DK DKYears ago, Sandra was delighted when Sheila, her best friend, told her that she was getting married—and ecstatic when Sheila asked her to serve as maid of honor. On the wedding day, twenty-year-old Sandra, driving her brand-new car, arrived to pick up the bride-to-be and take her to the church. Sandra had volunteered for the job not only because she was the maid of honor but also because it meant the bride was going to arrive in style.
It was raining as Sandra pulled into the carport at Sheila’s apartment. The maid of honor helped the bride carry wedding clothes and honeymoon luggage to the car and was about to hop into the driver’s seat when Sheila said, “Let me drive.”
“You can’t drive to your own wedding!”
“Let me,” insisted Sheila. “It will help me get my mind off a million things, not to mention that the sun has chosen not to attend my wedding.”
Sandra gave her best friend the keys, and off they went. They drove the couple of miles toward the church, reviewing wedding details and commenting on how bad the weather was getting, how hard the rain was falling. All of a sudden the car started sliding and Sheila lost control. The car slammed into a lamppost, killing the bride instantly. Sandra suffered a few broken bones, but survived. That is, she survived physically. Her psyche, however, was gravely wounded.
Even now, twenty years later, she is haunted by what happened that day. “If only I had driven,” she lamented, “Sheila would still be alive.”
In talking to Sandra, I asked her some questions: “Do you absolutely know that Sheila would have survived if you had driven? Did you know there was going to be a car accident? Did you know she was going to die? Did you know you would survive and she wouldn’t?” The answer to all these question was no.
“No, but I lived and she didn’t!”
It was clear that Sandra was still unable to release her guilt. I asked, “If it had been the other way around and the roles were reversed, what would you want Sheila to say to you? In other words, if you had died and she was here, and you could speak to her, what would you say to her? If you could look down and see your friend, decades later, still haunted by guilt, what would you say to her about the incident?”
Sandra took a minute to really put herself in her friend’s place. “I would say, ‘I was the one driving, I was responsible for my decisions. No one forced me to drive and no one could have prevented me. It was my wedding day and I wouldn’t have taken no for an answer to driving.’ ” Sandra’s eyes filled with tears from a tragic day long since past. “I would say, ‘It wasn’t your fault. It just happened. I don’t want you to waste your life feeling guilty.’ ”
Sometimes events, even the most tragic of events, happen, and it’s no one’s fault. None of us knows why one person dies and another survives. Sandra was guilt-ridden because she was angry with herself for not driving, because she had let her friend “drive and kill herself.” Sandra had to be reminded that, at the time, she did not know—she could not possibly have known—the consequences of their decision as to who would drive. She thought she was helping her friend have a more enjoyable wedding day by letting her drive her new car.
This reaction is often called survivor’s guilt, but it is guilt with no logical basis. The concept first got widespread attention after World War II, as some concentration-camp survivors wondered, “Why them and not me?” The phenomenon of survivor’s guilt occurs whenever someone witnesses or survives a catastrophic experience, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, plane crashes, car accidents, even widespread diseases such as AIDS. It may also strike when a loved one dies, even from natural causes. Although it is easy to understand why people who have lived through painful or horrific events would wonder why they had been spared, it is ultimately a question without an answer. There is even unknowing arrogance in our asking the question. It is not for us to ask why someone dies or why someone lives; those decisions are for God and the universe to make. And yet, though there is no answer to our question, there is a reason for what has happened: the survivors have been spared in order to live. The real question is this: If you have been spared in order to live, are you living?
The psychology of guilt is rooted in self-judgment, the sense that we have done something wrong. It is anger turned inward, arising when we violate our belief systems. Much of the time, this unhappy self-judgment is rooted in what we were taught as children. Our guilt so often comes from our childhood because we were raised to be “prostitutes.” This sounds harsh, but it’s true. Obviously, in using the word prostitute I’m talking about how, as children, we symbolically sell ourselves for the affection of others. We are usually taught to be good little boys and girls, tending to the wishes of others rather than forming strong identities for ourselves. We’re not really encouraged to be independent or interdependent. We’re trained to be codependent, making others’ needs and lives important and neglecting our own. It is not a conscious choice; often we don’t know how to meet our needs for our own happiness.
One clear symptom of this codependency is an inability to say no. We’re taught to please others by agreeing to their requests. Many parents are unhappy when their children say no. In fact, it’s wonderful when children learn to say no, at the appropriate times. We all should learn to say no—early, loud, and clear.
The desire to please others is a fertile ground for guilt, but not the only one. Sometimes we feel guilty when we try to assert our independence. This can be a particular problem for children who suffer a loss while still forming their identities. It takes a wise parent to help overcome or head off this guilt.
EKRNine-year-old Scott was angry with his mother for not letting him go on a camping trip. She had clearly warned him that he could not go unless he completed his homework, but it was hard for Margie to discipline her son. At forty, she had cervical cancer, which had spread to her liver. “I don’t want to see him unhappy with me,” she explained to me. “We have so little time left.”
