So far we have talked a lot about not blaming and not being self-critical, because condemning and blaming does not help us – but learning to be open to our limitations, mistakes and unkindnesses and be genuinely committed to improve and repair is very important for us in developing compassion (see Table 13.1). Guilt and the ability to be able to tolerate guilt can help us here.
Appropriate feelings of guilt are seen as more positive than shame because they are linked to wanting to avoid hurting others, the ability to think about other people’s feelings, to moral concerns and genuine effort to make amends.1 Guilt can obviously link to the legal meaning, that is, to mean one has ‘caused something’ to happen – but here I am going to contrast the psychological meanings of guilt and shame.
To clarify these distinctions, consider the reactions of two men, John and Tom, both of whom have affairs. When their respective wives discover their infidelity, John thinks,
Oh dear, my wife will give me a hard time now. Maybe she won’t love me so much. Suppose she tells our friends? How will I face them? I think I had better hide for a while and be extra nice.
John’s focus is not at all on the pain he has given his wife, but only on himself. His main concern is the damage the discovery may do to him (external shame) and maybe he is not a nice person (internal shame). His response is shame-based. Tom, however, feels terribly sad for the hurt he has caused his wife and the damage he has done to the relationship. He recognizes how bad he would feel if the situation were reversed and feels remorse. Tom may also worry about his wife loving him less and what his friends might think of him if they found out, because principally he is focused on the harm he has done and the hurt he has caused and how he can help his wife. His response is guilt-based.
Some guilt feelings are often related to a certain kind of fear. The fear is the same kind of fear we might feel if we hear that someone we love has been hurt – it is based on a worry for and about them. When we have done something that has caused hurt or harm there can be feelings of sorrow and sadness, and these in turn are linked to feelings of remorse and regret. It is these feelings that make us want to put things right. For example, John may not feel very much sorrow for what he has done, because he is focused purely on the damage to him that may follow from the discovery. John’s fear is that others will not like him. Tom, however, feels deep sorrow to see his wife so hurt.
You will note from this example that although Tom feels guilt and is far more in touch with the pain he has caused than John, he is unlikely to be free of shame. Suddenly, confronted with a deeply hurt wife, he may (perhaps for the first time) really appreciate how hurtful his actions have been, and this could trigger negative (shame-related) thoughts. Although this chapter is going to focus on guilt, we should be clear that guilt can trigger shame (and self-attacking thoughts, e.g., ‘I am a cheat and a bad/unlovable person’); indeed, in depression it commonly does. Both guilt and shame are self-conscious emotions – meaning that they focus attention in on the self. The heightened self-consciousness of guilt can easily tip into shame and negativity when we are depressed. Guilt, as a trigger for shame, is important to spot.
The American psychologist Martin Hoffman sees guilt as related to sympathy and empathy: you need both to feel guilt.2 Sympathy is when we are emotionally moved by another’s upset or hurt; the wince if we see someone fall heavily or cut themselves. Empathy is our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others and think about things from their point of view. However, without caring concern or some sympathy, empathy can be put to dark uses. Advertisers need some empathy to know how to hook us in to buy their products. Bullies might know how to really upset us because they can work out our soft spots and play on them. There is more to guilt than just empathy, and adult guilt must always involve some capacity for compassion and a desire to care for others – or at least not cause harm. This is why guilt cannot be understood purely by our thoughts. If we don’t care about others, why would we be bothered with guilt? One does not need to care for others to feel ashamed, but one does to feel guilt. Indeed, one reason we can behave so badly and hurtfully towards others is because we don’t have any interest in caring for or about the person. Similarly, if we stop caring or feeling sympathy for ourselves, we can also treat ourselves very cruelly and unkindly.
I will explore how guilt can become a problem, especially when it is fused with shame – which it often is in depression. However, we should also be clear that guilt is an extremely important moral emotion. Guilt feelings can enable us to feel for others and be sensitive to hurting other people and truly want to make amends. Guilt is very much something to be open about, own and tolerate without turning it into a feeling of being a bad person (i.e., shame). We can learn to accept that sometimes our behavior is not so good! Guilt is when we focus on the other person(s) and care about them and our impact on them. Shame, however, is about our sense of ourselves.
Guilt requires some emotional capacity for caring. It is not related to a status hierarchy or to feeling inferior in the way shame is. Guilt evolved along with our capacity to care for others. However, before we look at this more closely we need to clarify something important about our motives for engaging in caring behavior towards others. Not all acts of caring involve genuine feelings of care or sympathy. In fact, many don’t. Sometimes we are kind and nice to others because we want them to think well of us. We want to have the reputation of being nice, caring people. We are caring because we want to be liked, loved or admired. This is approval-focused caring. If we fail at this, what we feel may be not guilt (because our motives weren’t focused on the other) but shame: ‘Oh no, I forgot Bridget’s birthday party. She will think I am really thoughtless and be angry with me. Why am I so forgetful? I am stupid to make these mistakes.’ You see how much is focused on the self?
Let’s think about Tom and John again. Suppose John decides that he must be extra nice to his wife because in that way he might win back her love, or make life easier for himself, or because he might feel better about himself – this is approval- and shame-based caring. Tom, however, wants to help his wife to feel better. This is guilt-based caring. When we try to make amends only from shame, those around us can sense we are being nice for our own self-interests! So, in response, they might reject us.
