Pathological Guilt And Its Pitfalls
The feeling of guilt is, in principle, healthy. Even if it does not cause one to feel the slightest joy, it is a mechanism that is associated with self-criticism. It is inevitable that sometimes we act wrong and end up hurting others. In these cases, guilt alerts us to the need to right these wrongs. However, there are circumstances in which self-blame goes beyond the bounds of reasonableness and that is when pathological guilt arises.
Guilt involves a call to conscience. It appears when we have transgressed a principle or when we pass above a value in which we believe. Guilt is a feeling that is strongly associated with ideology. Moral conscience or duty always is.
In psychological terms, it is virtually impossible to define whether a behavior is “good” or “bad”. Even those who deliberately do harm could be motivated by bias in their thoughts or emotions, due to an altered, sick or dysfunctional environment.
However, at the individual level, everyone makes this type of estimate, in terms of accuracy or inaccuracy. And when we feel that we have neglected our beliefs or our values, we come to feel remorse. When do we go from normal guilt to pathological guilt? Let’s dig deeper into this point.
Normal guilt and pathological guilt
It is not always easy to know the difference between guilt that we could describe as “normal” and pathological guilt. A first way to distinguish one from the other is to be found in the evaluation of their frequency and their intensity. If we usually feel it and if it is a very strong and invasive feeling, we can speak of pathological guilt.
There are psychological disorders in which guilt is very present. One of the most common is depression. In this state, it is common for the person to tend to constantly punish himself. In fact, she starts to feel guilty because she is depressed and can’t seem to feel like other people.
Pathological guilt is also present in obsessive-compulsive disorders, phobias and addictions. In such cases, the guilt operates as part of the problem. It is not healthy guilt that prompts you to fix or redirect the behavior. Rather, it functions as a factor of constant emotional punishment, which usually worsens the central problem.
The different faces of guilt
Sometimes the guilt hides a bit. In this case, it is not the typical remorse after doing or saying something that we consider to be wrong. There is, for example, traumatic guilt, one of the forms that pathological guilt takes.
The mechanism works as follows. A person is the victim of an arbitrary act, abuse or an extremely painful and fortuitous event. The emotional impact is therefore very high. What is called “trauma” is then configured. Even if the person is a victim, they develop a feeling of guilt in the face of the situation. This is precisely one of the effects of trauma. In this case, there is pathological guilt.
On the other hand, there are cases in which a person comes to feel guilty simply by imagining something wrong when, in practice, this has never happened. There should be no remorse because no damage has taken place. However, if the person’s morals or “me” are extremely restrictive, they will perceive everything as if they have actually done something wrong.
Overcome pathological guilt
Pathological guilt can be very incisive. Little by little, she digs a hole and infiltrates the different actions of life. It greatly deteriorates self-esteem even if it is also the product of a person’s low self-esteem. For example, someone with low self-esteem feels that he must please others all the time and if he does not succeed, he feels guilty.
In this case, it is necessary to follow a process that allows you to open the mind in order to see everything from another perspective. It is important to think about the norms and beliefs that one has. And, above all, to assess their raison d’être and their logic. The vast majority of the time, these are overly rigid codes which, in reality, do not push us to be better people or to be better members of society. They only seek to torment us.
Very often it is necessary to go through this process with the help of a psychotherapist. Guilt may have roots so deep that it’s hard to deal with without support. It is worth making an effort to free yourself from pathological guilt. It is a force that can become overwhelming and ruin your entire life.
Our thoughts Why are some people unable to let go of their guilt?