Despite Margie’s desire for harmony, the homework-versus-camping argument became heated. Tommy spat out, enraged, “I wish you were dead.”
That’s a pretty harsh statement. Others might have snapped back, “Don’t worry, you’ll have your wish soon,” but Margie looked at him and lightly replied, “I know you don’t mean that. I do know you are very angry.”
Ten months later, now confined to her bed, she adds, “I want to leave Scott with good memories. I know my dying will scar his childhood, if not end it. That’s bad enough, but I don’t want to leave him with guilt. So I’ve talked to him about guilt. I said, ‘Scotty, do you remember when you were very mad at me and said you wished I was dead? Well, after I am gone a long time, you will remember things like that and you might feel bad. But I want you to know that all kids get mad and sometimes think they hate their mom. I know you don’t really hate me. I know you are deeply hurting inside. I don’t ever want you to feel guilty about that kind of stuff. You have made being a mother a wonderful experience for me. It was worth living just to be with you.’ ”
Most of us are not as wise as Margie was about guilt and its beginnings. Most of us are unaware of the guilt we instill in our children, and that was instilled in us. Our lives continue into adulthood filled with guilt, and it’s loud, punishing, and mostly unproductive.
To some extent we need guilt. Society would be chaotic without it. There would be no red lights telling us to stop. We would drive as if we were the only people on the road.
Guilt is part of the human experience. Guilt can sometimes be a guide, telling us that something is off. It can indicate that we are not following our belief systems, that we are outside the boundaries of our integrity. To move past guilt, we must align our beliefs and our actions.
DKHelen and Michelle, now both in their fifties, had been friends for over two decades. But Helen was now angry with Michelle; they had hardly spoken for over four years. Helen would become irate at the mere mention of Michelle’s name: “I still have four years of birthday presents for her in my basement. I am not giving them to her until she finds time for me.”
Both, in their second marriages, had become friends in name only. Michelle was the first to get married again. Helen was happy for her, but began to feel unimportant. Just about this time, Helen met her second husband. The two old friends continued to drift apart. Helen would call Michelle to get together, but she never seemed to find the time. Helen would say, “I have your birthday present for you, Michelle, we have got to get together,” but they never did.
Now Helen was facing breast cancer. As she reviewed her life, this broken friendship kept coming up. When I asked her why she didn’t mail all the birthday gifts she had purchased for Michelle to her old friend, she replied furiously, “Not till we get together. And I have been trying for years now. I keep calling her and telling her about the wonderful gifts I have gotten her.”
I asked the angry woman if she thought guilt played a role in her estrangement from her friend. She quickly replied, “I don’t feel guilty.”
I asked her if she might be trying to make her friend feel guilty. “Why would you think such a thing?” she asked, puzzled.
“It seems to me,” I replied, “that for whatever reason, Michelle was ending or at least changing the form of your friendship by not getting together. Rather than confronting this directly, you continued to do or say nothing, except to buy more gifts every year. I can understand the first year, but why continue for four years? You must have realized that you were buying gifts that would just accumulate.”
“I kept thinking this year we would find time.”
When I asked her if the gifts had changed in any way from year to year, she told me that they had got nicer. I then asked her why she would give nicer and nicer gifts to someone who was not interested in receiving them.
Puzzled, Helen began to think back on her actions. Then she blurted out angrily, “You don’t understand. Michelle is wrong, she’s the one not willing to get together.”
“That may be,” I countered. “But are those gifts you bought for her gifts of guilt? When you kept buying nicer and nicer gifts, what did you want Michelle to feel when she opened them?”
Helen looked down, finally admitting quietly, “I wanted her to feel guilty for not getting together with me.”
“Don’t you think she can hear that in your voice? Maybe that’s why she doesn’t want to get together with you. You are not offering her friendship anymore; those are gifts of guilt.”
“I want to clear this up. I want to do this better.”
“Then mail her the gifts.”
“No,” Helen replied adamantly.
“Then give them to charity.”
“No, I can’t.”
“If you want to feel better, you have to let go of the guilt; the guilt you have, the guilt you are giving. As long as you hold on to those gifts, you are holding on to guilt. You are now feeling guilty because you are trying to make her feel guilty.”
“I’ll think about it.”
A few weeks later, Helen called Michelle one last time. This time, instead of saying “I have gifts for you,” she apologized for them. Michelle told her that she had indeed felt she was being held hostage by those gifts. The two are now talking again and working on rebuilding their relationship. They have decided to start “clean,” and the gifts were given to charity.
Guilt binds us to the darkest parts of ourselves. It is a connection to our weakness, our shame, and our unforgiveness. The smallest part of ourselves feeds on it. Inaction nourishes it. When we feel guilty, we stay small-minded, our lower thoughts are in control. After a while we become ashamed. The remedy is to take action and share our feelings. The real you does not know guilt. Your true self is beyond the guilt of this world.
