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We all feel guilty from time to time.
If it forces you to correct mistakes, then it’s all for the better – psychologists classify such guilt as productive. However, if guilt becomes constant or excessively strong and begins to negatively affect your well-being, actions, and quality of life, that’s a different story. We will explain what you should do if the guilt has become unproductive.
Why do we feel guilty?
Guilt is the complex emotions a person experiences when committing – or thinking they are committing – a wrongful act. It signals mistakes, motivates their correction, and avoids repetition in the future.
Guilt is an unpleasant feeling, but in many cases, it can be helpful. It is one of the ancient adaptive mechanisms that help people regulate their behavior and maintain strong social connections. The absence of a sense of guilt can be a symptom of psychopathy or another disorder.
Personal characteristics of an individual influence the intensity of guilt feelings. For instance, individuals with high levels of empathy tend to experience guilt more frequently.
However, there are some benefits to this. Studies show that people who are particularly prone to guilt are less likely to drink and drive and generally less inclined to commit crimes. And for criminals who deeply feel their guilt while in prison, the rate of recidivism is lower after release.
Furthermore, people who are able to feel guilty usually earn more trust from those around them – and those people tend to justify their trust more often. Therefore, they become reliable colleagues, good managers, and romantic partners.
However, all these benefits only manifest if a person inclined to feel guilt knows how to experience it correctly, taking responsibility for truly committed mistakes – and forgiving themselves for them.
Rephrased: A person inclined to feel guilt must know how to experience it correctly, taking responsibility for truly committed mistakes and forgiving themselves for them, in order to manifest all these benefits.
Constantly feeling guilty for everything that happens in the world is not beneficial. Guilt always triggers a stress response in the body. If not interrupted, it can become chronic. This can lead to emotional burnout and sleep problems, increase the risks of developing anxiety disorders and depression.
One danger is that the incessant feeling of guilt can lead a person to make decisions that are not advantageous for themselves. For instance, they may start spending excessive amounts on unfamiliar people, jeopardizing their own well-being. Alternatively, they might constantly solve the problems of a former lover whom they once hurt, causing pain. To prevent this from happening, it is crucial to learn how to keep guilt within reasonable bounds. Here are a few ways.
Advice #1 – Apologize to others and forgive yourself
Professor Susan Whitburn from Massachusetts University suggests an algorithm for dealing with guilt: the most effective method is to acknowledge that you have done something wrong, apologize to all those affected and try to rectify any consequences.
Don’t try to suppress the feeling of guilt
Studies show that this leads to an increase in negative emotions. It’s better to admit to yourself that you feel guilty. This will help you take control of your emotions.
Remember what you did exactly
It will be unpleasant – most likely, the sense of guilt will intensify for a while. Despite this, try to approach the task as responsibly as possible – remember as many details as possible.
Do not try to find excuses for yourself. Instead, think about whether you were trying to meet some of your needs by making a mistake. This will help you adjust your behavior in the future and prevent repeating the mistake.
Let’s say you feel guilty because you yelled at your partner for no reason. However, it wasn’t because you wanted to be cruel to them, but because you’ve been scared since they started to distance themselves from you. Therefore, in order to avoid any more groundless arguments, you need to discuss your relationship with your partner.
Sincerely apologize to those you have offended
Be sure to tell them that you understand how much pain and discomfort you have caused them and that you sincerely regret it. To demonstrate to the person that you fully understand what exactly you are guilty of before them, use an “I-statement”. For example, “I regret what I did.”
Avoid using phrases such as “I’m sorry that you’re in pain” as they indicate that even though you regret the other person’s unpleasant emotional experience, you appear to see no fault in your behavior.
Support your repentance with action
If you have caused material damage, compensate for it. If it’s psychological, start behaving differently towards the affected person. And if for some reason you cannot do something directly for the victim, help someone else.
For example, send a donation to a charity fund. “Taking action to make amends is not punishment. It is a reparative measure that wrongdoers should make to ease their sense of guilt,” explains Susan Whitborn.
Forgive yourself
Say to yourself, “I have done everything to correct the mistake. And in the future, I will try not to repeat it. That’s why I forgive myself and allow myself to move forward.”
Psychologists assert that this point, despite its apparent formality, is no less important than the previous ones. The feeling of guilt is subjective: we can continue to experience it even when others have long forgiven us. Therefore, it is important to persuade oneself that the situation is resolved and there is no need to continue to blame oneself.
Tip #2 – Do not take on too much
Not only actions, but also much larger issues can make people feel guilty. For example, allowing humanity to bring the planet to an environmental catastrophe is described as a phenomenon called “ecoguilt”. People may also feel guilty for the actions of politicians they didn’t elect, or for the continued existence of marginalized groups who face injustices.