So we can see that caring for others (being nice to people) and putting things right when they go wrong can be motivated by a desire to make ourselves feel better (shame-based) or to make others feel better (guilt-based). However, as in so many things, the picture is rarely black and white; in most cases it is a matter of balance, and our caring behavior is not purely of one or the other kind. Let’s look at this more closely.
For many people, doing a good turn for others and helping out when needed feels good, especially if others show gratitude and appreciation of our efforts. Letting our friends or family down, on the other hand, can feel bad. Trying to earn others’ gratitude and thus feel good about ourselves is a typical human thing to do; we like to feel needed. For some, though, this desire can become exaggerated.
For example, David had fantasies of developing a loving relationship with a woman by rescuing her from a difficult life situation. The fantasy was vague. It could have been that she was lonely, or in a bad relationship with another man. He wanted to be someone’s knight in shining armour and rescue her. The key point was that he felt that if he found a woman who needed him, then her gratitude to him would be the basis for love. He needed to be needed. As you might imagine, he was far more uncertain that he could be loved simply for himself – he had to be useful to a woman before she would love him. You can also imagine the kind of person he felt he had a chance with. He never thought he’d get anywhere with strong and able women, and he felt they would overpower him easily. Gratitude and appreciation are of course important aspects of affectionate relationships; but sometimes people set out to put themselves in relationships where they can earn gratitude – almost expect it, even – because getting others’ gratitude and appreciation is the only way they feel loved. As for the partner – they do not want to be related to someone only out of gratitude – that becomes unpleasant!
Looking at the same desire negatively, we need others to be in difficulty so that we can rescue them. Some theorists see this style as developing in childhood, where children try to heal the wounds and difficulties of their parents and so to make their parents love them out of gratitude. This style can be called the rescuing hero. However, also note how our fantasies can involve obtaining other people’s appreciation, gratitude or admiration for being able to make things better for them. How much of it is really approval-seeking? Saving the world from a disease or alien invasion is the stuff of many of our fantasies as children and (judging by Hollywood movies) adults too. We want to be heroic saviours.
Rescuing heroes are prone to burnout, exhaustion and hiding their negative feelings towards others. They may have problems with being assertive in pursuing their own wants and desires, through always trying to be ‘so understanding’ of others. Sometimes they try to avoid the more angry and aggressive feelings in themselves because they fear this makes them unlovable. Various writers have claimed that some people can care or love too much, and are vulnerable to depression because they behave too submissively. In fact, many books have been written on how guilt arises from an overdeveloped need to be nice, and can get in the way of healthy lifestyles. However, as many spiritual traditions point out, it is not really possible to love too much. In my view the problem is more commonly one of needing to be seen as, and to feel oneself to be, a caring person. We are too submissive and fail to look after our own needs.
If you think you are a bit of a rescuing hero and always try to look after others, the first thing is to be kind to yourself about this – let’s face it, it’s not a bad trait to have. Once you are kind and accepting of this tendency in yourself, the next thing is to think about how to bring more compassionate balance into your life. This may require you to spend some time gently thinking about what your needs are – then act on them, step by step. If you are into list-making then make a list of the ways you could bring a better self–other balance into your life. Or you could write yourself a compassionate letter on how to be more balanced and less of a rescuing hero.
For example, Tina always put her young children first and was often tired when her husband got home. She was not keen on getting babysitters, so their going out together had fallen away, as had their sex life. Her husband had gradually disengaged because she was very much ‘mother hen’ with the children and wanted to do most things with them – so he felt a bit excluded. Tina came to realize that she was putting too much of her self-identity and sense of being a ‘good person’ into being the ‘perfect mother’. This was linked to feeling she had not been properly cared for as a child herself, but she came to see that she was neglecting her own needs and those of her marriage. Slowly she acknowledged she needed more help from her husband, especially at night, and also needed some space for her own interests. At first her husband was a bit annoyed because he felt she was pushing him even further away – but she had anticipated this and was able to accept his feelings and agree that maybe she had overdone the mothering role, but now needed his help. Step by step, and keeping a compassionate focus, they worked it out together. As she felt more able to have time and space for herself and she let her husband help out more, they rekindled their affections and thought more of themselves ‘as a team’.
When people become depressed they can lose the capacity to feel caring towards others and then feel deeply guilty and ashamed about this. Sometimes when people become depressed they face up more honestly to the fact that some of their caring and ‘putting others first’ has been motivated by the wish to be liked, loved and approved of, and not necessarily from care or compassion for others. Third, guilt and the concern not to hurt others can create many complicated dilemmas in life that can also be traps. Let’s look at these links.
Depression knocks out many of our abilities for positive feelings. We can lose interest in ourselves, and in others too. Becoming aware that we have neither the energy to care nor feelings of caring can be a blow to our self-esteem.
Sam had been a caring man for his family and friends, but when he became depressed he felt unable to show interest in his family. His anxiety stopped him from doing things with them, like going on holiday, which previously he would have planned, organized and enjoyed. When one of his children informed him he was going to be a new grandfather he felt inwardly dead about it. Our conversations went something like this:
Sam: I just don’t feel anything for anyone any more. I don’t know what has happened to me. When Julia told me she was expecting I didn’t feel anything. I know my reaction must have hurt her and I felt terrible about it. I would so much like to be there for her, but it just seems such an ordeal. My first thoughts were, ‘Oh God, I am going to have to take the responsibility of being a caring grandad. I don’t want the hassle of that.’
