Guilt

Over the past week I have had several people talk to me about how guilty they feel.  Now, I am not one of those therapists who feel that guilt is always a bad thing.  I think it is very important for someone to realize they have done something wrong, or bad, or offended someone, and to feel guilty about it.

Hopefully, guilt will be a motivator to do something good to relieve the guilt. People don't like to feel guilty, so I hope to help people find a good way to change things.

However, guilt can be so ingrained in a person's early in life that they just become overwhelmed and immobilized.  A parent, whose style is to let a child know that what they have done may not only not be the right thing, but that it hurt someone, in some unseen but emotional way, can plant the seeds of constant doubt.  Religion, as we all know, can be a big creator of guilt, which will lead to feelings of unworthyness.

But this week, one of the people I have been seeing really upped the whole guilt thing to a new level.  She was talking about how her mother always blamed her for having ruined her, the mother's life. The mother also was constantly letting this woman know all of her faults, all of her mistakes, and how they affected the family and the community.  The answer to any question about school, a friend, the family, her chores, her comments, was always that my patient was at fault; guilty unless proven innocent, and even then there were still major doubts.

To illustrate the result of such an upbringing, this woman told me that on 9/11/2001, very soon after the twin towers had tumbled and the planes all over the country were being grounded and the search for the terrorists had begun, she carefully reviewed her activities of the day, and wrote down where she was, and who she was with.  She said she did this really, without thinking about what she was doing.  It was not that she wanted to remember the day, she realized, she really wanted to make sure her alibi was in place.  She expected someone to come knocking on her door, but she was sure that this time she had nothing to do with it, and she needed to have the proof available.