Guilt

Question of Today: “How do you forgive yourself when the guilt feels like it’s become who you are?”

When I was growing up, my father was in charge of my education. The man who was once kind and gentle became overpowering and domineering. Looking back I understand him more clearly now, he was afraid I would be trapped by limited opportunities. However, at the time, I internalized his emotions. I thought that when I missed an answer on one of his quizzes, and he flew into a rage, that I was responsible for his rage. That I had caused that level of suffering.

As a result, I developed a rule inside me that took on enormous responsibility for others’ reactions. I strived to be morally perfect, not because I truly cared for the value of morality and its benefit, but out of fear. Fear of that feeling: guilt.

Inevitably I hurt some people throughout my life, especially when I had my breakdown. At the time it didn’t matter, my mind was elsewhere. However, in the aftermath the weight of what I’d done crushed me.

“How could I have done that? Is there something wrong with me? Am I a bad person, a monster?”

These thoughts were too difficult for me to handle, so I did what many of us do, and sought to apologize and seek forgiveness from others. I typed out careful responses, saying I understood what I’d done and the harm I’d caused and pleaded for forgiveness under the surface. Many forgave me in writing, but it wasn’t enough. A stone in my shoe, a thorn at my side. I wanted them to say something, to give me something they could not give, that was not theirs to give.

So what was it, that thing I needed? It wasn’t brushing the wrong aside, nor punishing myself for it. I see it as remorse. This is when we separate the action and motivations from our core identity. It becomes something we can look at clearly without being absorbed in a total judgement about our existence.

If the problem is “me at my core” there is no real way to change that. Nothing can be done with such a wide scope. However, if we look closely, the causes are much smaller. Not only that, they are things we didn’t know would cause damage in almost every case.

A while back I was working in a school and noticed that many students were feeling sick, going to the nurse and not feeling any better. I asked them if they were receiving anything from the nurse and they said no, that you had to have a special paper. I thought about this deeply. I wanted to help them, and knew that many may not have access to medical professionals. I had an idea to reach out to a pro-bono medical center and ask if they could help. I added the school nurse to the email. I felt excited, but a bit funny under the surface.

I started talking to a friend about it, and he warned me about what I’d done. That I had not told the school administration and potentially caused a breach. My mind went haywire. I pictured worst-case scenarios, but more than anything I felt that I had done something so unbelievably wrong that the whole world would fall on me.

When the storm settled, and I realized everything was exactly the same, I thought about it more. I was able to extract the real insight from it. Systems have procedures. Consequences correspond to actions proportionally. If you want to help others in lasting ways, work with the system, not around it.

The mistake was something I didn’t really know was a mistake. I didn’t know the reason for the system. I didn’t know how to work with it, or why it mattered. By stepping away from self-condemnation, I was actually able to learn something guilt would have never shown me.

Guilt will always say: “I am bad”. Remorse will say: “I did something bad, and here’s what I can learn from it, so that I don’t repeat it”.

My journey hasn’t been so much about self-forgiveness but rather realizing that guilt is ineffective. As long as I stay in guilt, I can’t really move forward. This has taken time to realize, through trial and error. I still get caught in it sometimes, but much less these days.

Interestingly, people with strong guilt have the drive to learn in them. We all do. Seeing our loved ones hurt by what we did is difficult. If we really want to be better people however, it’s a huge step to learn how to separate actions from identity.

The next time you start feeling guilty or ashamed, ask yourself: “What is the concrete thing that I did wrong? What is the action that I took? What is something I didn’t know then that now seems obvious? What will I do differently next time?”

How have you navigated guilt? What do you think about the distinction between self-judgement and remorse? Leave a comment and I’d love to hear what you think!