Guilt

March Topic... Guilt. Which is somewhat overdue. In the lead up to March 1st, I was very aware that I had this self assigned 'precept' of posting monthly articles. I had actual life happening however, so decided that this would be on the back burner.

I wouldn't call what I felt about not posting 'guilt'. It was more of a sense of knowing. I am very accustomed to starting projects and not following through. I was also aware that if this were a work or uni project, there would definitely be a sense of guilt attached. That is my ‘ah-ha’ moment with guilt. I realised that I feel it when I am accountable, not when it is something I can let go with out consequence. This is the same across the board, be it work or personal situations, and the feeling will always involve other people.

So I went, once again, back to the beginning, as per my apparently psychoanalytic nature. From 2013 to 2014, I spent a good amount of time contemplating Erikson’s stage of development ‘Autonomy vs Shame’. This was a large part of my journey in developing self-awareness, so there was a small internal squeal when I saw that the concept of guilt falls into the next stage: ‘guilt vs initiative’. Although it does not work in stages (really, REALLY, does not work in stages), I couldn’t help but feel a little sense of graduating and levelling up in my own personal introspection game.

Back to the point, I will rarely show initiative unless I need to. I am lazy and prefer to daydream my way through life, so it is rare that I will actively do anything deemed productive by society unless I have someone watching. I explored this in a previous post on validation, and would like to point out that this is why instagram and facebook are my crutches. When I cannot pull through in a way that my ego-ideal deems appropriate for my public persona, I experience guilt. This is because I have not lived up to an expectation, which would have resulted in me being ‘liked’. If you consider ‘liked’ to mean things that make us feel that we are nice, worthy, good people, you will see that this subconscious philosophy affects all personal and professional areas of my life.

This means that guilt is not actually guilt. The sensation of guilt is an indicator that I have done something which moves rewards away from me, therefore making me feel like a bad person. Yes, guilt acts as a mechanism to help us cultivate better relationships, social cohesion and personal growth, but I believe it is wildly and regularly misplaced. It is a mechanism. Not an identity.

Wikipedia explains guilt as “a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation”

Two things stand out for me in this definition. First is the belief that a person has “compromised his or her own standards of conduct”. This is closely linked to the ego-ideal which I spoke about last month. Second is that the person feeling guilt “bears significant responsibility for that violation”. As I said in the first paragraph, I do not feel guilty if the only person I am liable to is myself. Guilt comes into play when I feel a sense of responsibility for the situation I am in. I do not feel guilt calling into work because I know I am easily replaceable. I do feel guilt when I know that client’s appointments will need to be cancelled and someone else cannot replace me. It is my relationship to responsibility that is causing my discomfort, not guilt. All this time, guilt has been trying to alert me to a bigger internal struggle but I have been blaming it for my suffering.

This moths exploration has lead me to see that my guilt is closely related to my sense of responsibility, regardless of whether it is real or imagined. So you would think my next topic would be responsibility…but it won’t be. I have decided to cut straight across that and go straight to the source. Stay tuned.