How To Distinguish Rational From Irrational (neurotic) Guilt

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Guilt Is a feeling that arises in response to a violation of one's own or social values that have been internalized inside a person.

If shame is a failure of being, then guilt is a failure at the level of action.

Guilt, of course, also has positive functions, I feel guilty if I lie, thanks to this I can become more righteous and feel respect for myself. Guilt can be redeemed, repaired, or apologized.

We can distinguish: rational and irrational guilt

Rational guilt signals that a person needs to change his behavior. She tells the individual you have sinned. Rational guilt leads to rational moral pride. A rational sense of guilt helps an individual to correct his mistakes, act morally, and take initiative. Rational guilt tells a person where he has violated his values. Therefore, it is important to regularly research your values.

Irrational guilt leads to the suppression of a person with vague accusations not related to actual behavior. The purpose of rational guilt is simply to punish its victim and prevent any hints of aggression. While rational guilt serves to restore balance between the individual and society.

Example: The client talks about her interactions with her father since childhood. Father beat her, sister, mother, had constant mistresses who threatened the client, had illegitimate children. He humiliated her and her mother, instilling in them that they were nothing and no one needed without him and would die. According to the client's description, he is not interested in her, is indifferent, cold, all her attempts to clarify the relationship either ignores or rudely breaks off. He earns well, but does not give the client money. I always said that I stayed in the family because of them and my sister.

The situation now: the father periodically calls the client and talks about his life, how he earns well, and how everyone got him. The stories are accompanied by obscenities, breakdowns, tantrums. The client says that he is not interested in her in these conversations. When she tries to clarify something, her father hangs up. These conversations are unbearable to her. I ask: “Why do you endure? Why don't you stop talking?"

Answers: “Wine! Father! You can't do that with your father. " Takes on the role of a "drain bucket", because if the father accumulates negativity in himself, then his health will deteriorate. Behind the guilt is the fear of losing his father. I ask: "How can you lose him?" Answers: "He will stop communicating with me."

The communication that exists does not suit the client. But she hopes that she will still be able to convey to her father her need for warmth and protection.

In response to the disrespectful attitude of the father, even for the thought of trying to show aggression and set a boundary, the client becomes guilty.

Likewise, guilt before the mother. Setting: "If I am not the center of her life, she will be left alone." As a child, my mother blamed that if they were good, my father would not have cheated.

A common symptom of irrational guilt is responsibility for the feelings of others, their lives and health.

We see how adults, unable to cope with life and their own responsibility for their choices, actions and deeds, not withstanding the tension and pressure of guilt, stabilize their condition at the expense of children.

Feeling irrational (neurotic) guilt develops during childhood. This is a time when responsibility is easily confused. Children often come to believe that they are the cause of problems over which they have no control. And here comes the responsibility for the feelings of others.

The child may then choose to correct those mistakes by over-punishing themselves or decide never to harm anyone again. So they become compliant, docile and comfortable. At the same time alarming and fearful, because there is a constant fear that they will be angry and rejected for something.

Rational guilt Is a reaction to real harm done to a person, irrational guilt - to a far-fetched one. Rational guilt is a realistic response to harm actually done to others, it is proportional to the actual amount of harm and decreases when the person stops guilty behavior and corrects mistakes.

Irrational guilt - is unlimited. Individuals with an irrational sense of guilt believe that almost everything they do is morally unworthy.

People experiencing moderate guilt realize not only their moral shortcomings, but also their merits, their strengths. They understand that they are not saints or sinners, but only mistaken human beings who try to be honest with themselves and with others.

Rational guilt lets meet her. It is important that the guilty individual does not shift responsibility to others or to fate, this helps to reduce pain, but sooner or later, in order to complete the process of compensation, responsibility must be taken on for one's actions. We can make any choice, the main thing is that we are aware of the consequences of these elections and our ability to bear responsibility for these elections.

Rational guilt says, “I know I hurt you, and I sincerely regret it. Let me do what I can to fix it. Please forgive me.

Ashamed individuals are afraid of being abandoned. The guilty are more afraid of ostracism - that they will be rejected by those they love and need. It can be said that the ashamed person expects the other to get up and leave the room, while the guilty person expects to be thrown out.

Rational guilt is a feeling of discomfort that accompanies the actual violation and is proportional to the latter. In other words, a person feels rational guilt because they have actually trampled on their own values and harmed others.

Irrational guilt - this is the same discomfort that happens even when the individual did not make mistakes and did no harm. A person may feel irrational guilt even when they cannot determine the source of this pain; in contrast, the origin of rational guilt can always be deliberately established.

Conclusion: Overly guilty people often feel overwhelmed and overwhelmed by their depravity. Those who are not sufficiently aware of guilt consider themselves supermen, more gifted or blameless than others. Both of these states are in stark contrast to the sense of rational guilt, in which individuals consider themselves to be inherently good, but capable of unsuccessful actions or aggression. And the failures and successes of such people are within the human limits: they are temporary, changeable and normal.