The Plague of Guilt

Story of the Lena

Lena (not a real person but a composite from my practice) is in her late 60s. Her demeanor is proud. She holds herself tightly together. She is well dressed and is always immaculately put together for our sessions. When she was younger, spirituality and religion played an important role in her life. She would attend service weekly and was an active volunteer in her local church. That’s when life happened, so they say, and she had children and other activities that started occupying her time away from the church. Her voice is devoid of emotion as she says she feels guilty that she doesn’t go to church more often. The statement hangs in the air waiting for one of us to save it from falling flat on the ground. In this pregnant pause, Lena looks at me earnest and beseechingly. She expects me to have the answer to her guilt. Her eyes tell me that I am expected to do something with this pronouncement, but I am not sure what – do I absolve her as if I was her minister, or chastise her as if I was a parent?   

Nature of Guilt as Punishing

Guilt is an emotion and it is better to think of it as a state of being like any other emotion that arises in our awareness. Guilt generally falls into the category of negative feeling states and is associated with behaviour and the word “should”. “I should do this” or “I shouldn’t have done that,” for example. It arises when we have violated a norm or value or when we have broken a rule – whether that be secular, parental or religious. When we feel guilty, we feel bad about ourselves. Guilt has universal triggers – doing something that we know goes against the norm or value, or hurting or causing harm to someone or something;

Theo Rubin, in his book Compassion and Self-Hate, suggests that guilt with its sense of over-responsibility and morality is a means of blaming and hating ourselves. It is a feeling that we experience as depleting and fatiguing. His premise is that guilt destroys self-esteem, pleasure, well-being, and happiness.

The challenge here is separate from the childhood messages that we have received from the authorities in our lives and when guilt is a call for making amends or making a different choice. So much of our moral compass comes from earlier messages received from authority figures. If the feeling in the present is triggered from a childhood place, then it is possible that we haven’t done anything bad at all but instead need to evaluate the appropriateness of the internal message for today.

The Uselessness of Some Guilt

Iyanla Vanzant, a new thought spiritual teacher, dismisses guilt “as something totally useless and as a wasted emotion.” Like Lena, guilt can leave you stuck and paralyzed. The key to moving on from it lies in self-awareness and the question of what guilt serves. Does it serve the ego, self-hatred, and self-blame or does it serve individuation?

The Possibility of Good Guilt

Jung understood that the experience of guilt is a natural part of the individuation process – that is to become who we truly are meant to be. In the process of Individuation, human beings create their own path of personal growth and uncover ways to develop themselves. Consequently, we must separate ourselves from the collective norms and values. Jung recognized that to walk this path, we understandably experience guilt. We feel it like we are doing something wrong or committing a sin because we seemingly reject collective standards. However, what we must do is hold the apparent contradictions of following our own path while being contrary to collective norms. Walking the path of individuation takes tremendous courage. If we experience this guilt with awareness, then we make a conscious and responsible choice about which path to follow.

The Power of Taking Responsibility

However, Lena’s guilt keeps her stuck in her self-blame and by doing so, she does not take responsibility for her choices and instead rationalizes her inability to move on as guilt. If we unpacked her guilt, we might find a treasure trove of feelings and experiences related to her congregation that lies buried beneath her guilt and prevents her from going. Now, the truth lies buried in the unconscious.  However, we must all accept our choices consciously. Either, Lena must own her decision not to go to church more and the true authentic reasons why or she must connect to the value that she finds there and make a choice to go. By staying in the guilt, she has nowhere to go but to be stuck, neurotic and unhappy.

Questions for reflection

1) When is the last time you felt guilty about something and what did you do about it? Did you move on?
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3) When is the last time you decided for yourself and accepted the consequences guilt-free? How did you make you feel?

Copyright Christina Becker
December 2019

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