Paul: Well, sadly, depression can do this. And even when we are not depressed we can have such feelings and thoughts. But when we are depressed our inner resources are low and the body simply does not have energy to put into caring feelings. If there is no fuel in your car it does not matter how much you push the accelerator, it won’t go anywhere. This does not mean the car is bad or deficient, only that the fuel tank is empty. We need to have a way of thinking about your loss of ability to care for others, ‘to be there for them’, so that your guilt does not become another source of self-attacking.
Working with this aspect of Sam’s depression was focused on his guilt feelings about not feeling for others close to him. It turned out that he was often prone to guilt feelings and was normally very loving and sensitive to others. Sam was experiencing guilt for his lost abilities to ‘be there for others’ and was aware of how much his depression was hurting others. Yet he felt he could not do anything about it. Nor could he address some of his anger and difficulties in relationships because to do so felt like a betrayal and (of course) made him feel more guilty. His guilt feelings turned to shame; for example, he told himself he was selfish and an unlovable person. Therapy focused on seeing the depression as a brain state that turns off certain positive emotions.
Mothers can be especially prone to guilt when they lose loving feelings for their children. They tell themselves, ‘I should not feel like this, I should always feel loving towards them’. Concern that their feelings and behaviors are harming their children can be a source of painful guilt. If this triggers negative ideas of the self such as ‘I am a bad mother’, then there is guilt and shame.
If you suffer from these kinds of feelings, then, as with so much I have tried to outline here, the key message is clear – the loss of feelings is not your fault – it is sad and painful but absolutely not your fault. We can be kind to our loss of feelings, and work out how best to walk the road of self-understanding and healing our minds.
Some depressed people feel that they are being a burden to others (see pages 313–16). They may even feel that others would be better off without them. This is a dangerous way of thinking, because it fuels suicidal thoughts. It is never true, because suicide leaves those left behind in states of sadness, loss, anger and confusion; they’ll never forget. If you think like this, let me state clearly: this is the depression talking, and it is never true. Sadly, I have seen the damage a suicide can do to families for years to come. And when people recover from depression they are very relieved they did not harm themselves. If you think others would be better off without you, then you need to be clear in your mind that everyone, including you, would be better off if you could recover from your depression – that’s common sense – but, no matter how dark your feelings are, no one gains from a suicide.
So let’s be honest about this. Sure, depression is burdensome – but so are many other types of illness. We do not need to pretend otherwise. And we may become dependent for a while. When we are children we could not survive without being dependent on others. When we get sick we often need looking after – life is like this. There are times when we have to take as well as give. Sometimes we have to learn how to cope with being cared for, for a while; to learn that sometimes we have just run out of fuel and then we can’t give out as much as we would like. If you are haunted by feelings of being a burden, then seek professional help as soon as you can. Tell yourself,
This is my depression talking. There is nothing bad about me for feeling this way. However, I can focus on what I need to do to get well rather than how bad (guilty and/or ashamed) I am for being depressed. There are over 300 million depressed people in the world, so it can’t be my fault if my depression makes me feel this way. Let’s go step by step and focus on what I can do rather than what I can’t.
This is what we worked on with Sam from pages 411–12.
Paul: At the moment you’re preoccupied with the fact that you don’t feel pleasure in your daughter’s pregnancy, right? And you feel sad at this loss and the possibility that it hurts her?
Sam: Yes.
Paul: Okay, suppose you were to put that to one side; to admit, as you have, that your feelings are not functioning that well right now; that’s sad for you, but what might you do that she would like?
Sam: (thinks) Well, I guess I would normally send her a card or something.
Paul: Okay. How would you feel if you did that?
Sam: Better, probably, but it wouldn’t seem genuine. I should do this because I really want to, because I feel something. (Note the underlying belief that all caring should come from a deep feeling of caring. We could have explored this belief, and later on we did, but here we took a different track.)
Paul: Sure, if you weren’t depressed you might well feel something. But look, we know that at the moment you won’t, so there is not a lot of point in telling yourself you should feel something. Your feelings may come back as you recover. The first step is helping you do things that you want to do, regardless of what you feel. Feelings will be the bonus of getting well. So even though there may not be much feeling in it right now, sending a card would be something you could do.
Because Sam was preoccupied with his guilt feelings about not feeling overjoyed at his daughter’s pregnancy, but felt indifferent, he had been paralyzed and unable to act in ways he’d normally do. This made him feel even worse. By breaking into this paralysis we were able to help him begin to make changes and not expect that his behaviors should be matched with passionate feelings of caring. He went to the shops and sent a card and some flowers. His daughter was touched by this, and it was a small step forward. This also indicates the importance of doing things and taking action, even when you don’t really feel like it (see Chapter 12). So compassionate behaviour can be more important than compassionate feeling.
We also learned from this exercise that Sam had been telling himself that if he went through the motions of caring then this was not genuine caring, and if it was not genuine caring it was a fake, and if it was a fake it was worthless. Remember how some people can be tormented by the ideas that their behaviors are fake (see Chapter 14)? Sam gives another example of this.