A person can understand perfectly that he himself is not doing anything wrong. But realizing that injustice exists in the world and there are people who suffer from it will make him tormented.
Although this type of guilt is based on moral values, psychologists often consider it unproductive: the problems that need to be solved to stop feeling guilty are global. Realizing this paralyzes many people, and they get stuck in a guilty state for years.
When such guilt becomes unbearable, it is helpful to use the method called the accountability circle.
- Take a sheet of paper and write down how much responsibility you feel for a specific global situation. For instance, if you feel 90% responsible, it means that someone else bears the remaining 10% of the blame.
- Draw a circle. Then ask yourself: who else is responsible for this situation besides me? And to what extent are they responsible? After that, shade in the corresponding segments of the circle based on those percentages. Ultimately, you will have a diagram that will help you understand how much you are truly responsible for in the current situation.
- Think about what you can actually do to have some influence on the situation that concerns you. For example, if you are concerned about the environment, start separating your garbage and try not to buy unnecessary things. Remember that even minimal efforts are better than complete inaction. This will help you not to constantly feel guilty.
Tip #3: Analyze your stereotypes
In her book “Let Go of the Guilt“, Valorie Burton describes how the most unexpected things, such as cornflakes, can trigger feelings of guilt.
Burton’s son loves to have cereal for breakfast. It is convenient as there is no need to spend time on cooking. However, the problem is that Burton herself firmly believes that a good mother should always feed her child a breakfast consisting of several healthy dishes such as porridge or scrambled eggs, toast, and fruits. This is what her mother always prepared for her in her childhood.
Every time she poured cereal into her son’s bowl, she felt deeply guilty in front of him. Even though the child was delighted with such breakfast. Burton refers to such examples as false guilt.
In addition to cultural beliefs, unclear self-expectations can also act as triggers for feelings of unwarranted guilt. For instance, people tend to blame themselves for not eating “right” or not exercising “enough,” even though they have never defined what “right” or “enough” mean for them. As a result, individuals berate themselves for failing to meet standards that they have no clear understanding of.
One more reason for the absence of guilt is outdated beliefs about oneself. For example, it’s unfair to blame oneself for not being able to work as much as before having a child. Or forgetting keys at home due to a few days of insomnia, when previously, in a well-rested state, this never happened.
Burton suggests using a technique from cognitive-behavioral therapy to address feelings of fake guilt:
- Do not automatically give in to feelings of guilt when they arise. Instead, try to analyze them. Ask yourself, “Did I actually do something wrong? If so, what specifically? Did anyone really suffer as a result of my actions?” If there is no victim, try to determine if your guilt is being triggered by unreflected and outdated beliefs. To do this, try to remember what thoughts were going through your head just before you felt guilty.
- If you discover the source of the guilt, try to describe the situation differently. Instead of saying “I am guilty for feeding my son cereal again,” say “I feel guilty for feeding my son cereal because I believe it is wrong. But in reality, I am not harming anyone.” This will change your attitude towards the situation and reduce the feeling of guilt.
- List the evidence of why you do not harm anyone. Burton explains that the task is not to find justification but to describe your feelings more accurately.
ADVICE #4 – Don’t blame yourself if you’re luckier than others.
Another type of guilt is called survivor’s guilt. It is usually experienced by people who survived a war or a serious disaster. For example, cases of survivor’s guilt were widely reported in the US among relatives of those who died during the COVID-19 epidemic.
In these cases, professionals usually advise people to seek assistance. Seeking assistance will help provide relief by offering a different perspective on the tragedy.
However, some psychologists refer to the feeling of guilt experienced by individuals who have achieved greater success than those around them. Life is truly unfair: some are fortunate from birth, while others grow up in conditions where basic needs are not met.
But even if you have been lucky in many ways, it is much more productive to not feel guilty and to help those who have been less fortunate than you.
And of course, you shouldn’t blame yourself for the fact that your parents chose to sacrifice their lives for your success. Instead, you should express your gratitude towards the people who put so much effort into helping you achieve more in life than they did. It was their conscious choice that you had no influence over.
Advice #5 – Grant yourself the right to make mistakes
To avoid becoming chronic, remember that each of us occasionally makes mistakes or acts unfairly towards others. This does not make us definitively bad people, especially as we strive to take responsibility for our actions and their consequences.
Therefore, even if you have seriously wronged others, there is no point in blaming and punishing yourself for it. You will only increase your stress, but you will not correct the situation.
Think about what you would say to your friend if they were in this situation. You wouldn’t shame them, but rather provide a more balanced assessment of what they have done, and offer words of support and comfort.
Blame is not the most pleasant experience. And just the fact that a person experiences it gives the right to sympathy. Including from oneself.
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