The Experience of Guilt
Research Presentation Metavision Institute – By ANNA RAWLINGS
Thanks for taking a look. Please say hi and drop me a message if you have popped in to read about guilt. Email me here.
Guilt is a huge subject. It is so fraught and complex. This is just a snippet.
My research is on the experience of guilt for women. I gathered experiences and self reflections from ten women in our class.
Responses from that research, describe how awful guilt feels inside the body: like a hole, an emptiness, stress and anxiety symptoms such as heart racing, and it’s something to push away.
Other experiences included:
Feelings of guilt are the natural consequences of judging negative emotions as “bad” whenever distressing feelings arise (Linehan).
Linehan defines guilts as “a response to evaluating one’s specific behaviours as bad or immoral.” Guilt and shame are often confused. To clarify, shame is defined by Linehan as “a response to evaluating one’s entire self as bad or unworthy.”
Paul explains guilt is the “feeling that you feel when you judge yourself for having done something that you believe is wrong. Your ego wounded self is saying things like, I know that I should visit my mother more. I’m really a bad daughter.” Similar responses were given in my research regarding, see Appendix 2. I should exercise, eat better. Spend more time with my parents or children.
Women talked about feeling immobilised, frozen, self punishing. There’s negative self-talk and the inner critic emerges. A need to justify herself.
The phenomenological description, for me, it’s like the tide or a wave rushing in, I cannot control the immense volume of water in the ocean. I’m subject to its forces and must let it take its course.
I can move aside, run from it, swim with it, duck under the wave or even ride it.
Or it can take me under, roll me, smash me into the sand beneath and leave me gasping for air, as I try to regain my balance and heal my mental and emotional wounds.
Guilt often showed up related to disappointing others.
Examples given include:
There is a belief that, if I say no, I am guilty. If I’m not available 24/7, I am guilty.
“As a child you have no choice but to comply with your parents’ expectations because if you don’t, you might lose the attachment relationship and not survive.” (Mate)
The mechanism in your brain that communicates - you better not do that, or you better not say no - is guilt. Guilt’s message is, if you say no, you’re a bad person. (Mate)
Several women said guilt was related to their upbringing and particularly their relationship with their mother.
As grown-ups, we don’t want to feel it. We will do anything not to feel guilty. We’ll take on extra workload, twist ourselves into a pretzel to meet the demands of others. Often, prioritising their needs over our own.
As a consequence of not saying no, to avoid guilt, we actually experience guilt through symptoms such as
The interesting thing is that as adults, we are no longer in that dependant situation, we were as children, yet we still tend to comply with the demands/needs of others to avoid the pain/anxiety of guilt.
It seems counterintuitive to embrace guilt and register the old messages being sent by our brain. But we need to do this, TO NOT ACT ON GUILT, so that we can make new choices. Many women said they’ve worked this out over the years. E.g. to evaluate the situation and decide if rectification is required or just to let go and move on.
Growing up in a Greek family, my brother and I used to joke that guilt was a Greek parenting tool. “What is Aunty Dora going to say if I let you go out with your friends? How’s that going to look!”
I do not want to pass the experience of guilt onto my children.
But I’m not perfect. I have my limitations. E.g. My daughter said she was sick one morning and couldn’t go to school. I had made plans. We’d just moved to Canberra and I was looking forward to catching up with an old uni friend. Even with awareness, I still managed to make my daughter feel guilty when I said, she could stay home and I would change my plans. My resentment still came out.
Guilt is a huge subject for me. My brother died by suicide 18 years ago. It was a shock to us all.
Having lost a brother and being the only child left, a daughter in a Greek family, I felt a great responsibility for my parents.
I carried my parents’ bottomless pit of pain and disappointment.
Dean was the boy and adored. I was less valued. My mother told me she had “nothing to live for now.” Even though I understood why she said it, it was hard to hear.
Feeling bad for my parents is natural. They lost a son. We all suffered. My upbringing fuelled my behaviour to overcompensate and to fill the gap for my parents.
Eventually, I came to realise my parents were not my responsibility. In any case, I could never satisfy them. It’s never enough. .
It took courage to embrace the guilt I felt, to let go and set myself free.
It’s probably the reason that when out of the blue, I got offered a job teaching out west, I jumped on it. See you later.
It seems guilt is a recurring process. It is an intractable force. With awareness and skills, we can minimise our suffering or length of time in guilt. But we get pulled into the fray through our relationships, upbringing, social and moral codes. What choice do we have but to find a way to deal with guilt when it arises. Because it will!
If you’re not watching the surf, guilt is a wave ready to whack you on the back of the head or take you under.
But what is our responsibility? To whom? How do we prioritise our time and energy.
Often, we just don’t have the tools at our fingertips
Setting boundaries and upholding them takes practise and courage, which lots of the respondents talked about learning this over the years. For women, feeling guilty about being assertive, is a real struggle.
Example: Recently, I was willing to feel the anxiety produced by guilt.
There is a conception I have about myself, about being this fabulous hostess that should provide accommodation, look after everyone, breakfast, lunch, dinner. And if I’m not willingly doing that, then I am doing the wrong thing. And I’m guilty. My dear friend and her family came to visit my family in SWR, and they found accommodation nearby for the week. I was relieved to not be burdened with the high standard of hostess duties from Greek upbringing. It is fascinating because the perfect solution happened and yet, I still felt guilty.
Gabor Mate says, we should sing hallelujah when we feel guilt, because it means we are changing. We are becoming more aware and making new choices. We are not the child trying to please the parent. Nor society’s codes. We are choosing our own code. Being true to ourselves. Living authentically. Free of pain and stress, and associated illness that guilt can bring.
When we see the impact of guilt on the respondents body symptoms, emotions, consciousness and behaviours, we can see the need for people to address and heal guilt. Some long term, some moment to moment. To recognise guilt, deal with the maladaptive behaviours and negative coping strategies we have inadvertently used.
I think this sense of being free, free from guilt, is important. To free ourselves is important, so we can live an authentic life and not suffer the ramifications of guilt.
Like the furies (guilt personified) that pursue and torment Orestes in the Greek myth. Briefly, he was between a rock and a hard place. He had to avenge his father’s death, which meant he had to commit matricide. Guilt is corrosive and has to be dealt with. You can’t keep running from it like Orestes tried to.
Guilt can be worked with in therapy, and the process unfolded, so that we can learn more about how it shows up in our life and how to deal with it. To be happier and healthier.
In my own experience I have found the way I judge myself for having upsetting emotions is one of the causes of guilt. Linehan states that feelings of guilt are the natural consequences of judging negative emotions as “bad” whenever distressing feelings arise. The addition of “secondary feelings to an already negative situation simply makes the distress more intense and tolerance more difficult. Frequently, a distressing situation or painful affect could be tolerated if only a person could refrain from feeling guilty or anxious about feeling painful emotions in the first place.” Like a meta emotion, guilt can be a reaction to an emotion. E.g. when I get angry at my husband, I feel bad about myself. One of the respondents talked about her husband and her impatience with his disability, and that made her feel guilty.
I found the responses very interesting with many similar, shared experiences. In regards to when guilt comes up for the women, it seems a common thread was they believed they ‘should’ be doing something that they are not doing. For example, exercising more, spending time with their parents, putting others’ needs before their own.
Some of the shared thoughts that stood out included they had:
Common was also resultant feelings of resentment for doing things for others.
A common underlying experience of not doing enough seemed to emerge for some women. For example, not keeping a tidy house, not spending enough time with family and friends. It seems some of the women behave as if they must be all things to all people. An inner critic seems to emerge.
The body sensation of guilt experienced by the women included discomfort in their stomach, tightening and constriction in the chest. Words like, sinking, heaviness and tension. e.g. jaw tension.
In conclusion, the experience of guilt seems to arise by failing to meet high and often unreasonable expectations. A sense of inadequacy, of not feeling good enough alongside a sense of responsibility for others’ needs. Guilt is experienced as unpleasant and something to be avoided. There seems to be self judgement and beliefs often stemming from early childhood that lead to feelings of guilt. It seems dealing with guilt interferes with prioritising one’s own needs, and therefore living an authentic life is jeopardised.
© Anna Rawlings 2019
All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be used without written permission.
Research Presentation Metavision Institute – By ANNA RAWLINGS
Thanks for taking a look. Please say hi and drop me a message if you have popped in to read about guilt. Email me here.
Guilt is a huge subject. It is so fraught and complex. This is just a snippet.
My research is on the experience of guilt for women. I gathered experiences and self reflections from ten women in our class.
Responses from that research, describe how awful guilt feels inside the body: like a hole, an emptiness, stress and anxiety symptoms such as heart racing, and it’s something to push away.
Other experiences included:
- cognitive dissonance (or feeling out of sorts).
- Resentment, remorse, self blame.
- Worrying. Ruminating.
- Regret – e.g. I shouldn’t have got angry or I should have handled that situation better. I let my husband annoy me.
Feelings of guilt are the natural consequences of judging negative emotions as “bad” whenever distressing feelings arise (Linehan).
Linehan defines guilts as “a response to evaluating one’s specific behaviours as bad or immoral.” Guilt and shame are often confused. To clarify, shame is defined by Linehan as “a response to evaluating one’s entire self as bad or unworthy.”
Paul explains guilt is the “feeling that you feel when you judge yourself for having done something that you believe is wrong. Your ego wounded self is saying things like, I know that I should visit my mother more. I’m really a bad daughter.” Similar responses were given in my research regarding, see Appendix 2. I should exercise, eat better. Spend more time with my parents or children.
Women talked about feeling immobilised, frozen, self punishing. There’s negative self-talk and the inner critic emerges. A need to justify herself.
The phenomenological description, for me, it’s like the tide or a wave rushing in, I cannot control the immense volume of water in the ocean. I’m subject to its forces and must let it take its course.
I can move aside, run from it, swim with it, duck under the wave or even ride it.
Or it can take me under, roll me, smash me into the sand beneath and leave me gasping for air, as I try to regain my balance and heal my mental and emotional wounds.
Guilt often showed up related to disappointing others.
Examples given include:
- being away from children, partners, pets
- Not spending enough time with aging parents
- Untidy house
- getting annoyed with loved ones, even if they are being inconsiderate.
There is a belief that, if I say no, I am guilty. If I’m not available 24/7, I am guilty.
“As a child you have no choice but to comply with your parents’ expectations because if you don’t, you might lose the attachment relationship and not survive.” (Mate)
The mechanism in your brain that communicates - you better not do that, or you better not say no - is guilt. Guilt’s message is, if you say no, you’re a bad person. (Mate)
Several women said guilt was related to their upbringing and particularly their relationship with their mother.
As grown-ups, we don’t want to feel it. We will do anything not to feel guilty. We’ll take on extra workload, twist ourselves into a pretzel to meet the demands of others. Often, prioritising their needs over our own.
As a consequence of not saying no, to avoid guilt, we actually experience guilt through symptoms such as
- stomach pain,
- headaches,
- back spasms,
- dry mouth,
- insomnia,
- fatigue,
- stress,
- overwhelm,
- frequent colds and
- depression (Mate).
The interesting thing is that as adults, we are no longer in that dependant situation, we were as children, yet we still tend to comply with the demands/needs of others to avoid the pain/anxiety of guilt.
It seems counterintuitive to embrace guilt and register the old messages being sent by our brain. But we need to do this, TO NOT ACT ON GUILT, so that we can make new choices. Many women said they’ve worked this out over the years. E.g. to evaluate the situation and decide if rectification is required or just to let go and move on.
Growing up in a Greek family, my brother and I used to joke that guilt was a Greek parenting tool. “What is Aunty Dora going to say if I let you go out with your friends? How’s that going to look!”
I do not want to pass the experience of guilt onto my children.
But I’m not perfect. I have my limitations. E.g. My daughter said she was sick one morning and couldn’t go to school. I had made plans. We’d just moved to Canberra and I was looking forward to catching up with an old uni friend. Even with awareness, I still managed to make my daughter feel guilty when I said, she could stay home and I would change my plans. My resentment still came out.
Guilt is a huge subject for me. My brother died by suicide 18 years ago. It was a shock to us all.
Having lost a brother and being the only child left, a daughter in a Greek family, I felt a great responsibility for my parents.
I carried my parents’ bottomless pit of pain and disappointment.
Dean was the boy and adored. I was less valued. My mother told me she had “nothing to live for now.” Even though I understood why she said it, it was hard to hear.
Feeling bad for my parents is natural. They lost a son. We all suffered. My upbringing fuelled my behaviour to overcompensate and to fill the gap for my parents.
Eventually, I came to realise my parents were not my responsibility. In any case, I could never satisfy them. It’s never enough. .
It took courage to embrace the guilt I felt, to let go and set myself free.
It’s probably the reason that when out of the blue, I got offered a job teaching out west, I jumped on it. See you later.
