Destructive guilt: why we are used to living with it

We underestimate this feeling. We call it a worm that is gnawing, we say that time will heal, we try to step over it and move on. Why shouldn’t guilt be pushed into the far corner, what does it really tell us? And how to deal with it correctly? Family psychologist and psychotherapist Ekaterina Pastukhova shares this with readers of the online publication INC-News.ru.

Guilt is an invisible feeling

Guilt often causes emotional disturbances such as anxiety, depression, fear or even anger. A person may face a constant feeling of dissatisfaction with himself and his actions. Stress caused by guilt can lead to physical symptoms such as insomnia, headaches, abdominal pain or muscle tension.

Feelings of guilt can affect relationships with other people. Without realizing it, we may begin to avoid socializing, feel alienated, or have difficulty forming close connections. And of course, constant feelings of guilt can lead to decreased self-esteem and self-confidence.

Feelings determine our lives. How we feel, how we experience this or that event, how we feel inside ourselves what happens to us every day. We can catch some of them: joy, sadness, jealousy, envy, shame. But more often than not, we don’t even notice the guilt; it’s considered a matter of course and “it’s like that for everyone.” This feeling is “hardwired” into us by default, like the firmware of smartphones, and we live with it for a very long time.

The feeling of guilt is so familiar to us that we often take it for granted, something natural. But we ourselves do not realize how much it poisons our lives, exhausts us and limits us in many areas.

Three types of guilt. Which is yours?

In psychology, there are three types of guilt: neurotic guilt, real guilt, guilt as a mistake. How are they different?

• Neurotic guilt, which is imposed on us by our parents, boss, partner, society. It comes from religious taboos, from modern stereotypes and attitudes, from the cultural context and social environment in which a person finds himself and its prohibitions. Often the voices of our significant adults become the “voice of guilt.”

All this makes a person feel bad, wrong, often while his own voice of conscience and his own position cannot be detected. It happens that an inner voice says: “Well, I’ve lost a worthy man again. You’ll remain a girl, you fool”, “I screwed up again, you could have done better, you’re not worthy of this position”, “well, again it’s my fault that I didn’t come to my parents, but I could have found the time, a good daughter would have found it”, “absolutely I worked too hard and fell asleep instead of playing with the child, I’m a bad mother” - this is about neurotic guilt.

“Neurotic guilt kills personality”

With neurotic guilt, a person feels obligated: “I must succeed in order to please my mother,” “I must be a good wife,” “I must know everything in advance so as not to disappoint my boss.” And then the question arises, what do I owe to myself? And where does my responsibility end and the responsibility of others begin?

If we cannot answer these questions for ourselves or simply do not ask them, then our life changes very much in quality and becomes not personal. Not ours. It's as if we are living it for someone else. And we don’t feel that it is good for us and that we are happy in it.

• Real guilt (true guilt) is when we betray ourselves. Namely, we act contrary to our own conscience or value and do not act the way we really want. Perhaps the fear of consequences hinders us, or we want to succeed and are faced with a moral choice, to act as our heart tells us (that is, as it would be right for ourselves) or to listen to the noise that tells us the selfish voice “everyone already has, but you don’t”, etc.
• Guilt, how error works in the context of when we do not see reality as it really is and cannot realistically calculate our strengths. For example, we think that we can cope with this difficulty and pass the exam by preparing two hours before it, but we actually need more time. Or that we are ready to fulfill the obligations that our boss has assigned to us, but over time we realize that taking on the additional workload was a mistake.

At the moment of making a decision, we do not have enough knowledge about the world (situation, person, something external) or even about ourselves (our internal one). And then, over time, we understand that we did the wrong thing, that it was a mistake. There's nothing wrong with that. It is important to be more sensitive to yourself, to take yourself into account, to weigh your strengths and possibilities.

Guilt is always invisible, it hides in burnout, depression, anxiety, fears. Of course, experiencing these states is difficult, but they really are a red signal that will help you say goodbye to the destructive feeling and take back your life.