Guilt Feelings
Author: Nili Raam, communication consultat

I guess there isn't one person who hasn't experienced feelings of guilt and some people carry a constant, deep engraved guilt feelings regarding this aspect of their life or another. Guilt feelings are often related to as a negative emotion - but what are they, why do we breed them in ourselves and whay do we generate them in others?

TO begin with, it takes two for guilt to exist: one person to cause it and another to carry it. Guilt is by core a control mean, used to gain control over another. There are two quality levels of control: the higher level and the lower level. The higher way of control is by means of support, uplift and encouragement. The low control is by causing guilt feelings. Unfortunately most of the control in our world is from the second type, which means that there are two kind of people, one can’t do without the other:

A) Those who causes guilt in another
B) Those who carries the guilt load

Guilt is a feeling of the conscience which causes in us this specific emotional ache of “I am not OK” whenever we do something we shouldn’t be doing, according to others expectations from us. Now, the higher are the standards expected form you, the more strict and uncompromising are the values around you – the harder it is to keep up to them, thus greater guilt is built up whenever you divert from these values.

It takes at least three ingredients to make a person a good candidate for guilt feelings:
1) They have a low self image that makes them doubt themselves and what they do
2) They know or think that they misbehave or do something wrong
3) They have an alert conscience that make them suffer for that

In other words: When you don’t have values but you do have conscience and you are convinced you others are better than you are, you might find yourself feeling guilty for quite few things you do or think or say or feel during your life.

It all begins in childhood, between parents and kids. The kid, being a kid, has natural feelings of guilt, generated from the gap between what he is and what he knows his parents are expecting him to be.

The child most naturally thinks that his parents are perfection itself. They got values he dares not question, they got standards he dares not doubt, they behave, they are never wrong, they are of worth. Some parents actually work pretty hard to enhance this perception of their kids, because it enable them to control them by triggering their guilt feelings ( “I don’t deserve this from you after all what I did for you”), meaning : I am good (I gave, I did, I thought only about you) while you were bad (you do not behave the way I want you to behave).

The catch is…that while you believe, according to childhood perception, that others got better values and are better people – the truth is that almost no one got real values, including your parents. Most of the values people pretend so proudly to possess, are actually a fake, a decorative facade, a control mechanism.

Sometime during his growing up years the child discovers this about his parents. He learns that they too are human, normal, full of weaknesses people and he develops a more peer to peer relations with them, as well as enjoys the benefit of the diminishment of his guilt burden. But…sometimes this doesn’t happen, for any reason. Either the parent refuses to let go of his or hers “perfect” image, or the parent died before process was completed, or the child refuses to grow up. As an adult he is now used to be motivated or maneuvered by guilt and this becomes a need, a trait engraved into his psychological disposition. Since parents are no longer an active part of his life, he subconsciously seeks for someone else to take on this role of activating and pulling on these guilt strings of his – and he than marries this person.

The match works perfectly well. Both parties cooperate in this game, though they are not aware of it.

The spouse is a person that usually mimics, out of his/hers own psychological needs, the parent controlling figure. They can be caring people but with a strong need to control, to always appear to be right, to be doing the correct things, to have the better values and standards. The guilty one gets his deal too: he is again the kid, which means he would be excused for whatever he does (and would, by that, enable the other party to feel noble and of worth). Taking on the role of the kid, the guilt carrier doesn’t need to worry about values, can cope out of responsibility, he is been taken care of, he got someone to be in charge of things. The guilty party can misbehave, because in this unwritten contract between the two of them, he is sort of expected to always be found at fault, be accused and kindly forgiven. He can do all those pleasurable forbidden things he likes, things he shouldn’t do, because he got someone to watch and take control over him, to! accuse and forgive.

Those who manipulate others to feel guilty are dominant people. They present what they do out of their own free will or need as something done out of pure care, sense of responsibility or immolation – expecting the other to feel owe to them in return. This is a very tricky way to gain control and tie another person to you – for there are no strings stronger as the guilt strings, generated by a false sense of owe to another (“after all I did for you…”).

Guilt carriers agree to feel they owe the other for their “self sacrifice” because their conscience isn’t clean – they always doubt themselves and feel that they are the only one who do “bad things” (“if you only knew what I have done…you wouldn’t like me any more, or you would leave me”).

The more bad the “bad” party is - the more justification gains the “good” party to pull on those guilt strings that tie them both. The only way out of this destructive game is by refusing to play it which means to be able to give up the psychological benefits that each gets from this game.








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Nili Raam www.nonverbal.up.co.il
Communication Consultant
Israel

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