Long ago I heard the emotion of guilt described by a name person in the psychology field as an “entirely useless emotion.” That really stuck with me.
Besides the general throwing the baby out issue, I have a couple of other problems with that.
First, it presupposes that we understand that this is speaking to so-called irrational, or unreasonable guilt. In other words, guilt we feel even when we’ve “done nothing wrong.” The implication being, because there’s no rational/logical basis for it, this alone should somehow magically allows us to just “let it go,” if not ever feel it again.
Some in the progressive spiritual community and even some psychotherapy methods are guilty (no pun intended) of this implication, as well. Dare I say there’s a potential bypassing at work there.
Ask anyone whose been struggling especially with chronic feelings of guilt, or as it used to be called, a “guilt complex,” how much this view helps. As they say up north, “fhuggettabaatit!”
Rational or irrational, our emotions, or the parts of us carrying them, don’t make such distinctions. Experience-born emotions themselves don’t discern whether we or anyone believes they’re warranted. They just are.
This reductive, rather judgmental stance on guilt is all head, no body/heart. It invalidates all underlying energetic, emotional, somatic/subconscious factors that serve as the scaffolding of chronic guilt.
It also leaves out that the emotion and the experience of chronic guilt is the mere tip of the iceberg poking out of the water.
what is guilt?
I think we all intuitively know what guilt feels like. But to me what’s really important about guilt— generally defined as a body-based feeling/knowing that we’ve done something wrong/bad/out of integrity or against our our own or the generally accepted moral code, is what separates it from it’s close cousin: Shame.
Shame is generally defined as the feeling that we are something bad, and/or simply not enough as we are. So powerful and universal is shame (Thanks Brenee’ Brown) that it’s often referred to as “The Master Emotion.”
So while pure guilt is an emotional response to an action, core shame is about our being; about how fundamentally flawed and unacceptable we may think/believe/feel we are.
One problem is, since most of us are so heavily culturally conditioned to equate who we are with what we do, guilt and shame become easily fused. And the earlier we experience events that produce too much of either is the degree to which our core identity becomes fused with underlying guilt and shame.
There are, I’ve learned, generational and ancestral components (i.e. “epigenetic triggers”) that can saddle us with inherited guilt or shame that never belonged to us to begin with. But working with people therapeutically for 20 plus years, and for the last several developing and utilizing my Subconscious Heal and Release energetic and somatic, kinesiologically-guided approach, I conclude we can largely thank environment for this identity fusion.
Cause here’s the thing. No one comes out of the womb drowning in either guilt or shame, or with a all-formed belief about our fundamental worthlessness. Cultural, societal and familial conditioning, in all its insidious and myriad forms, feeds us this shit cake!
the utility (not futility) of guilt
To experience guilt about an action we’ve taken that was intentionally harmful to self or other, or otherwise thoughtless to a point that it inadvertently produced harm is, of course, appropriate. Guilt in this case is utilitarian, functional, purposeful. We all have our defenses and rationalizations for the shit we say and do, but in any reasonably emotionally healthy and mindful person, it will (eventually) signal a healthy response—to take responsibility, make an amends, or whatever’s required for the situation.
Ideally, having done so poises us to forgive ourselves, learn from it, and put it to bed. It’s also a good sign that we have a functioning conscience, that we’re not a sociopath or psychopath. That’s always good :>
But with the experiencing of chronic, pervasive guilt, we’re really talking about a shame-infused, identity-based guilt. In fact, as I see it, with chronic guilt it’s really more about the shame, and the *hidden* factor which I’ll get to below. For without heavy doses of shame, and a shame-based identity, chronic guilt would not possess the hang-around power that it does.
codependency/interdependency
Chronic guilt is most often correlated with people-pleasing and especially, codependency, also a universal. Again, sociopaths, psychopaths and committed antisocial isolationists aside, as for the rest of us social beings appropriately wired to connect, let’s face it, we’re all codependent. Just a matter of how much.
I find that liberating. Acceptance is the beginning of all real change and growth.
On the unhealthy, problematic end is more extreme codependency, marked by a visceral emptiness and lack of real sense of self. Here self-worth is almost entirely dictated by approval and ability to please other, driven by the avoidance of disapproval/displeasing of other, often at the expense of self and ones own best interests and true needs. (“Needs, what needs?“).
On the healthier end of the spectrum we lean more interdependent, which honors that liminal space between interpersonal drives for social connection/secure attachment, and the capacity for solitude, individuality, unique expression, a clear sense of self marked by clear boundaries as to where we begin/others end, and most notably, the ability to say “no” when necessary without feeling…you guessed it, guilty.
There’s the most obvious and common complaint of someone struggling with chronic guilt: ‘I just can’t say no!”
(It’s actually the very first thing, after hello, that my first adult client ever said to me).
The hidden factor
There is, or so I see time and again in folks bearing the albatross of chronic guilt, an interrelationship (inverse?) between chronic guilt and deep, often unacknowledged (disowned) resentment.
Yes, guilt and resentment. Two sides, same coin.
Strange bedfellows, you might think.
But not so much.
Chronic guilt is essentially shame and unworthiness-based self-blame. (Masochistic self-flagellation at it worst). Resentment is essentially deep, crusted over, usually unacknowledged and/or unexpressed hurt, grief & sadness-based anger. A constellation of suppressed emotional energetic pain signatures that, if and when accessed, owned and expressed, would (must) include the recognition of appropriate accountability and responsibility to those (and/or to circumstances) other than oneself.
It’s often said that the shadow of the people-pleaser (one common interpersonal expression of codependency, rooted in fear of abandonment) is ultimately, resentment. The shadow being a Jungian idea signifying all the disowned parts or aspects of ourselves. Those things we’re loathe to recognize are in us, or that we’re even capable of.
