FAMILIES FORMING A CHRONIC SENSE OF GUILT

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

All parents have a responsibility to teach their children what is good and what is bad; Psychologically well-off parents are able to develop the capacity for realistic awareness of when and how a child harmed others. Other parents say and do things that burden their children with excessive amounts of irrational guilt. Children growing up in such an environment often carry this excess, irrational guilt with them into adulthood.

For some wine-focused families, there is no such thing as coincidence or chance. Everything that happens, especially everything bad, must have an explanation. Moreover, the reason usually lies in the wrong actions of one of the family members. For example, a child who dropped a cup of hot tea on himself must have been careless. Or a child who has become a victim of a school bullying must have behaved defiantly, thereby incurring aggression. Personal responsibility in such families becomes too distorted. Young children who consider themselves to be the center of everything that happens tend to believe that they are the cause of many events; if parents confirm this belief, children may eventually come to the conclusion that they are constantly and for everything. They may be immobilized by the fear that any action they do might harm others. They get into the habit of blaming themselves for any trouble that happens to those they love. People who are blamed for too many troubles, especially if in reality they are unable to control them, gradually acquire a chronic sense of irrational guilt.

A central component of experiencing guilt is suppression of aggression. If at first the child must restrain himself from a simple fear of punishment, then later the children gradually internalize parental expectations, eventually becoming self-disciplined. Normally, a person understands that he has every right to be constructively aggressive and does not spend most of his energy watching his impulses to make sure that they do not turn into action. Such a person is able to be spontaneous, temporarily weakening self-control without the anxiety of committing inappropriate acts. The families that generate the most guilt are those that place the greatest emphasis on control. The messages that a child in such a family receives is that he must be constantly on the alert in order to be able to refrain from doing the wrong thing. Children are expected to be ideals of suppression. Children can be punished for the slightest mischief as they are expected to be in control at all times. People growing up in such an atmosphere are overly socialized. Anger is viewed as a threatening emotion that should not be experienced or even heard of. Guilt blocks the path to understanding that anger can be a marker that something is wrong in their life.

Some guilt-centered families practice mental interventions: “I know what you are thinking, and stop thinking so immediately.” Such parents can often be persecuting and insist that their children's thoughts be clear. Children growing up in such an environment may come to the conclusion that any mental aggression is unacceptable and must be eliminated immediately. Children gradually transform parental prohibitions into their own, and learn to censor their thoughts and actions. One eloquent example of this is when a child stands in front of a mirror, points his finger at himself and says, "No, don't do that." Later, as an adult, this person can become self-punishing, attacking himself every time he feels his own aggressiveness. Such a person is not capable of self-affirmation without feeling irrational guilt.

Power and guilt are usually closely related. Some parents believe they have the right to punish and threaten to punish those who are weaker than them. In wine-centered families, children are expected to obey their parents, listen carefully, and then do exactly what they want them to do. Respect for elders in such families can be a wonderful way to control children. The main explanation for such parents is that they themselves are the social order because of their position as parents, and that for this reason their children must follow their commands unconditionally. Such parents demand obedience, in spite of their actions, their justice / injustice, their own moral behavior, their consistency. Punishment for disrespect is a logical consequence of this state of thought. The parent can be aggressive towards their children, punish them, beat them or pull them back as soon as they think the child has disobeyed the command.

Guilt-provoking families often mix strict moral attitudes with the expectation that some or all of their members will violate those attitudes. Parents are emphasized on the need for an absolute obligation to behave appropriately. At the same time, they behave as if they are convinced that their children will act immorally. For example, they can constantly interrogate a teenage daughter about her sexual activity and accuse her of promiscuity, regardless of obvious evidence of her high moral principles. Some parents may be less critical, preaching high moral standards and acting immorally. This is a well-known style - "Do as I say, not as I do."

One surefire way to provoke irrational guilt is to consistently blame someone for the wrong behavior without telling them exactly what they are doing wrong. Phrases that can often be heard in such families: “You don’t know what you did, I won’t tell you” or “You must have done something wrong, since he didn’t say hello to you.” This "nebulousness" of statements fulfills several functions. First, it enables the one in power to maintain control; he can blame anyone and anything without bothering to find an excuse. Secondly, the "vagueness" of the statements does not allow the accused to take action to protect himself from attacks or to correct the actual harm caused. A person who feels guilty about such a situation may desperately try to correct their mistakes, only to hear again that they misunderstand the problem and have only made it difficult. Thus, irrational guilt breeds more guilt when the individual tries to change. These new accusations are just as "vague" as the previous ones and fill in even more "fog", gradually disorienting the guilty person completely. This leads to the third function of vague accusations. Uncertainty leads to the "sinking of the guilty", exhausted by his efforts to repair what does not need repair. In the end, he stops this hopeless struggle and despairs. He says, “I've tried everything. No matter what I did, nothing suited them. I can not do it anymore. I'm so tired that I will only do what they say."

Some parents make a conscious decision to use guilt in the way described above. Other parents are convinced that their accusations are absolutely fair. Many families develop a pattern of interaction in which vague accusations become a common form of mutual communication. The result may be that a person carries out from such a family a feeling of pervasive guilt.

Guilt-provoking family members are characterized by a tendency to divide the world into good and bad people. Once included in their blacklist, he may remain on it indefinitely. Members of such families may live in fear that they will be expelled by the rest of the family. If a person does something unforgivable, the cost can be very high; he can become rejected and generally discarded as unnecessary. It is the need to punish that feeds the refusal to forgive or forget. The punisher, considering his actions morally justified, insists that the wrong side has committed an unforgivable offense.

Many guilt-provoking families are convinced that guilt is a collective phenomenon; in such families, everyone takes responsibility for the misconduct of other family members. Collective guilt tendencies are found in intricate family systems that place great value on mutual dependence and destroy individuality. Responsibilities in such families are poorly distributed, which scatters responsibility. A person who has actually done something wrong can be protected from experiencing the consequences if the whole family tries to make amends. People who grow up in such an atmosphere often tend to take the blame for things they didn't do.