Sometimes people lose affectionate feelings for others (and feel guilty) because of unresolved conflicts of anger or envy. I will discuss these in later chapters; here we simply make the point that whatever might be causing the loss of caring feelings, there are things that one can do and ways of thinking about the problem that need not lead you into self-attacking. Ask yourself:
Few of us take pleasure in purposely hurting others, especially those we care about, but sometimes this is inevitable and we need to face that. Carol had stayed in a relationship for some years because she could not face hurting John. She was fond of him, but the love had gone out of the relationship some years earlier. Her mother had had a similar relationship with her father, and Carol had felt sorry for both of them. They had stayed together, her parents had told her, ‘for the sake of the kids’. That of course put some burden on Carol, to think that mother and father suffered each other because of her. It is just as likely that there were many other complex factors in their psychology that made them cling to each other. For example, maybe they did not know how to build affectionate relationships.
Many children in such situations, far from feeling gratitude to their parents, can feel a sense of guilt. Carol was one of those people who felt it her role to make people happy. She was one of life’s rescuing heroes. To be a cause of unhappiness (e.g., to John by leaving him) was almost unbearable. Also, as we noted above, guilt is most likely in times of conflict, where one person’s gain is another person’s loss.
No therapy can help people avoid dilemmas in life, and sometimes these are acutely painful. There are no right or wrong answers; no cost-free solutions. All one can do is help people think about their dilemmas in ways that allow them to move forward with them rather than get stuck in guilt and shame. In essence, Carol’s psychology had set up a trap – sometimes called the compassion or guilt trap. She was not free to do what she wanted (to leave the relationship) because she felt too guilty about the pain she would cause John. Underneath this there was a bubbling resentment (for which she felt guilty) and depression. She could see no way forward.
Carol’s therapy focused on issues related to her guilt and her inability to tolerate it. She had to acknowledge the painful fact that her guilt often led her to being dishonest in relationships. She would do things for others to avoid upsetting them. By the end of her therapy she had worked out that ending the relationship might be for the better. She would be sad about it, and John would be hurt, but if she stayed she would only get more resentful and depressed. Once she had faced the possibility that she could go, that she could face her guilt, sorrow and sadness, she felt less trapped. The therapy had loosened the bonds that were immobilizing her. I don’t actually know if she did leave John, as their relationship had improved slightly through her being more honest with him; but she told me that she had more insight into what locked her into unhelpful relationships, and this released her a little. Maybe facing the fact that she could leave made the need to leave less urgent. I don’t know.
Just as we can feel a burden to others, so we can feel burdened and overloaded by the responsibilities of life. Not only may people lose interest in caring for others; as they get depressed they can have strong desires to get away from them, to escape. For example, a young mother who is not sleeping and has become exhausted may want to run away from everyone who is making demands on her. In our own studies we have found that desires to escape are strongly associated with depression.3 (See pages 57–8.)
If you have strong escape desires, then remind yourself that these are common in depression. Try to work out specifically what you want to escape from. Do you need to create more space for yourself and look after your own needs more? Worksheet 4 in Appendix 1 addresses this issue. Guilt about wanting to escape can stop people exploring why they wish to leave, or what they need to do to change their current situation, or even whether they would indeed be better off leaving or taking time out. Guilt can lock us into circles of thought and feeling such as: taking on too much responsibility, we feeling burdened, then want to escape, then feel guilty; to cope with the guilt we try harder, but then feel more burdened – and so on. It’s important to allow yourself to take an honest look at your life and see what needs to change to make you feel less burdened. Are you expecting too much of yourself? Do you take on things because you do not like to say ‘no’ – but then feel resentful and out of control? Have you become exhausted? Do you feel like this when you are not depressed? Imagine you were talking to a friend. How would you see it for them? How would you help them? What might a rational/compassionate approach be?
Guilt can be like other emotions, such as anxiety or anger – we can feel overwhelmed. But fear and guilt can lead to dishonesty and serious difficulties. Abigail often felt a little intimidated by her husband and wanted to separate from him, but whenever she broached the topic he got angry and made her feel guilty. She withdrew more and more and started taking overdoses. One day she admitted, ‘You know, I just hoped he would get fed up with me, find someone else and leave – that was my dream. I could not bring myself to be the one to walk out’. Abigail was also not entirely sure in her own mind if she wanted the relationship to end – but if her husband left her, that would relieve her of those doubts too. When she fantasized about him leaving her there was ‘this enormous sense of relief’. She was also honest enough to acknowledge that part of her could then also play the hard-done-by victim.
These are not easy things to acknowledge in ourselves – they take courage – but we can be gentle and see that many people get caught in these dilemmas and struggle to be honest. It’s not our fault – life can be tricky. However, once we give up self-blaming and face our sense of shame and guilt, and realize our dishonesty is not helpful, then we are more open to think how best to move forward. Ruminating on entrapment is a recipe for depression. In fact Abigail did eventually muster the courage to leave and some months later reflected on why she had not ‘done it years ago’.
People who are prone to excessive guilt will sometimes talk in terms of ‘entitlement’ and ‘deserving’. Fairness and a sense of deserving are part of our psychology, but we must learn to keep it in balance. Some depressed people feel they don’t deserve to be happy – that somehow if they are happy they will be punished for it. Folk who feel like this might have been made to feel guilty when they focused on their own needs and feelings. Some people can also feel tormented by guilt and shame because they can’t enjoy their good fortune. Such a person may say, ‘I’ve got so much going for me. I’m not poor, and I have a fairly good relationship with my partner, but I’m not happy. I feel so guilty that I can’t appreciate things. Maybe I don’t deserve them.’ This is a bit like Sam from a few pages ago. Instead of working hard to find out exactly what they are not happy about, they keep telling themselves they ‘should be happy’ and feel worse for not being so. If this is the case for you, then write down what you are satisfied with in your life. Then write down the things you are happy with. Recognize that there are things that you are happy with and things that you may not be happy with. Next, note that if you are unhappy in one area of your life this can affect the feelings about other areas – that’s natural. If you break a leg, it doesn’t matter how well the rest of your body is functioning, the broken leg still hurts like hell and stops you doing lots of things. Telling yourself you shouldn’t be in pain because at least you don’t have cancer does not help much. Of course, learning to appreciate the good things in one’s life is important in depression because it helps us avoid all-or-nothing thinking and over-focusing on the negative, and stimulates positive feelings. There is not much to be gained by feeling guilty for not being happy. You can see then that the question of deserving does not enter into it.