With this I agree. I see it a lot. At this point, I feel like I can smell the buried resentment in the people-pleaser presentation.
For reasons I’ll get more into below, resentment serves as the undergirding, or hidden factor, of many a struggle with chronic guilt, within or in absence of a codependency problem. And as the cure for pain is in the pain, understanding and contending with this is the key to transforming it, thereby freeing oneself from the spectre of chronic guilt.
A deeper dive
Children in any culture, psychologically and developmentally speaking, are hard wired to avoid pain to survive, either literally or emotionally/psychologically. Part of this pain is the pain of the inevitable failings of the environment. Especially when it comes to our caregivers, our instinctive set point is to maintain connection and felt sense of security at almost any cost. To avoid dreaded abandonment, ultimately.
When and where the environment fails, be it empathic/emotional failure—i.e. to respond consistently when we’re in distress, mirror us and meet our basic needs for self esteem and identity), more concrete failures— i.e. food, shelter, resources, or the more gross failures of psychological safety and security— i.e. neglect, abuse, emotional or actual abandonment, our innate, survival-based need to keep caregivers good, “all good,” leaves us one choice only:
We must make ourselves the problem. We must be “bad.” We must be the trouble, the problem, the cause, and/or are just not enough as we are.
Enter worthlessness, shame, and the recipe for chronic guilt.
Typically, what is not recognized is how we really feel about the failings. Our true emotions. Be it “Little T” or “Big T” traumas we experience, or both, we are disappointed, hurt, confused, scared, and sad when caregivers or the environment fails us in significant ways.
When our true emotions get repressed, because they’re too psychologically threatening to acknowledge, or our environment won’t support or help us with them, and/or the larger culture disavows it via spoken or unspoken puritanical ethics, “boys don’t cry” or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” cultural mandates, the result is often a mountain of unrecognized emotional pain and a growing, festering resentment. And when that resentment and all that supports it is understood to be unacceptable to feel and/or reveal, it converts to its opposite— the far more socially and culturally acceptable unworthiness/self-blame & shame-based guilt.
Enter, the False Self.
a kind of Addiction
There’s a reason why in the addiction treatment community, including the 12 Step world, there’s a major emphasis on unearthing, facing and working through resentments. In addition to genetic factors, the environmental trauma that produced it can easily set one up for escape through dependency.
Dependency through addiction itself symbolizes a wish to return to earlier developmental stages where we were dependent, and so badly needed our needs met in “good enough” fashion. The flight into addiction then be seen as a metaphor for the ultimate wish for a “do-over.” A return to the ever-longed for safety, security, and consistent demonstration of love and acceptance that were perhaps not there at all, or failed to meet the “good enough” litmus test.
Chronic guilt itself can become an addiction, for we can become dependent on anything. Anything can be used as a defense. Even, crazy as it may sound, our suffering.
To stay stuck in a cycle of feeling unworthy and unacceptable, believing that everything is our fault, stricken with the need to please, always craving the approval of others at all costs is not just a horrendous way to live, it’s completely inauthentic, self-invalidating, negatively self-fulfilling and engenders no real healthy, meaningful connection with ourselves others, and the world.
It’s one face of the Victim Archetype, with grave spiritual implications.
Genuine connection, and a fulfilling life in the social matrix of planet earth requires a reasonably healthy sense of self, the ability to tolerate and even enjoy solitude (as distinct from isolation), solid boundaries, the willingness to set and maintain them, as well as true reciprocity.
The person living in a state of chronic guilt, until they’re on the road to healing recovery, possesses little or none of this.
So the chronically guilty person has an out, if they feel they need it. Like the perfectionist whose perfectionism is socially rewarded, many of the behaviors (like people pleasing) that flow from chronic guilt are also rewarded. So they don’t have to take ownership or responsibility for their pain, or their healing. They can live out the Victim role to the end, if they choose. But this is just resistance, a defense against making contact with the underlying pain they know is there. Ans they know that to acknowledge and finally face the resentment born (usually) of pervasive childhood trauma means facing the unspoken psychological “loyalty bind” contract made with caregivers—i.e. I’m “all bad” so you remain “all good.”
Some version of this almost always comes up in the healing from chronic guilt process. It’s a rite of passage, and an important one.
Ultimately, it’s how we grow into a well-boundaried, individuated, sovereign Adult Self.
Messy, but doable. Totally doable.
healing is always possible
Everything we want to achieve, I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) begins with true commitment, From there, we’ll be called to demonstrate courage, discover our capability, and thus arrive at true confidence.
This is the Heroes Journey.
Insofar as emotions are energy in motion, everything is energy, energy is either flowing or struck, and given that words have the power to heal, we can gain much traction on the road out of chronic guilt by addressing the hidden factor element and all related unacknowledged, often trapped emotions, traumas, and corresponding limiting beliefs on the somatic/subconscious level.
I can help you do this with my Energy Healing process, as a stand alone treatment, or in conjunction with my Integrative Counseling process. In that we work together to establish safety and security in an environment of hope and clear expectations, and begin constructing a healthy sense of self, good boundaries, discover your innate resources, heal, and begin working toward your preferred-future reality.
So, if you’ve been considering or looking for a Nashville Therapist, or a Therapist in Franklin, or for that matter, if you’re virtually anywhere else in the world and would like to do some work together via Telehealth/Video, visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box for more information about my other services, including those that are available on a “coaching” or consultation” basis worldwide. Or just call me at 615.430.2778 or email me at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com to set up a FREE 20 MINUTE CLARITY CALL about how I can help you best.
Peace, love, and freedom from guilt!
Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP