Guilt is a Complex Emotion Part 1

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Issue 14 // Read Time: 4 Minutes 41 Seconds 

Guilt Is A Complex Emotion Part 1 

It is easy to lump all guilt into one bucket and to treat it as good or bad, helpful or not helpful. 

But guilt is quite complex. We all feel varying levels of guilt daily, and it is worth understanding why that is, when it is helpful, and when it is stifling, 

So today we are going to get familiar with the tree types of guilt and how they manifest in our life. Next week we will get into more practical information about how to move through those feelings. 

Today you will get. 

Guilt as a form of responsibility (Authentic Guilt)

Guilt as a defense against anxiety (Inauthentic Guilt)

Existential Guilt

Guilt as a Form of Responsibility 

Let's start with the first type of guilt: helpful, necessary, and a sign of maturation.

We will call this Guilt as a Form of Responsibility or Authentic Guilt.

Authentic guilt indicates that you are mature enough and have enough ego strength to acknowledge what you have done that perhaps did not serve others.

It is a type of guilt that motivates growth, action, and movement toward the kind of person you want to become.

To say that you have erred and are guilty of bad choices and their hurtful consequences in the world is the first step toward wisdom and the only way to move toward release.

The three R's can guide you in acknowledging and moving through authentic guilt: recognition, recompense, and release.

Recognition is a process of taking accountability, owning what is yours, and humbly accepting the consequences of your actions.

It is a widespread misconception that going to therapy is about finding problems with our parents or caregivers and blaming them for what ails us.

But it is the opposite.

Yes - it is acknowledging the conditioning we were given and the friction it has caused in our lives, but more importantly, it is taking that and owning up to our responsibility. To own that we are the only ones who can shoulder that burden.

Recompense : we are not always fortunate enough to get recompense. You can't undo what has been done, so sometimes, we can not achieve this.

But in those situations where we can, recompense is the process of making right what we have done.

Supposedly, our judicial system is based on some form of recompense, but it is more punitive and isolating than compensatory.

But when we can recompense for our wrongdoing, we more easily move toward release.

Release comes when we can accept the consequences of our actions on the road toward wisdom, fully integrating the lessons learned through this bout with guilt.

Guilt as a Defense Against Anxiety (Inauthentic Guilt)

Much of what we call guilt is a response to anxiety.

It is a bodily (somatic) feeling that lets us know a wound or complex has been hit and is worth listening to.

Take, for example, the person who says they feel guilty any time they say no to someone, or when they feel angry, or the parent who feels guilty for not being a "perfect" parent.

These are feelings that are slowly conditioned since childhood and remnants of the spontaneous experiences of childhood that get stamped out through fear of alienating ourselves from our caregivers.

So what we often call guilt then is actually a child's protective reaction.

The sudden feelings of coldness, queasiness, and dis-ease are reflexive memories of parental disapproval.

James Hollis says it this way,

"It is as if, when a natural impulse arises, anger, for example, a hand reaches out like a governor in a car and throttles the impulse. [..] Feeling guilty for saying no, for example, is really a defense against the possibility that the Other will be displeased, thereby activating the immense reservoir of emotion we all carry."

Most of us were conditioned to be "good" or "right," so we come up against this all of the time.

To overcome inauthentic guilt, we must recognize that pleasing others and deciding to protect them can not be at the top of our agenda.

Maturity and wisdom accept the responsibility of letting others down when your choices do not align with their perception of goodness and rightness.

Being blocked by this type of guilt is still to be stuck in childhood.

Existential Guilt 

The last form of guilt is existential and a concomitant of being human.

Existential guilt requires us to acknowledge that by virtue of being a human being, we are complicit in the destruction of beauty.

There is no life without death, and our life requires an energetic exchange.

When we take something from the market, it means someone else will have less. When one part of the globe prospers, another part may dwindle.

This is part of the human condition.

This is a heavy burden to bear, and it can become quite overwhelming for many of us.

This is represented in the symbolic experience of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

They finally recognize the human condition and come to terms with the fact that they exist at the expense of the other.

They must suffer because their choices are not between good and evil but between all sorts of moral grays.

They must acknowledge this moral ambiguity, which is inherently a guilt-riddled experience.

Existential guilt puts us in contact with our unavoidably flawed nature. And perhaps, this is the hardest type of guilt to bear.

Sorting This Out

My invitation this week is to start noticing how guilt appears in your life. 

Which type of guilt do you feel most frequently, and in what situations does it show up?

Start to notice what guilt is authentic as a sign of responsibility and what is inauthentic to guard you from feeling anxiety. 

Don't worry so much about doing anything yet. First, we will build awareness of how this organizes itself in your system. 

Come back next week, and I will give you some guidance on working through this more systematically.

Thank You!

I love that you are interested in exploring yourself in the pursuit of growth and expansion. 

And I love that you are diving deeper into the unconscious patterns that limit our capacity as a species to transcend this paradigm. 

You are becoming the change you want to see in the world and that is incredibly inspiring!

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your journey ✨✨

With Love,

Christian