Some people can feel guilt at wanting to fulfil their own needs; wanting more affection or time to do things with friends. One patient thought that wanting more personal space was ‘kind of greedy’. Owning up to and trying to fulfil one’s needs are normal, natural and important. The key thing is how to balance the demands on us, while also looking after ourselves and not burning ourselves to a frazzle!
We might need to acknowledge that some of us can develop a fear of pleasure and enjoying life. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But consider Kerry. She has many memories of enjoying herself, then something bad happening. For example, she recalled enjoying playing with friends in a garden, screaming with fun. Then her mother came rushing out and told her how bad she was as she had forgotten to clean her room, grabbed her painfully by the arms, told the other children to ‘go home’ and threw her into her room. Kerry said, ‘If I feel very happy I am sure I will pay for it tomorrow or something really bad will happen. I feel I must never let my guard down.’ In Kerry’s mind good feelings were associated with bad outcomes. You can see how Kerry had learned to be frightened of feeling good.
Patricia only felt people cared for her if she was in pain or unwell – indeed, only if she were ill did she think that her mother paid the slightest attention to her. In her mind was the idea that being happy or well meant not being cared for or about.
So there may be all kinds of reasons why we feel guilty or frightened to be happy. In a quiet moment it can be useful to write these down, in a gentle and honest way. Ask yourself, ‘If I was frightened or concerned with being really happy – what would my concerns be?’
Remember, too, that it’s relationships that make us happy, not material objects. People make this mistake time and again. Just because you are wealthy or healthy (although these help, of course) is no guarantee at all of being happy. Indeed, I would suggest that often it is not so much happiness that is key, but that we can learn contentment and how to be at peace with ourselves.4 To help yourself with these problems you can:
Lynn O’Connor and her colleagues in San Francisco have studied guilt over a number of years and noted there are different types of guilt. One of these is survivor guilt.5 This type of guilt first came to the attention of researchers when it was found that people who had survived traumatic experiences such as being in a concentration camp or taken hostage, or survived a disaster could feel bad because they had survived while others had died or been seriously injured. They asked themselves, ‘Why did I survive and others die?’ Sometimes there was a feeling that they didn’t deserve to live, or didn’t have a right to be happy when others had died. Feeling happy made them feel guilty. A recent study has found that people who have survived a life-threatening illness and knew others who shared the condition but who did not survive, can feel not only sadness but also a depressing sense of not deserving or, ‘Why me?’
Lynn and her colleagues also reasoned that this kind of guilt can operate in many types of relationship where we find ourselves better off than others: for example, from an awareness that we have superior qualities, or better opportunities. Imagine that you and a good friend take an important examination, say to go to university or get a job, or you enter a competition like a beauty pageant. You are both keen and share your hopes of passing or winning. You pass but your friend does not – she fails. How do you feel?
There are times when we know that we can’t do anything to help others; and knowing that others are suffering while you feel helpless to do anything about it can be depressing, especially if you are doing well yourself. Sonia had a good job in advertising and was over the moon about it. Her husband Dave, however, was not doing so well. His firm was going downhill and eventually he was put on short time. Sonia started to feel guilty about her success. When she came home she didn’t share good experiences she had at work or her sense of how exciting it was, because she felt it would upset Dave and make him feel worse. She was also worried that Dave would resent and envy her for her good job. She loved Dave, but she also began to resent his low mood and anger at how things had turned out for him. Then she also felt guilty at feeling resentful. After all, things were going well for her. The guilt of upsetting Dave with her own good fortune stopped her from sharing things with him. As time passed, she found that she would stay longer at work to be with enthusiastic people rather than in the more subdued mood that prevailed at home – but this also made her feel more guilty. Key beliefs were: ‘I shouldn’t want to spend more time at work when I know that Dave needs me at home. I should be there for him. I shouldn’t enjoy my life when Dave is not enjoying his. I am selfish.’ Sonia needed to clarify the issues and recognize that, for her, wanting to be with enthusiastic people rather than a husband afflicted by envious low mood is natural. For Sonia, the important point was to help her see that labelling herself as selfish and feeling guilty about feeling resentment were unhelpful.
In some families, induced guilt is rife. Sonia had grown up in a family with a mildly depressed mother. As she entered adolescence and started to go out at night, her mother would often tell Sonia how lucky she was and how much more difficult it had been for herself when she was young. ‘I never had the opportunities you have’, she’d say. Her mother would tell her how much she loved Sonia, not by noting how good-natured or talented Sonia was, but by pointing to all the sacrifices she (as her mother) had made for her! Sonia was unwittingly being trained to operate on guilt and gratitude. She came to believe that she should always put the needs of others first and that if others were suffering or needed her, she should be there for them. After all, she was so lucky, wasn’t she? In therapy it is common to find that people who are sensitive to guilt, who feel uneasy with success and enjoying life, often have had depressed parents. They need to care for others, to help others; and quite often they gravitate into the helping professions.
As we have seen, then, when something good happens to some depressed people they often wonder if they ‘deserve’ it, have a right to enjoy it or are frightened to enjoy it. These thoughts are often not fully conscious, but are in the background of their minds. If you ever worry about showing off your talents because you fear that others will feel badly in comparison to you, and so you play them down, the chances are you are operating on some kind of guilt issue. You may also have a belief that others will envy you. ‘If they see my good fortune or talents they will envy me or dislike me or try to pull me down.’
Just as some people feel they don’t deserve their good fortune, and so sabotage their ability to enjoy life, so others are all too ready to use the idea of deserving to support and justify their good fortune. Some time ago the newspapers published the fact that a wealthy financier had been given a £3 million ‘golden handshake’. When asked whether he was a ‘fat cat’, he responded with, ‘No. I worked hard for my firm and deserve it.’ No obvious guilt here. It looks like the banking system all over the world has been run by the ‘give me more I deserve it, guilt-free’ mob. How much more refreshing to have heard, ‘Well, I have had the good fortune to be reasonably bright, with an ability for hard work; I’ve been given a good education and had the connections to get a good job.’ As you see, the notion of ‘deserving’ is in the eye of the beholder.
Many commentators note that we are surrounded by (some would say bombarded by) constant information about the need to be aware of the consequences of our behavior. We must be careful with our diet, be careful of our weight, look after our children properly, not buy commodities that might damage the environment or be made by child labour in the third world, be aware of our carbon footprints, open our eyes to the suffering in the world and recognize the terrible economic injustices – on and on. It is probably true that we are living at a time when we know far more about the consequences of our behavior than at any other time. Learning to be open to and live with these responsibilities without feeling burdened, becoming hopeless, controlled by guilt or going into a state of detachment and denial – these are interesting challenges for us. The depressing bit here though is usually social comparison – believing that we’re doing less well than others at these things.
Lynn O’Connor and her colleagues have also pointed out that at times we take too much responsibility for other people, especially their feelings5 (see pages 283–8). For example, some women blame them selves for their husbands’ drinking or violence. One woman felt that her husband drank because he felt unloved, and that if she could love him more he would stop. Thus in her mind she felt guilty for not loving him enough to heal his inner pain. This kind of thinking, however, takes responsibility away from the other person and stops them having to confront their own problems. To put it negatively, we can literally rob people of their responsibilities. It is as if we were saying to the other, ‘You are not responsible for your own happiness or bad behavior. It is all down to me. I am responsible for what you feel or do.’ Put like that, it doesn’t sound so good, does it? People can only grow and mature by taking responsibility for themselves. Although you may think that blaming yourself and feeling guilty is helpful or protects them, it is unlikely to do them much good in the long run. It is the same with our children – a key challenge is how to enable them to take responsibility for their lives.
In such situations it can be useful to draw out a responsibility circle (see pages 283–8). There may well be aspects of any situation that are indeed your responsibility and under your control; but always try to keep a balance here. Avoid all-or-nothing thinking: it’s either me or them. Sometimes when people confront their own pain, especially if it’s people you care about, you may feel sad for them. But this does not mean you have to feel guilty, as if you were not doing enough to help them. Support them, yes; but don’t take on the responsibility for their change or healing their minds – only they can do that.
I discovered my own ‘rescuing hero’ side with a wise and kind supervisor who drew my attention to the fact that I was not discharging people from therapy as I should. He helped me discover my own thoughts along the lines of, ‘Maybe I haven’t done enough to help them. Maybe they will need me in the future.’ I had mild guilt and shame feelings about discharging people because I might be abandoning them (letting them down), and so they would not like me.
When it comes to ending a relationship or separating from others, we often have many mixed feelings, and one of them can be the guilt of leaving and saying goodbye. Perhaps it is leaving friends or staff behind when we take a new job or maybe it is leaving a relationship that has had its day. Even parting with a beloved car can be tricky for some of us!
In the lives of some depressed people there is often a history of guilt at leaving their parents. When Ruth wanted to go away to study, one of the things that stopped her from going to her favoured university was the prospect of leaving her mother, who from Ruth’s childhood had turned her daughter into her ‘closest friend’. Although Ruth was close to her mother too, the relationship was fairly one-sided in terms of who was benefiting from it. Ruth remembered many occasions when she had not gone out with friends so that her mother wouldn’t be lonely. Ruth had major guilt problems in separating from her mother, and thinking of her as ‘being left alone’. But from the outside it was clear that unless Ruth had faced this, she would not have been able to claim her own life. Parents are responsible for their own lives and can cause children real problems by turning them into their carers or depending on them for friendship. For most animals, including humans, the role of the parent is to train their offspring to be able to enter the world, even at times to push them out into it. It is not to keep them away from it in relationships of dependence.
The biggest separation is, of course, death. When someone we love dies it is not uncommon to feel (at least a bit) guilty. We remember all the times we said unkind things; the times we could have done more for the person and didn’t; the visits we could have made and didn’t. This is all normal and not uncommon. We are only human, after all. However, sometimes there have been unresolved conflicts with the dead person and we feel painfully guilty that we were not able to sort them out before they died. Many Hollywood movies have been made in which relationships work out at the last moment before death and a reconciliation occurs. There are few dry eyes in the house, but that is Hollywood; real life is not often like this.
