Guilt, Its Effects, and How to Overcome Regretful Feelings

What is a feeling that occurs everyday, by adults, teenagers, and even children? Guilt is a feeling that is experienced when a person feels regret over something they thought, something they said, or an action the person has done. "Guilt is the regret or pain we experience when we choose to act in conflict with our conscience and beliefs"

(Marron1). When guilt is experienced the person feels upset and depressed because of something he/she has done to cause an event to go wrong, or feelings of another to become hurt. Guilt is caused by regret or remorse that one feels after he/she has committed an act in which the person feel is inappropriate. "Guilt is caused by Grief, Depression, Bi- Polar Disorder, Poor self-esteem, poor self-image, Parenting, Religious beliefs"(symptoms2).Guilt is the complete opposite of innocence in the fact that guilt is a corrupt feeling that is felt when something bad is done, innocence is the act of being completely free from any corruptness. The feeling of guilt has many affects on people, such as physical and mental, but what people fail to realize is that guilt can also cause many social consequences.

Real guilt is when the person has control of the situation but refuses to keep the plans and either forget or just disregard the situation. Real guilt can occur when one tells a friend that he/she wants to hang out, but then decides they do not want to so they just disregard the situation, causing real guilt because it was controllable. Real guilt can occur when any kind of event occurs; this is the kind of guilt that one is self responsible for. But in the reaction of having this guilt you affect the person who either one said something about or did not follow through plans with. This kind of guilt is the guilt that could potentially ruin friendships and relationships with others.

Neurotic guilt is what is felt when one has no control over the situation and blames themselves for it. Neurotic guilt is often a symptom of insecure people who blame themselves for everything that happens. When someone experiences neurotic guilt it is often experienced with anxiety along with shame, due to the fact that one feels like everything is going wrong and feels as if everyone is mad at them. This is often related to death, in which one puts blame on them for an uncontrollable event.

Guilt has many affects on the brain, which can cause a series of emotions and alter the state of the brain. Guilt causes anxiety, when someone experiences guilt it could immobilize he/she and cause one to faint. The other part of which guilt affects is the mental stability of oneself. Guilt can highly affect the brain and the complete structure of it if one keeps going through constant neurotic guilt. This could lead to the mind denying access to other natural feelings that are now blocked. Ones brain can also be negative to decision making, the guiltier and guiltier one feels the more the ability to make decisions is decreased.

Guilt can also have many negative effects on not just the mind but also on the body. "Guilt could potentially immobilize you. You can become so overcome by the fear of doing, acting, saying, or being ``wrong'' that you eventually collapse, give in, and choose inactivity, silence, and the status quo" (Messina1). Guilt is a factor in the case of many weight loss victims in the fact that if one feels a severe feeling of guilt ones eating habits can be affected. When the eating habits are affected the stomach begins to feed on the fat and then the muscle causing the body to dwindle and weaken. Guilt can also cause people to not sleep causing serious problems to not only to ones physical looks but also in acts that concern other people. Say guilt causes lack of sleep and one begins to drive a car, and then falls asleep at the wheel, this all leads back to guilt. Along with all of what guilt can due to ones common well being, something else is affected, ones friends, and family.

Family may react to ones guilt by taking them to either a therapist or putting them on an antidepressant if constant guilt ensues. This is also harmful for the family to watch one of their loved ones go through such a thing, this kind of impact could then create more guilt for oneself but also the family. Family is the foundation for everything whether it is the ability to overcome guilt or the ability to have the backbone to overcome other things. Sometimes all a guilt trip needs is a family's love and support to break the feelings of guilt. Some couples actually try to make each other feel guilty to see if they really do care about each other. "Using guilt as a weapon may get you what you want in the short term, but it is a dangerous tactic that will undermine your relationship and rob you of intimacy with your partner" (Colvin1). Psychologists often call the family the support system in the fact that families have the ability to change the person's feelings with love. Ones friends' guilt sometimes causes them to not want to be around such a person who blames themselves for anything that goes wrong.

One way to overcome guilt is a form of mental toughness, which is the ability to overcome guilt by just mentally pushing yourself. Mental toughness is an ability that if conquered could potentially not better only the feeling of guilt but also many other negative feelings that one could have. For mental toughness one would need some sort of motivation from whether it be friends or family, sometimes with the ability to over come something, all that a person needs is the motivation of others to push them mentally over the feeling of guilt. The other way to solve the problem of guilt is through a psychologist. Psychologists are trained professionals that help people over come mental troubles or problems that the people have gone through somewhere in their life. From personal experiences a psychologist helped me solve many problems and realize why I felt guilty or felt certain ways about my life. Psychologists often use the method of Hypnosis to get to the bottom of the problem. Hypnosis is the art of putting someone to sleep while the psychologists asks the subject questions in order to find out why the patient feels or thinks something.

On the contrary guilt has also been proven to be quite a good thing in some ways, psychologists have proven that guilt can teach lessons. "Guilt is a wonderful thing for our society, because it keeps people in check. (Stossel1)" Guilt has been proven to teach people what is wrong from what is right, whether it be a child or an adult. Life lessons can be taught no matter what the age, sometimes the most valuable lessons can be taught later in life rather than earlier. "As a result, guilt is an important tool in maintaining standards of right and wrong in individuals and society as a whole. As such, guilt can often be used as a tool to overcome conflict" (Barker1). Guilt has also been proven to be a motivator, for a child to fight to not do something again or prevent something from happening. If one knows if he/she does not do something which could have an affect on someone other than themselves. One knows if guilt could affect friends or family so therefore one knows they would feel guilt if they do something wrong.

Guilt causes many intense social consequences that could affect not just one but friends, and family as well. There are two types of guilt that happen to everyone they are real and neurotic. Real guilt is an event or something that one can control and determine the outcome for. Neurotic guilt is guilt that is felt through an uncontrollable event in which one could not do anything to defy. Along with the two types of guilt there are other instances where one creates false guilt. False guilt is when someone actually finds something to be guilty about even if it does not concern them. Family and friends are the basis of a certain foundation that have a major role in helping a loved one overcome the feeling of guilt and the symptoms that come with it. Guilt depending on the severity can be either really simple to over come or very extreme. Guilt can either be solved by developing mental toughness which is the ability to solve the problem of guilt just by ones mind and logic. And then there is psychotherapy which is when one gets a psychologist and they help solve the guilt by digging into where it all stems from. Although guilt can be used as a motivator and used to help learn life lessons, guilt in small amounts can be quite a good thing. Guilt is a major feeling that everyone feels throughout the days of their lives and without it the world would be full of negative people and improper morals, not that there is not any of that right now.

Bibliography

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Messina, James. "Handling Guilt." Coping.org: tools for Coping with Life Stressors.
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