Getting a Grip on Guilt
 

Guilt, self-depreciation, and shame are an integral part of depression.
Whether they are the cause or a by-product is not known. A combination of
both life experience and biochemistry help explain why some people
constantly put themselves on trial.

                                       Guilt and Shame




































FALSE GUILT

If you are predisposed by life experience or biochemistry to self-
condemnation, it is easy to have a false or disproportionate sense of
responsibility for anything that goes wrong. You may magnify what you’ve
done, take personal responsibility for everything that goes wrong, “should
yourself” instead of understand yourself, and unrealistically expect yourself
to only have positive feelings. Rarely is an undesirable state of affairs all
one person’s fault or as bad as it seems at the moment. Make your
introspection work for you by reexamining your “wrongdoings” and putting
them in perspective.

GUILT TEST

Directions: Identify something you feel bad about. Determine a percentage
for your intention of causing the event, your contribution to it, the amount of
control you had over it and the degree to which it was bad. Get a second
opinion on all your ratings in case you have not yet learned that guilt comes
in shades of gray.

I feel bad about:

    1.        I had ___% intention of making this turn out the way it did.
    2.        I am ___% responsible for the other person’s distress or
               negative outcome.
    3.        The other person is ___% responsible for his or her distress or
               negative outcome.
    4.        I had ___% control over achieving the outcome I wanted.
    5.        I was ___% capable of preventing what happened when it
               happened.
    6.        Other factors (lack of experience information) contributed to
               ___% of the outcome.
    7.        I was ___% successful in achieving the outcome I wanted.
    8.        The world or other person was ___%  damaged by what I did.
    9.        The ultimate outcome of what happened was ___%  negative
               and ___%  positive.

Some people seem to prefer to condemn themselves rather than place
responsibility where it is due. Just recognizing what you are doing is the first
step of change. Decide if you are guilty of the following false guilt payoffs:

• If I cannot do anything right, than I do not need to try to improve or
  act differently. Change means I would have to make an effort and
  possibly fail.

• If I am responsible for the bad things that have happened to me, then
  I can control future misfortunes. Change means I would have to give
  up my “illusion of control.”

• I am not sure what it will mean to change negative views. Therefore, I
  look at life events in a way that reinforces my current perceptions.

PROPER GUILT

Most people don’t learn to skate without falling, and it is impossible to go
through life without making blunders. It is proper to feel remorse when you
have unnecessarily or willfully acted in a hurtful manner toward yourself or
another person in a way that violates your standards.2 However, no matter
how bad your transgression, you are not innately bad or evil. Good people
do wrong things! The very fact that you feel regret means you have a
conscience. It is better to take one or more of the following actions to
relieve your distress than to wallow in “poor-awful-me-ism”:

• Pinpoint your mistakes: Take responsibility for your contribution to a
  problem, but only for your part!

• Express your regret: “I am sorry for. . . .” Do not make excuses by
  saying “I’m sorry I . . . , but . . .” This is a sneaky attempt to gain
  absolution. You can explain why you did something only if you are
  asked!

• Express the wish behind the regret: “I wish I had. . . .” Identify a
  specific action that could have made the situation different. This will
  help you learn from your mistakes.

• Change your pattern: In future situations, change your actions. Even
  if you are unable to do this with the person you hurt, you still make
  amends by being different with others.

• Do not ask for forgiveness: forgiveness is entirely the choice of the
  “injured” party.

Most people feel either too much or too little guilt. The chronically guilty
take responsible for everything bad that has ever happened to them or
their loved ones. The forever innocent do not hold themselves accountable
for the bad consequences of their actions or how they respond to others’
blunders. It is easier to tone down a sense of overresponsibility than to
build one in people who have little. However, by owning your part of a
problem and only your part, you model how to make amends and make it
more difficult for others to shift blame.
 

References
    
See “Cognitive Dissonance” in Breaking the Patterns of Depression by
Michael Yapko (Doubleday, 1997), p. 224.

See “Guilt” in Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (Avon
Books, 1980), p. 199.