Guilt can be one of the many complicating factors in grief and can stop us working through our grief. The problem with guilt and death is that because the other person has now ‘gone’, we may see no way we can repair things or put them right. We feel blocked. If this is true for you, then getting counselling or therapy might help you move forward. As always, be aware of the negative self-attacking thoughts you might have.
Through talking to others, you may gain new insights and see possibilities for change. I remember a person early in my career who taught me a lot about how things can ‘just happen’ in therapy. We had been working on his relationship with his father and how they had not got on that well. When his father died, Ben felt intense sadness and guilt for a separation that had lasted for years and which neither had been able to heal. Then one day Ben had a dream about his father. I don’t recall the details, but Ben came to therapy in a changed state of mind. He said something like,
You know, I can see now that both my father and I are proud men. Neither of us could share our feelings that easily. I see how much he suffered because of this. It seems so silly and pointless to me now. His death has brought home to me how important it is to say what we feel and not hide behind these barriers. By dying when he did, he has given me the chance to be different from him. In a way I guess that is a gift he has given me.
Ben was very tearful at this point. He had looked at his guilt in a different way, and had been able to learn from it rather than being paralyzed by it.
There can be times when a death is a relief. Maybe one has had to look after a dying person, whose death sets both free. Even this can induce guilt, however, as if we should not feel relief at the release from the burden of caring alongside the sadness of the loss. A hundred years hence, much that we see around us will be dead. This is the cycle of life. Death makes room for new life. The evolutionists have their views about it and the religious have theirs. The only point I am making here is that to feel relief at the lifting of a burden is natural to life. You may wish to focus on your sadness, but you don’t need to be stricken by guilt.
Can we feel guilty for things that harm only ourselves? The existential writer Irving Yalom, in his book Existential Psychotherapy – a fascinating work on these issues, including those associated with death – answers yes.6 In his view, to believe that we have not lived to our full potential, that at times we have taken the coward’s way out (my favoured way) and have not been ‘true to ourselves’, can induce what he calls existential guilt – that is, guilt for how we live our lives. We put up with things which in our heart we know we shouldn’t tolerate. One of my own self-guilt areas is in having been a smoker. In my heart I knew it was bad for me but I couldn’t face up to the effort and loss of pleasure to stop. I knew I was harming my body, and my family asked me to stop – and I was always going to, ‘next week’. This type of guilt is helpful to own and face up to, because it helps us take steps to change. When we deny it or pretend we don’t feel guilty for things we know can harm us, then we may be less likely to change. Having said this, it is usually better to find positive reasons to stop doing harmful things – guilt simply alerts us to the need for change.
Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have written about how guilt can work positively in relationships. Imagine what relationships would be like if we never felt it!7 Certainly, there are times when children and adults alike have to recognize the hurt they have caused others and learn to experience and cope with guilt; and there are times when adults have to point this out to their children. However, some people actually try to induce guilt in others, to make them do what they want them to do. For example, they might say to a lover, ‘If you leave me I couldn’t cope without you’, or even ‘I will kill myself’! They try to shift responsibility to others. This tactic may work to a degree, but you always run a risk here. If you are a guilt-inducer and go around telling people how bad they make you feel, or try to control them by inducing guilt and making them feel sorry for you (or bad about themselves), you will run into problems. You may end up with resentful others around you.
Again, one has to be honest here. Think of the last time you had a conflict. Did you say things you (secretly) hoped would make the other person feel guilty or ashamed? Even if you were successful, how would this help them feel closer to you or more keen to be with you? Think of people you know who make you feel guilty. Do you like being around them? Do you like being around people who make you feel sorry for them? Sadly, no. In the next two chapters we will look at dealing with conflicts and how to be assertive. Recognize your guilt-inducing tactics (which we all use from time to time). Once you are aware of them, then you can choose to be different and find new ways of sorting out your differences and conflicts with others.
Annie found that every time she got off the phone after talking to her mother she felt depressed. As we unpacked this mood change we found two other feelings: guilt and anger. Her mother had a knack of making Annie feel guilty (e.g., for not visiting enough), and always wanted to pour out her woes, with the expectation that Annie should do more for her. Annie felt angry at not being able to stand up to her mother. Despite this, she kept phoning, because she thought she ought to and felt guilty if she didn’t; and so she kept stirring up low moods.
I suggested a ban on phone calls (I had to take the responsibility for this at first). Second, we looked at what was a reasonable level of responsibility and what was not. Annie acknowledged that her mother had always been like this and had alienated other members of the family too. Third, we discovered that Annie had a secret hope that one day her mother would change and give her the love and approval she wanted as a daughter. Accepting that this was unlikely was painful. Fourth, and later on, we helped Annie monitor her thoughts very carefully as she spoke to her mother on the phone, and to generate alternatives as they happened. During the conversation, she held a flash card on which she had written thoughts like:
I know Mum will try to make me feel guilty, but then she always has and she does it to others too. It’s not me, it’s her style. She is not going to give me the approval I want, so there is no point in secretly hoping and then getting angry. I don’t have to feel responsible for her happiness, and in truth there is not a lot that I could do.
The key idea was helping Annie to keep a balance and break up her guilt–anger cycle. Sometimes it is important to keep our distance, and acknowledge that while we may feel guilty about this, we can tolerate it if we don’t engage in excessive self-attacking or tell ourselves things like: ‘I am bad or unlovable for keeping my distance.’ And, of course, it can help to talk to sympathetic others or therapists if there are complex conflicts with guilt-inducers that you’d like to resolve.
