– feeling so guilty about being happier or richer or more successful than others around that you cannot enjoy what you have;
– feeling constantly bad about not being able to look after someone in the way you think you should;
– dwelling on things you wish you could have done differently in your childhood;
– feeling bad about something you did in the past but have not owned up to;
– feeling partly responsible for something that went wrong when others were accused and punished and you were not;
– having cheated and now regretting your actions;
– being a survivor of a disaster or serious illness when others were not so lucky;
– if you feel guilty about hurting others by your own life choices;
– if you feel guilty about not feeling guilt!
• Yes, if you would like to become clearer about when you should feel guilty and when you should not.
• Yes, if you would like to just check that you are dealing with guilt in a confident and assertive manner.
• Yes, if you want to help anyone else handle their guilt more effectively.
And also,
• Maybe yes, if you have been treated for a mental illness in which guilt has played a part and are now on the road to recovery. This book should help to handle any future guilt in a constructive and self-affirming way.
• Maybe yes, if you have committed a crime and been punished but still feel guilty. But it would be advisable to work through this book with the support of someone who is a professionally trained psychotherapist or counsellor.
How to use this book
I suggest that you first read this book through quite quickly. You need not bother with the exercises or to practise the strategies now, but do mark up the parts of the book that you think could be useful for you. It would also be good to note down any examples of situations in your life that you have found difficult as they come into your mind when you are reading.
On your second reading, do the exercises and try out the strategies as you go, taking special care with the ones that you have marked. Again, make notes as you go along. After this reading, it could be very helpful to discuss the book with one or more of your friends. This might help to jog your memory and feel less alone with your problem.
Finally, make a prioritised list of issues that you want to resolve or work on. Then return to Chapter 9, Guilt into Goals, and do an action plan. Don’t forget to try to find a supportive person to help keep you on track.
Over the next few months, keep the book in a handy place where you can consult it whenever you need to. Having it lying around at home may encourage others to dip in and start wondering if this is something that may help them as well.
I do hope that you will find the book interesting and stimulating to read. I also, of course, hope that it will help you to move on with your life more happily and confidently.
What Exactly Is Guilt, and What Is the Point of It?
Psychologists call guilt a ‘self-conscious’ emotion. Other emotions in the same category are pride, embarrassment and shame. All these emotions differ from our basic emotions such as fear, disgust and joy, which are more instinctive and universally felt during the first year of our lives. Self-conscious emotions develop later when we begin to get a sense of ourselves as separate from others. This usually occurs towards the end of the second year and through the third year of our lives.2
Before we can feel guilt, we must be able to make judgements. This can’t happen until the thinking centre of our brain (the neocortex) is sufficiently developed. This means that babies and very young children cannot feel guilt. Their brains are simply not well enough developed to process it. Physiologically, they cannot understand the difference between right and wrong.
At thirteen months, my little granddaughter sometimes appeared to know when she had done something not allowed. She would throw her food on the floor and look at us with a big grin on her face. This was not because she enjoyed being wicked (that will come later!). Her smile had been generated because she was enjoying seeing the reaction of us adults. And perhaps because we were still in the honeymoon phase of grandparenting, we found her behaviour funny and so would laugh along with her. Unsurprisingly, she would then instantly repeat it without the slightest hint of guilt!
However, this guilt-free phase of life is all too short. I was recently taking a walk along a fairly deserted beach when I came across two little naked girls at the edge of the sea. When they spotted me one of them hastily stood up and placed her bikini pants over her private parts. Although they were giggling and smiling, I noticed that their heads were bowed. My guess is that they were around three years old, the age at which guilt starts to creep its way into our psyches. Fortunately for them it had not yet developed well enough to spoil their innocent enjoyment of being ‘naughty’.
This pleasurable stage in guilt’s development is one that many adults often try to recapture. Here are some examples you might recognise:
• Girls’ days out in health spas where groups of gym-toned, professional women get drunk on champagne and greedily devour forbidden desserts.
• Boys on get-fit golf breaks, egging each other on to have yet another drink until dawn appears.
• Carnival participants dressing up in outrageously shocking costumes and singing songs that in everyday life would not be tolerated.
• Office parties where people let their hair down and the next day return to work smiling but with their heads down, just like the little girls on the beach.
• Buying food and drink labelled guilt-free, while being aware that they may still be far from nutritious.
On a more serious note, some people simply cannot feel guilt at all. Early in my career I used to work on the locked wards of a large psychiatric hospital. Many of our adult patients had a reduced capacity to reason. Through disease or arrested development, the centres of their brains that are used to process guilt were not functioning. As a result, much of their behaviour would have appeared to the outside world as selfish, anti-social and excruciatingly embarrassing. Because they were incapable of feeling guilt, I – along with other members of staff – had to learn to accept and tolerate their behaviour. It was a good lesson to learn so young, because since then I have met many adults and young children in the outside world who are also incapacitated in this way.
What’s the point of guilt?
Guilt, like other self-conscious emotions, probably emerged in our human evolutionary development at the time when humans started to form groups. They did this in order to work and protect themselves from enemies more efficiently. The function of the self-conscious emotions was probably to make these groups stronger by encouraging loyalty and self-discipline. Anyone who has set up or led a group will know how