Shame and guilt are deeply connected. Shame comes from old guilt. While guilt is about what you did, shame is about who you think you are. The guilt that attacked your consciousness becomes the shame that assaults your soul. Like the guilt that precedes it, shame usually takes root in childhood, before we know who we are. It begins to grow before we know we are responsible for our mistakes, and that we will make many of them, but that we are not our mistakes. If our needs and our parents clashed, we felt we must have done something wrong. We began to believe we were wrong. We buried our hurt, our anger, and our resentment. Now we just feel bad about ourselves.
At fifteen years old Ellen was too young to be a mother, but not too young to get pregnant. Her family never expected anything like this; they had not even discussed the facts of life with her. When Ellen could no longer hide it, she told her parents of her condition. Filled with guilt and shame, Ellen’s family sent her away to have the child and put it up for adoption. Ellen refused to have any pain medications during childbirth, for she wanted to “get one good look at my child.” She was able to see, but not hold, her precious little daughter before she was taken away.
Now, over fifty-five years later, Ellen has a weakened heart and poor overall health. “It’s time to wrap up life,” she said. “I accept it just as it was, except for my firstborn daughter. I realize I must forgive myself for giving her up. I was a child myself when it happened. I didn’t understand the consequences of my actions. But I see how this shame has been an undercurrent through my whole life. I’ve thought a lot about my child. I felt incomplete. It is probably too late to find her, and maybe even selfish—she might not even know she was adopted. Even though I was young and didn’t know any better at the time, I want to leave this world feeling like I have taken some action to transcend my shame. So I’ve written my daughter a letter”:
By the time you read this, I will probably be gone. While I have had a good life, you were always missing from it. I have spent much of it feeling guilty. I could have resolved things sooner. I don’t know if I could have found you, but I could have made it easier for you to find me if you wanted. Now that life is over for me, I have one thing left to do, and that is to leave you this message: If you can find a way to live your life to its fullest despite how unfair it can be, you will end your life with a true sense of worth. I know this is hard to do. I ran into unfairness early in life, but yours began at the very beginning. You can find worth. Not perfection, but worth. I needed to tell you that you were wanted, and that I never wanted to leave you. In some ways I never did leave you. I hope you have a good life, and a meaningful one. If there is a heaven, I will watch over you and protect you in death in a way I never could in life. My deepest wish is that when your times comes, I can come to meet you.
Ellen’s letter was found as her family cleaned her room after her death. Her story was reported on a local radio station, so that the letter might find its intended recipient. A few months later a woman came forth to see if she could be Ellen’s daughter. After some checking, it was confirmed that she was.
As in Ellen’s case, shame in our childhood makes us feel more responsible for our situations than we are. If we were abused, we feel we caused the abuse. If we are ashamed, we feel we deserved the shame. If we were unloved, we feel we are not worthy of love. We feel we are at fault for our bad feelings. The truth is, we are of worth and value. Yes, we may have felt bad about our actions at times, but those feelings actually make us good, for bad people don’t feel bad about hurting others. See the best in yourself. Remind yourself of your goodness.
Many spiritual belief systems view guilt as part of a lower thought system—thinking that is apart from God, or thinking that is without love. Our first instinct is to get rid of guilty feelings because they are so painful. We do this unconsciously, by projecting the feeling onto someone else. “Since it is hard for me to feel guilty and wrong, I will see you as being guilty and wrong.” In other words, it can’t be me, so it must be you. But when we hide in that projection, we stay stuck in a cycle of guilty feelings that we cannot resolve.
Peace and guilt are opposites. You cannot experience peace and guilt at the same time. When you accept love and peace, you deny guilt, but the opposite is also true: when you cling to guilt, you turn away from love and peace. The good news is that this is a decision. You can commit to love, you can exchange feelings of guilt for feelings of peace.
Some believe in a God that sees us as bad and unlovable. But many at the edge of life find a God that loves us unconditionally, that sees us as guiltless. Of course we have made mistakes, that is part of the human experience. It is our guilt that keeps us separated from our true reality of love and God.
Guilt and time are closely connected, too. Since guilt always comes from the past, it keeps the past alive. Guilt is a way to avoid the reality of the present. It drags the past into the future: a past of guilt will create a future of guilt. Only when you release your guilt do you truly release your past to create a new future.
Guilt clearly needs to be processed out. Workshops can be extremely helpful in allowing people to release their anger. Then they must share their guilt. If they share it from a place of good intentions, they will release it, sometimes with a flood of tears. This kind of sharing is much like the Roman Catholic confession. When we confess, we release the burden of the secret and often encounter the grace of knowing that we are loved by a power greater than ourselves. We can also learn that we are still worthy of love from others. The key to healing is forgiveness. Forgiveness means acknowledging the past and letting it go.
Anything that you think you are guilty of can be cleaned and purified with forgiveness. You have been hard on others your whole life, and you have been even harder on yourself. Now it is time to release all these judgments. As a holy child of God, you do not deserve to be punished. Once you forgive yourself and others, the guilt is no longer yours to keep. We do not deserve guilt; we deserve forgiveness. When we learn this lesson, we are truly free.