Carol’s story, described on page 416, warns us about the un intentional dishonesty that can creep into our lives if we don’t face up to our guilt feelings and simply act on them. Our feelings, such as anxiety, anger, jealousy, shame or guilt, are there because evolution has designed them that way. But we need to understand them, not just act them out. If every time we felt anxious we ran away, we’d soon end up with serious problems of managing our lives. If every time we felt angry we lashed out at people, we would not have any friends. With guilt as with so many other areas of life, it is often a matter of learning to cope with and tolerate our feelings. Indeed, if we can’t tolerate at least a little guilt or shame, we will run into problems. If, in every conflict that produces guilt, we back down, we will soon feel overwhelmed and paralyzed. Sometimes therapy is about learning to tolerate our guilt feelings without becoming submissive!
There are some depressed people who are, in effect, intolerant of shame and guilt. They may feel these things acutely, but instead of working with the feelings, understanding them and learning how to accept them as part of life, they will do everything they can to turn them off and avoid feeling them. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes it is because these feelings have been over -whelming in childhood and they have not had the opportunities to work with them and accept them. And of course sometimes it is because these negative feelings trigger terrible (shame) attacks on the self in the form of self-criticisms and put-downs.
Usually, guilt does not involve anger at others. (This is another aspect that distinguishes it from shame and humiliation.) Sometimes people feel angry if they can’t own up to their feelings of guilt and recognize that they may have hurt someone. Consider an example. Tom forgets Jane’s birthday and when he gets home she’s clearly upset about it. Here is a guilt scene:
Jane: Tom, it’s my birthday and you forgot. I feel really upset about it.
Tom: Oh, Jane, I am so sorry. You are right. I was so busy. It was really thoughtless of me. Let me put it right by taking you out tonight.
Let’s assume that Jane accepts the apology and the offer. Here Tom has acknowledged his guilt (at having hurt Jane), apologized and made an offer to ‘put things right’. Jane, for her part, is not intent on punishing Tom but accepts and forgives. Obviously how he conveys his genuine feelings is important here.
But suppose it went like this:.
Jane: Tom, it’s my birthday and you forgot. I feel really upset about it.
Tom: Oh, come on, Jane, you know I have been so busy. I can’t remember everything, I’m stressed out right now. (Angrily) Look, I am sorry, okay!
In this scenario Tom can’t cope with his guilt and feeling bad, so he turns it around and blames Jane, asking her (angrily) to accept the fact that his work took precedence over her. His ‘sorry’ is not a ‘sorry’ at all. The evening will now be affected by bad feelings, because Tom does not deal with his guilt but tries to cover it up. Many therapists would see this as turning guilt into shame, but it is also a form of guilt intolerance.
Another possibility is:
Jane: Tom, it’s my birthday and you forgot. I feel really upset about it.
Tom: Oh, Jane, I am so sorry. You are right. I was so busy. It was really thoughtless of me. Let me put it right by taking you out tonight.
Jane: Well, it’s too late for that. I think you are a mean, thoughtless sod.
In this scenario Jane does not accept the apology. Perhaps she thinks, ‘If he loved me he would not forget’, and acts on that assumption, maybe also withdrawing and sulking. She is intent on wounding Tom – inducing shame and guilt. This will get neither of them anywhere.
The point here is that because guilt often arises from conflict there is always the possibility either that the guilty person won’t face up to it or that the one who feels hurt will escalate the situation into yet more hurtful conflicts. As a rule of thumb, when you hurt people with your thoughtlessness – and you will, we are not perfect – own up to it. This does not make you a bad person; far from it. It keeps you in touch with your caring feelings and compassion.
If you do feel sorry for your poor behavior, then it is useful to express this as sadness rather than as anger. If you express your apology in an angry, dismissive or cold way, people won’t believe it’s genuine. Many apologies fall flat because of the way they are given. As a general rule, if someone who has hurt you appears to be genuinely sorry, then it is helpful to accept it. Attacking them further is usually not productive.
Among the ideas that can help you with guilt over things you have done in the past are those of forgiveness and acceptance. Forgiveness is discussed more fully in Chapter 20, but we can note here that inner forgiveness can be an important aspect of change. We could all benefit from the practice of self forgiveness because we can all look back and cringe at some of the unkind things we have done.
Kieran had walked out on his family 15 years earlier. As he grew older and matured, he was haunted by terrible guilt at what he’d done, but he could not face it; so he drank. It took him some time to recognize that when he married he was not emotionally mature enough to cope with a young family. So he had to face up to and grieve for the pain he had caused. Until he could confront this grief, sorrow and guilt, he could not come to terms with his life. His guilt had turned to shame, which paralyzed all good feelings about himself. He saw himself as a worthless inadequate who always let people down and who could never be trusted. Thus (he believed) he’d never be able to have a loving relationship. This kind of self-battery did him no good at all; nor did it help him to relate to others or to develop a more supportive relationship with his ex-wife and son, which he wanted to do. The self-battering was doing his wife and children no good either – of course the key thing was not to become so self-focused and absorbed but think how to help and repair things. Some self-forgiveness is needed. The steps to self-forgiveness often require us to fully acknowledge what we have done, face our guilt and pain and sorrow, learn from it, make amends if we can, and give up attacking ourselves. Here are some ideas: