Seven Basic Forms Of Guilt

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

Excerpt from the book by Robert Anthony. Secrets of self-confidence

PARENTS - CHILD

As a child, you were taught to feelings of guilt adults, especially your family members. After all, if they feel guilty and it's good for them, it should be good for you too! If they didn't like what you were doing or saying, they called you "bad girl" or "bad boy."

They condemned you, not your actions. Throughout your childhood years, especially the first five, you have been taught to respond to "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong." Guilt at the same time it was introduced into your subconscious mind through a system of reward and punishment. It was at this age that you began to identify yourself with the nature of your actions.

Parents unwittingly use guilt as a means of controlling their children. They tell the child that if he does not do this, they will be very upset. Their weapons are phrases like "what will the neighbors think?", "You disgrace us!", "You disappoint us!" The list is endless. Every time you fail in trying to please your parents, they play a trump card. As a result, you develop a pattern of behavior aimed primarily at satisfying the moral standards of others.

To avoid feelings of guilt, say and do what others want from you, each time coming to the conclusion that only in this case everyone will like it. In this way, you develop a strong need to make a good impression on others.

CHILD - PARENTS

In contrast to the above method, children often manipulate their parents through feelings of guilt. Most adults want to be “good” and cannot deal with the feeling that their child considers their behavior to be dishonest or indifferent. For coercion, the child operates with phrases like "in fact, you do not love me!" or "So-and-so's parents gave him permission." He also reminds elders of what they did or didn’t do, intuitively understanding that this creates feelings of guilt in them.

This pattern of behavior was learned through observation of adults. The child does not know the mechanism of its work, only realizing that it is the most effective for achieving the desired. Since manipulation is one of the main activities of children, it does not take a child long to learn a lesson.

Guilt is a learned emotional response. The described behavior is not natural. If your child is trying to force you to do something with guilt, you can be sure that he has adopted this tactic from a good teacher - from you!

WINE THROUGH LOVE

"If you loved me.." This is the beginning of one of the most common phrases used to manipulate your partner. When we say, “If you loved me, you would do it,” we are. in essence, we say; "You are guilty because you did not do it" - or: "If you refuse to do this, then you do not really love me."

Of course, we must always show our love and concern, even if we have to internalize a neurotic injection scheme! If words don't work, we may resort to things like silence punishment, refusal to have sex, resentment, anger, tears, or slamming doors.

Another tactic is to use guilt feelings to punish your parents for behavior that is inconsistent with our values and beliefs. Digging into old sins and reminding them of how “wrong” they were helps maintain guilt. As long as our parents feel guilty, we can manipulate them. This type of relationship implies that our love depends on the special behavior that we seek from our parents. When they disobey, we use guilt to "fix" them.

These are just a few of the ways in which guilt is embedded in a love-based relationship.

WINE INSURED BY SOCIETY

It all starts at school when you are unable to meet the demands of the teachers. They make you feel guilty about your behavior, suggesting that you could have done better or that you let your teacher down. Without trying to get to the root of the problem - the student's erroneous Realization - the teacher presses on the feeling of guilt. It is of little benefit to training, although it is an effective means of control.

Society instills in you the need for obedience. Guilt develops in you if you do or say something that is considered socially unacceptable. Our prison system is an excellent example of guilt theory.

If you violate the moral code of society, then you are punished by imprisonment in a correctional institution. During this time, repentance is expected from you. The more serious the crime, the longer you will have to repent.

Then you are released as a supposedly rehabilitated person, without solving the main problem: without correcting the erroneous Awareness, namely, low self-esteem. Unsurprisingly, seventy-five percent of inmates become repeat offenders.

Guiltimposed by social education makes you anxious about how others will react to your actions. You are so preoccupied with the opinions of others that you cannot free yourself for the main thing: achieving your own goals. You seek to consult with others before you do or say anything that might upset them.

That is why the rules of etiquette are so strong in society. For most people, the question is: which side of the plate should I put the fork on? - literally a matter of life and death! Their whole life is governed by socially acceptable patterns of behavior, because they cannot bear feelings of guilt. Unfortunately, people are more likely to prefer to be polite than to be themselves.

SEXY WINE

Sexual guilt has long been a part of the American way of life. Past generations have lived with sexual values that are incompatible with natural desire. Coerced by a religious upbringing where all forms of sexual expression were labeled "good" or "bad," "natural" or "sinful," people passed on their beliefs from generation to generation like a contagious disease.

If your value system included any form of sexuality that was considered morally unacceptable, you were forced to feel guilt and shame. Things like masturbation, extramarital sex, pornography, homosexuality, abortion, etc., were “bad” and “sinful”.

As a result, there are many sexual taboos today engendered by repressed feelings of guilt.

For the average person, brought up from childhood on the concept of the sinfulness of sex, it is impossible to enjoy any sexual gratification without feeling guilty. Until the partners understand that ANY FORM OF SEXUAL EXPRESSION IS WITHIN THE HUMAN VALUES SYSTEM AND DOESN'T CREATE PHYSICAL HARM TO ANOTHER, ANY EXPERIENCE IS CORRECT, ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE, ANYTHING IS CORRECT.

RELIGIOUS WINE

Religion has done a great deal to develop and embed the feeling of guilt in the mind of the average person. It is due to the presence of the concept of original sin that guilt is a means of control over religious people.

Through the false concept of perfection, many religious denominations plant guilt feelings in the minds of those people who do not fit their moral criteria based on their interpretation of Scripture. They start with the premise that any judgment is based on the concept of perfection. They say that perfection is "good" and imperfection is "bad."

Misinterpretation has limited understanding of the true meaning of the word. If you place ten thousand identical objects under the microscope, you will see that among them there are no two absolutely alike.

Each creature is clearly different from the other: it is a biological, psychological, philosophical and metaphysical fact. Any personality is an expression of the Creative Intelligence, therefore, perfection is relative, as, indeed, everything else. Wallace Stevens puts it this way:

Twenty people walking across the bridge

To one village, -

These are twenty people

crossing twenty bridges

Twenty villages …

Some churches, expecting two people to equally understand God, Truth and the Bible, have sentenced their believers to failure in their quest.

Paradoxically, you must be flawed to be “perfect”. Imperfections are the means of promoting your development, encouraging all of humanity to be creative. To be flawless means to be a sterile person who does not need mental, physical, emotional and spiritual evolution. The desire to succeed, unspoiled by guilt, is essential for people to get better results.

It is difficult for a person who is convinced that everything sinful is bad "to see value and beauty - yes, even beauty! - in sins and mistakes. The Church claims that sin is "bad," but few priests will deny that we learn from our mistakes. The difference is whether we learn the specific lesson they teach us. Some of the world's achievements belong to people whose flaws were the driving force in creativity.

If you read the biographies of great people who made a significant contribution to the development of mankind, you could see that they all, without exception, had flaws, many of which were considered "sinful" by society. Realizing this fact will allow you to reevaluate your own guilt feelings in perspective.

It is useless and self-destructive. It is enough to have a desire to overcome the so-called shortcomings, sins and mistakes.

SELF-APPLIED WINE

This is the most destructive form of guilt. We impose it on ourselves, feeling that we have violated our moral code or the moral code of society.

Guilt arises when we look back at our past and see; that they made an unreasonable choice or act. We consider what we have done - whether it was non-constructive criticism, theft, deception, lies, exaggeration, violation of religious norms, or any other act that is unacceptable to us - in the light of our current value system. In most cases, guilt is a way of proving that we care about our actions and regret them. We are simultaneously flogging ourselves with rods for what we have done and trying to change the past. At the same time, we cannot understand that the past cannot be changed.

The neurotic always feels guilty. A balanced whole person learns from examples from the past. There is a huge difference between the first and the second.

Serving a sentence for imaginary guilt is a neurotic habit that you should get rid of if you ever want to gain confidence in yourself. Guilt will not help you one iota. It will only make you a prisoner of the past and prevent you from taking any positive action in the present. By harboring guilt, you elude responsibility for your life today.

Illustrations: artist Kate Zambrano