Hey Readers,
This is more of a post for my own internal turmoils, but I thought I'd write it out in case it may help any of you throughout life's at times difficult moments. I don't particularly want to make this into a series, as no one likes to feel down in the dumps, and I rather my blog be of a more ridiculous/cheerful nature overall, but life isn't always this way so at the same time I think it may be healthy to do this sort of post every once in a while.
The topic of today, is that of guilt, now for those of you who have experienced true guilt in your lives you know how horrid an emotion that is, it is an emotion that seems born of the devil himself, one of constant inner and outer attacks that you can't seem to escape. That my readers is the emotion that has been plaguing me as of late. Now before going into my personal guilt, I thought it may be more interesting and helpful to dig into what guilt is in a psychological/emotional sense.
Now first and foremost, the definition of guilt is as follows; "Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation"
Guilt can be used and manifested in a few different ways, it can be a good way to make someone do something for or to you as a sense of obligation; though it is honestly not the healthiest of motivators, guilt is often grouped up with the emotion of sadness, but it is more akin to those emotions of agony, loneliness, and self-hatred. Now why would we feel guilt? Well like any number of emotions there can be more than one catalyst, in fact Freud mentioned that there are 5 MAIN causes for guilt. Let's look into those real quick;
1. Guilty because of something YOU did;
Perhaps this is the most obvious reason as to why we may feel guilty, and it certainly is a factor in to why I feel guilty myself. Now as we saw in the definition this can include harm to yourself or others, whether psychological or physical, a break in your own moral code/standards, guilty over your own thoughts and behaviors, in doing things you perhaps swore you would never do, such as drinking, drugs, lying, cheating, dancing the hokey pokey in your underwear in front of your in-laws, etc. In fact guilt is the appropriate emotion in these sorts of cases, and if you don't feel some sort of remorse then that may be a sign of sociopathy or psycopathy.
What's hard about this emotion is it locks us up and allows other sad emotions to come into our open wound caused by guilt, we have to understand that an action has happened, it is in the past, it has occured and we are not able to change it. You need to accept and admit the fact that this happened, humble yourself and apologize to all those affected, and then remove whatever stumbling block brought you down this path so that you can avoid it from happening again. Learn to do what I at this moment find myself to weak to do, which is forgive yourselves for what you have done after others have done so, free yourself and become better. Falling is easy, getting up is harder but it is better than beating yourself down further. This segways into the very similar second type of guilt catalyst...
2. Guilty for something you didn't do, but WANT to do;
This is pretty self-explanatory but unlike the above you haven't done anything yet, but are thinking about committing an act that would deviate from your moral code, maybe thought of a scheme to benefit yourself despite knowing it would harm your colleagues, or maybe even mentally lusted for someone other than your spouse/S.O. This is a tough type of guilt to handle. On one hand you didn't commit any atrocious acts, so you are technically still in a good moral standing, but the fact that you are contemplating these acts in such frequency and detail already begins to violate standards you have set for yourself.
There are 2 forms to deal with this, you can repress them in your mind and being, though this isn't a very satisfactory solution as it could very well overflow and lead you to actions you would normally not do because of all those bottled up desires; or you can acknowledge these thoughts and form a conscious effort to reduce them, remind yourself your values and nip the thoughts in the bud as soon as they surge, this is a practice that needs one to really be committed to stopping the same. This leads us on to the next type of guilt catalyst;
3. Guilty for something you THINK you did;
As much of the unhappiness and frustration we as humans put ourselves through, this type of guilt is caused by our own irrational thoughts and views about situations. Honestly the mind is a powerful thing, if you honestly just think you did something wrong, you can honestly experience just as much guilt as if you actually preformed the act itself. A common thought induced guilt is the thought of karma or jinxing people by talking bad about them behind their backs, and should that ill wished comment you may actually come to pass you may feel completely responsible despite not actually doing anything to cause it. We as people are intelligent to know we are being illogical, but this wretched emotion makes it hard to rid yourself of the belief that you were involved in this misfortune.
Honestly for this, before you go accusing yourself of any wrongdoing, understand if the wrongdoing you believe transpired actually transpired, be centered and don't distort events to be against you, reality checks can be life savers in these moments of self-guilt.
4. Guilty that you didn't do ENOUGH to help someone;
*Deep Breath* Okay readers if I may be frank with you, this is a guilt I put on my shoulders in an almost weekly basis and it sucks, but I do it almost automatically. Perhaps you have an ill family member or a friend going through hard times. Let's say you have given hours of your free time to assist those people, you have made sacrifices to show them you care, but unfortunately you have your own personal obligations that you need to fulfill. This is where the Guilt can start to creep in, where you put an enormous burden of yourself as some mystical problem solver where YOU need to find better ways to help them until the toll on your person gets to you. I believe the proper term for this type of guilt is "Compassion Fatigue" this is common among those with big hearts and a predisposition to help others, but this mixture of emotional burnout and self-guilt for not doing more is dangerous to the individual's mental health.
It is important to understand anything you do to help someone makes a positive change, and if you need to make sacrifices to help more for your own conscious then do so tactfully, but don't layer guilt on top of it, as I mentioned in the very beginning, guilt isn't a healthy motivator and will only serve to drain us more.
5. Guilty that you're doing BETTER than someone else;
I will be honest with you all friends, this is one I am not too familiar with as I have my own internal issues regarding my personal growth, but I thought I would cover it anyways. This is the guilt that is commonly known as "Survivors Guilt" this can be outliving comrades, family, or other loved ones while you survived the same or worse, I know my Grandfather had this when my Grandmother passed, he had gotten any and all surgeries with high risk and was still strong, whereas my Grandmother only had one hospitalization that led to her death months later, I still recall the hurt in his voice when he muttered "Why couldn't it have been me, I was under the knife so many times, why my Rosemary?"; It broke my heart to hear such words from such a strong man that is my grandfather, but I can understand how that can become a guilt.
To be honest this guilt isn't just in surviving death but maybe just doing extremely well in comparison to family or close friends, this can create a guilt that in order to "protect" their friends and families from disappointment, the person themselves becomes self-destructive; logic dictates that our loved ones want us to succeed, but guilt makes us lost to this logic and therefore we plummet.
The best way to overcome this guilt is to be proud of your endeavors and how glad you are that those you love invested time in helping you get to where you are. Remind yourself, even if it is hard, that your own failure won't bring someone back, not will it magically makes those around you more successful. Give yourself the shot at happiness that you deserve.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's no doubt that this is a complex emotion with several triggers, but I hope that semi-long discussion was more interesting than boring for you readers, as it encompasses what a horrid emotion this is and how I do not wish it upon any of you, even if I myself find myself ensnared in its illogical web at this moment.
I want to talk about my situation again as a form of therapy for myself and maybe be of assistance for others. Readers, I am a firm believer that our curiosity can cause us to stumble more times than it can help us flourish, and stumbling isn't that big of a deal in itself so long as we push forward, it is when you cause another, someone close to you to stumble because of your own actions where the guilt stings the hardest. I am of the type of people where I could fall a millions times and fail at life and wouldn't care as much as if those I care about get hurt in some way, especially if I inadvertently caused this pain. This is where I want to warn about the flesh and the guilt that it can bring. They say every human has 2 wolves living within them, one of flesh and one of spirit, they are both hungry and constantly fighting, you may be asking, well which one will win? The answer my readers is simple, the winner is the one we chose to feed.
That said we need to be careful of the things in this world readers, I learned the dangers of the flesh and anonymity on the internet, without going into details I was lured into a very questionable situation disguised as a friendly chat, what's worse is I could see it going south, but it is as if my mind simply stepped outside for a moment and my fleshly wolf began to feast on the opportunity, by the time I came to I realized what I was about to do, I had already gone too far and despite the disgusting nature of my actions I am thankful i had the sense to snap back and completely remove this temptation from my life, now I felt like garbage, I felt horrible, but I thought it's done, I will learn from this, I need to be harder on myself. Here is the part where my soul gets crushed readers, the app forwarded my disguising behavior to the person I love most in this world, and my world shattered. I already hated my guts, to have her just receive the same, I betrayed myself and even worse I betrayed her.
Currently my depicting of myself is worse than fecal matter, I am like the dying worm being suffocated by said fecal matter, and I want to warn you to avoid putting yourself in these types of situations where the flesh begins to dictate your actions instead of your spirit. Impulsive behavior leads to harm and worse guilt, which we have learned to be one of the most self-destructive emotions. I implore you to be wise, and to better yourselves, and if someone fails you, forgive them, and if you fail someone admit your flaw and humbly request forgiveness. Know the worth of forgiveness readers, don't be a merciless judge because you too can also become guilty by manipulating those who already feel this curse of an emotion.
 |
| Guilt can bring out the best of our worst. |
I truly wish you all a wonderful weak as I try and rebuild myself, as forgiveness is also for one's self. People may not always believe you, but know that sometimes our carnal desires can literally overtake us for a time, and if we are lucky when can get out before we truly go passed the point of no return. Be wise my friends, be forgiving, and know your value, no matter what you have done, you have some value, use it to become a better you.
Much Love,
Wachi