It seems guilt is a recurring process. It is an intractable force. With awareness and skills, we can minimise our suffering or length of time in guilt. But we get pulled into the fray through our relationships, upbringing, social and moral codes. What choice do we have but to find a way to deal with guilt when it arises. Because it will!
If you’re not watching the surf, guilt is a wave ready to whack you on the back of the head or take you under.
But what is our responsibility? To whom? How do we prioritise our time and energy.
Often, we just don’t have the tools at our fingertips
- to decide is this something I want to do for me, for the relationship, will I resent doing this thing.
- the language (the actual words to say no to someone, to communicate assertively) how to say no, without feeling bad about disappointing or letting someone down.
- Being prepared for the anxiety that accompanies guilt. Having self compassion.
Setting boundaries and upholding them takes practise and courage, which lots of the respondents talked about learning this over the years. For women, feeling guilty about being assertive, is a real struggle.
Example: Recently, I was willing to feel the anxiety produced by guilt.
There is a conception I have about myself, about being this fabulous hostess that should provide accommodation, look after everyone, breakfast, lunch, dinner. And if I’m not willingly doing that, then I am doing the wrong thing. And I’m guilty. My dear friend and her family came to visit my family in SWR, and they found accommodation nearby for the week. I was relieved to not be burdened with the high standard of hostess duties from Greek upbringing. It is fascinating because the perfect solution happened and yet, I still felt guilty.
Gabor Mate says, we should sing hallelujah when we feel guilt, because it means we are changing. We are becoming more aware and making new choices. We are not the child trying to please the parent. Nor society’s codes. We are choosing our own code. Being true to ourselves. Living authentically. Free of pain and stress, and associated illness that guilt can bring.
When we see the impact of guilt on the respondents body symptoms, emotions, consciousness and behaviours, we can see the need for people to address and heal guilt. Some long term, some moment to moment. To recognise guilt, deal with the maladaptive behaviours and negative coping strategies we have inadvertently used.
I think this sense of being free, free from guilt, is important. To free ourselves is important, so we can live an authentic life and not suffer the ramifications of guilt.
Like the furies (guilt personified) that pursue and torment Orestes in the Greek myth. Briefly, he was between a rock and a hard place. He had to avenge his father’s death, which meant he had to commit matricide. Guilt is corrosive and has to be dealt with. You can’t keep running from it like Orestes tried to.
Guilt can be worked with in therapy, and the process unfolded, so that we can learn more about how it shows up in our life and how to deal with it. To be happier and healthier.
In my own experience I have found the way I judge myself for having upsetting emotions is one of the causes of guilt. Linehan states that feelings of guilt are the natural consequences of judging negative emotions as “bad” whenever distressing feelings arise. The addition of “secondary feelings to an already negative situation simply makes the distress more intense and tolerance more difficult. Frequently, a distressing situation or painful affect could be tolerated if only a person could refrain from feeling guilty or anxious about feeling painful emotions in the first place.” Like a meta emotion, guilt can be a reaction to an emotion. E.g. when I get angry at my husband, I feel bad about myself. One of the respondents talked about her husband and her impatience with his disability, and that made her feel guilty.
I found the responses very interesting with many similar, shared experiences. In regards to when guilt comes up for the women, it seems a common thread was they believed they ‘should’ be doing something that they are not doing. For example, exercising more, spending time with their parents, putting others’ needs before their own.
Some of the shared thoughts that stood out included they had:
- done something wrong,
- done something against their values,
- upset, disappointed or inconvenienced someone else.
Common was also resultant feelings of resentment for doing things for others.
A common underlying experience of not doing enough seemed to emerge for some women. For example, not keeping a tidy house, not spending enough time with family and friends. It seems some of the women behave as if they must be all things to all people. An inner critic seems to emerge.
The body sensation of guilt experienced by the women included discomfort in their stomach, tightening and constriction in the chest. Words like, sinking, heaviness and tension. e.g. jaw tension.
In conclusion, the experience of guilt seems to arise by failing to meet high and often unreasonable expectations. A sense of inadequacy, of not feeling good enough alongside a sense of responsibility for others’ needs. Guilt is experienced as unpleasant and something to be avoided. There seems to be self judgement and beliefs often stemming from early childhood that lead to feelings of guilt. It seems dealing with guilt interferes with prioritising one’s own needs, and therefore living an authentic life is jeopardised.
© Anna Rawlings 2019
All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be used without written permission.