RE: The Psychology of Guilt

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Wow, this is an incredible write-up, @agmoore. I'm so glad it was inspired by The Ink Well prompt. As one of your co-admins, I know how these ideas sometimes churn us up or get us thinking. They can brew in our minds. I sometimes think of four or five different approaches to any given prompt, and sometimes weeks after we publish it. The mind is a funny thing.

As for guilt, I also grew up Catholic. I won't blame Catholicism 100% for my feelings of guilt. I simply have a very strong sense of commitment to others. And I've felt a lifelong deficit in myself in that regard — as in, feeling that no matter what I do I am bound to cause harm. And have, in fact, done so. It is without intent but not without remorse.

I like the Tony Robbins suggestions for ridding ourselves of guilt. It's not a very useful emotion. I liked your weight analogies. Guilt is an emotional burden. The weight of guilt sits on our proverbial shoulders. Like Atlas, we soldier on beneath it.

One thing I sort of thought you alluded to in this article was the notion that guilt makes us human. It shows that we have heart and soul. I believe that. If you read my letters article, you'll meet Bill, a social predator and sociopath who would steal people's time. He would pull them into his weird conversational trap — attempt to assimilate their manners in some demented effort to relate to them, and not let them go, regardless of how much they tried to peel away. And he had no sense of the torment he caused them, and no guilt.

Shame is an even more useless than guilt, and is downright unhealthy. But one can almost see the utility of guilt in a world where we absolutely need to have compassion for one another and be able to walk in one another's shoes. The trick is to find a balance, I think, where guilt triggers actions — to make amends, to forgive and love ourselves, and to be more kind and thoughtful going forward.



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Thank you, @jayna, for that thoughtful response. Yes, the word prompt is interesting. It is meant to encourage us to write about one thing, but then one never knows where the mind will lead us.

I did mull this over as an essay for the Inkwell, but was never comfortable making it about 'me'. So (maybe it's a Catholic thing 😄) I took myself out of the thing.

I didn't have a chance to read your essay. There was a lot to work out here and finally (phew!) it happened.

you'll meet Bill, a social predator and sociopath who would steal people's time. He would pull them into his weird conversational trap — attempt to assimilate their manners in some demented effort to relate to them, and not let them go, regardless of how much they tried to peel away.

Wow, that sounds horrible. I really need to get over there and read it. I'm already feeling hostility toward this person.

Everything we learned (especially that stuff learned early in life) adds to what we are today. In the end though, it is our life, our responsibility. We take it all and make the best of it and ourselves.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

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Everything we learned (especially that stuff learned early in life) adds to what we are today. In the end though, it is our life, our responsibility. We take it all and make the best of it and ourselves.

Yes. At the end of the day it's all about responsibility — to ourselves and those in our lives. If we suffer from unmanaged guilt, it limits the amount of energy and love we have to give others (and, I believe, leads to a bad form of narcissism). So in fact, we should feel a responsibility to those around us to deal with guilt so we can live fully!

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we should feel a responsibility to those around us to deal with guilt so we can live fully!

Brilliantly true. Sometimes I think of the Hebrtew toast, L’Chaim! (To Life!). That sums it up. In the end we are here, we live and we find a way to rejoice in that.

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