paranoia, obsessive-compulsive behavior, intellectualization, and the need for punishment.
- Among the positive functions of shame are humanity, modesty, autonomy, independence, and a sense of competence. Among the positive influences of guilt are initiative and activity, reverse restorative actions, morality of behavior.
- Guilt is associated with the self-esteem of the individual, and shame is associated with the assessments of society.
The differentiation of guilt and shame is inherent in psychology as a science. In the everyday understanding, these feelings are usually identified.
Reasons for Feelings of Guilt
The same situation in different people can cause guilt, shame, or both.
Freud believed that the main reason for the feeling of guilt is the conflict between instincts and reason, that is, biological and social in a person. A similar reason is the conflict between egoism and altruism, personal and social.
Shame is often born of an internal desire to correspond to the ideal of the parents, but the simultaneous need to be an independent person, the discrepancy between the desires of the individual and the beliefs of the parents. Feelings of guilt are rooted in a person’s need to control internal aggression.
Feelings of guilt can be justified and unfounded. It is more difficult to fight the latter, since a person rarely realizes the true reasons himself, but they lie in childhood and the style of upbringing, in which parents demand a lot, scold and punish the child, prohibit and shame.
The feeling of guilt and shame is brought up in people from childhood. This is the parents’ favorite way of influencing the child’s behavior, although not entirely correct. Abuse of this method also leads to unconscious feelings of guilt.
So, the main reasons for feelings of guilt include:
- A real act that entailed dangerous or harmful consequences for other people.
- Thoughts about such an act.
- Violation of social norms.
- Infringement of one’s own interests and needs for the sake of someone’s personal or social ideas, a sense of the wrongness of life, a tightness of potential.
- Destructive family parenting style.
- Unjustified expectations, non-compliance with others’ or one’s own requirements.
- Inaction, resulting in negative consequences.
- Manipulation from the outside, the suggestion of guilt. Suspicious, modest, lack of initiative and undecided people without their own worldview give in.
- Character traits (predominance of suspiciousness, sentimentality, highly developed empathy).
How to get rid of guilt
Work begins with a clear understanding of the cause of the feeling of guilt. The purpose of the work is to eliminate the cause, which requires an individual and personal approach and understanding of a particular case.
General recommendations include the following:
- Stop seeing failures as problems, start seeing them as opportunities for personal growth.
- Realize that guilt is a brake on personal development. It does not allow you to move, makes you get stuck in a loop.
- Think about whether you are deliberately guilty, whether you are being manipulated (“I am for you, for you, and you …” …
- If you understand why you feel guilty, then make a plan to deal with the situation. Have the courage to talk to the person.
- If there is no way to talk in person, then write a letter, read it out loud and tear it up.
- The second option is to talk to a person if it is impossible to meet in person: put a chair, imagine that person on it, say whatever you want, then say what you would like to hear in response. Take these words. Ask for forgiveness and forgive yourself.
- Realize the meaninglessness of empty worries and experiences of the past. It happened, you need to accept, draw conclusions and think about how to smooth out the situation. Think about what it taught you and how to prevent it from happening in the future.
- Use the confession method, speak out.
- Play all possible scenarios if you had done otherwise. Please, think adequately, do not fantasize and do not attribute superpowers to yourself. Such an analysis makes it possible to understand that the outcome of the situation was the same – the one that happened.
- Were you to blame? Could it be that the feeling of guilt is due to the fact that you were unable to prevent something? Could you change that? Did the circumstances depend on you? Very often, especially in situations of loss and grief, people begin to come up with a series of actions that they could do. But these are just games of the imagination, and the situation can be described as “I would have known where I fall – I planted straws.” The point is that already knowing about the consequences, we can assume how this could have been avoided. But at that moment you could not know in any way, which means that there can be no fault of yours.
- Concentrate on maintaining your personality and self-esteem. It is on them that the feeling of guilt hits. Do not reproach yourself, do not punish, do not impose prohibitions.
- Expand your vision of the world. By concentrating on the problem, you provoke a narrowing of consciousness. As a result, the surrounding opportunities and solutions go unnoticed. Try to imagine that this situation happened to an abstract hero, what would help him? Do you have these opportunities in your environment? If not, how do you get them? Don’t allow yourself to become isolated.
- Keep a diary, observe yourself. Record when and what triggers the feeling of guilt (if the problem is chronic). Write down your thoughts, emotions and feelings, the reactions of others.
The process of getting rid of guilt is never short; it is always difficult and thorny. It will seem that nothing will come of it, flashbacks (sharp involuntary memories from the past) will be listened to, but regular work on yourself will yield results over time. It is not so important what you do, how much the cumulative effect of these actions. And there are two principles of work – life activity (personal, social, professional, and so on) and self-love.
The complexity of the work depends on the depth of the feeling of guilt and the degree of involvement of the protective mechanisms of the psyche. Often a person is ashamed of everything and in front of everyone, but in fact, only one situation from the past has not been released. If you cannot figure out your thoughts and feelings on your own, then contact a specialist. You cannot live with a sense of guilt, you can only exist.
