Navigating the Weight of Guilt Versus Embracing Responsibility

“Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt, since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt. He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question, he will look into his own heart.” – C.G. Jung

Story 

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 such an important part in her life. She would attend service weekly and was an active volunteer in her local church.  Life happened with children and other activities that pulled her away from the church.  Her voice is devoid of emotion as she says she feels guilty that she doesn’t attend 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 earnestly 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 were her minister, or chastise her as if I were 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 which arises in our awareness.  Guilt generally falls into the category of negative feelings states and is associated with behavior and the word “should”.  “I should do this” or “I shouldn’t have done that”  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 a 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 to separate the childhood messages that we have received from the authorities in our lives and when guilt is a trigger 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 Guilt 

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

Good Guilt 

Jung understood that to individuate means to incur guilt.  In the process of Individuation, human beings create their path of personal growth and uncover ways to develop themselves. As a consequence, we must separate ourselves from the collective and distance ourselves from collective norms and values. Jung recognized that to walk this path, we understandably experience guilt. We feel 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 path with being contrary to a collective norm.   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 

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 stuckness 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. At the moment, the truth lies buried in the unconscious.  

However, we must all accept what is and 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 guilt, she has nowhere to go but to be stuck, neurotic, and unhappy. 

Christina Becker
January 2024

Have you found value here? Have you been inspired or moved?  Please consider sharing the post on your social media networks by using the buttons below.

I love to hear your comments and ideas. Use the comments below or send me an email.