Is the feeling of guilt healthy and can it be felt while enjoying life

Among the difficult feelings that fall on a person, depriving him of his strength, driving him into a dead end, a sense of guilt occupies an honorable place. How does it appear? Can guilt deceive us, and if so, why? What if the damage or error cannot be corrected? Is it still possible to do something? We understand with the practicing psychologist Yulia Tkachenko.

Guilt as a signal

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in his work “Man's Search for True Meaning” included guilt, along with death and suffering, in the “tragic triad” of human existence. No one has yet managed to live a life without these three – death, guilt and suffering. And at the same time, wine is… an amazing gift. Why?

Normally, the feeling of guilt performs a specific function: it signals that we are at odds with our own values, have gone against what we consider right. They were rude to their mothers, boasted to appear as someone in front of their new friends, lied about a little thing, although we consider honesty to be an important human quality.

Adequate guilt helps to understand where a person has broken with himself and how to correct or compensate for the damage caused to him (sometimes just to himself, to his integrity), just as physical pain allows us to identify problems in the body in order to correct them. After appropriate actions are taken, healthy guilt disappears – it has fulfilled its function. So, when we feel guilty, are we guilty? But this is more difficult.

“The answer to almost everything”

Guilt must be commensurate with opportunity. And this is a very accurate psychological observation. Guilt is impossible without freedom of choice. If you had no choice, guilt is wrong. Often, this – imaginary – guilt arises in over-responsible people who feel in the answer “for everything and at once”, without specifics and a defined range of obligations. They pre-judge themselves without knowing the details. Yes, the mother may feel guilty that the child is often sick, although she does everything that depends on her for his health; a co-worker – to worry about the relationship with the boss that did not work out, not taking into account that on the other side there is an impenetrable wall of hatred or envy.

Perceived guilt has no specific cause. A person can constantly apologize without knowing why, feel like a burden to others without any reason. At the same time, it is extremely difficult for him to answer the simple question: “What exactly am I to blame?”.

And then it is important to stop and clarify the situation of guilt: what exactly happened? What of my actions caused this? What did I do, say, think? Is there anything I could have done to make it different? What, when? Sometimes, after such an analysis, a person realizes that he did not do anything wrong, and the feeling of guilt will disappear.

Another marker of unproductive guilt is that it seems to eat us up from the inside, whereas healthy guilt-responsibility allows us to grow.

Guilt-mistake

Existential analysis distinguishes real guilt for real guilt from guilt for a mistake. . What is the difference and why is it important?

We make mistakes by having the wrong picture of what is happening. You can yell at a child, and then find out that it was not her fault at all. Taking the wrong position in an argument, defending one and accusing the other, without having full information, and realizing it too late. If the error can be corrected, it should be done. Ask for forgiveness. Explain. But what to do if the consequences of the mistake can no longer be corrected? After all, then the feeling of guilt can be unbearable.

A good tool for working with guilt-error is the question: “Knowing everything that I know now, would I have acted the way I did?”. If a person sincerely answers “No”, guilt no longer has power over him.

“You eat cake, and people die in the world”

One of the varieties of imaginary guilt is guilt for joy. Do we have a right to it if there is fighting and people dying somewhere right now? And here it should again be about responsibility. What am I responsible for? At least for yourself, your physical and emotional state. Am I good at work, my family, my wife, my husband, my children if I let the news crush me emotionally? Hardly.

You can be happy, joke. You can watch and do everything that will allow you to live normally and maintain your vitality: take care of yourself, sleep, eat, find what brings you joy. Even in the most difficult situations: in camps, prisons, in the occupation, those who brushed their teeth, shaved, exercised, allowed themselves to fall in love and have hobbies survived.

Spiritual writer Serhiy Fudel, who spent about 10 years in exile and camps, wrote: “…The meaning of life is terribly simple: always and everywhere try to preserve the warmth of the heart, knowing that it will be needed by someone else, that we are always needed by someone else. And if a cup of lavender latte at the end of the work day allows you to keep that warmth and bring it home, there's no reason to feel guilty.