Читать книгу Skip the Guilt Trap: Simple steps to help you move on with your life - Gael Lindenfield, Gael Lindenfield - Страница 7
ОглавлениеWe often hear guilt described in oppositional terms such as ‘healthy’/’unhealthy’ or ‘rational’/’irrational’. I confess to having talked about it in these terms many times myself, and I still do occasionally. But the reality is that people who have difficulty in managing guilt are usually experiencing a messy muddle of a number of types of guilt, including both oppositional kinds. And to make matters worse, people’s inner cauldron of guilt is forever changing.
As we can’t see or touch feelings, naming and describing the problem we have with them is very helpful. It makes the issue more real and is an important first step towards dealing with it. Furthermore, if we see it in black and white outside our head, our thinking brain becomes top dog, rather than our emotional brain. We can then often see clues as to what we may need to do to manage the problem better. This is not just true for us as individuals; it also applies to groups, organisations and societies, too.
So I have compiled a list of the ten most common types of guilt that I have encountered. I will describe each kind and give you some examples. This should help you to identify the types of guilt that trouble you, and understand the kinds that other people you know may experience.
Please remember that my ten types do not constitute an exhaustive list. If you don’t feel your guilt fits under any of these categories, try creating one or more new labels and write a short description for each. I am confident that you will be able to apply the advice and strategies in this book with minimal adaptation.
Positive guilt
As we noted in the last chapter, guilt evolved in humans as a helping mechanism. For those of us whose experience with guilt has been quite negative, it is important to remember that it can still be very good for us, and also for the world we live in.
When guilt is felt appropriately, and the wrongdoer feels the motivational urge to make recompense and then takes constructive action, it has the power to be positive. Let’s look at a couple of examples:
a) 1. Ian had a journey from hell coming back from work. When he arrived home, his six-year-old son jumped on him to greet him. Ian irritably brushed him aside. On seeing the tears well up in his son’s eyes, he felt a surge of guilt. He immediately took his son in his arms and said he was sorry. He then asked if he could make up for his bad temper by having a kick-around with him with his new football. His son was delighted!
2. Janine was newly appointed as a manager in a store. Her brief was to improve the turnover. This was her first management post and she had been told by her boss that she would now have to ‘toughen up’ her style of relating to her team, many of whom had become her friends.
For the first six months she tried and failed. Turnover didn’t improve and she became alienated from her colleagues. She knew that she was doing something wrong, but she didn’t know what. Her staff were obviously demotivated and Janine felt guilty and concerned. She decided to try a weekend course in interpersonal skills that she had seen advertised in her store’s newsletter.
The course was enlightening and helped her to see that her style of management had been aggressive and was having a demotivating effect on her staff. She was recommended an eight-week evening assertiveness training course and decided to do it.
At work the next day, she called a meeting of her staff and told them what she had done and intended to do. She apologised and asked for their help in giving her honest feedback while she was trying out a better style of interacting with them. The end result was that morale improved enormously, and so did the turnover.
Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you’re messing up.
MARGE KENNEDY, NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT
Ian and Janine’s examples show that positive guilt can be beneficial not just to us, but also to others. It can also be used for the prevention of wrongdoing. This is particularly so if it is used in conjunction with empathy. Here’s a simple example of good parents using it well:
Twelve-year-old Joe is kicking up a fuss about having to go to his grandmother’s birthday tea. Instead, he wants to spend the afternoon with his friend. His mum tells him his gran will feel very hurt and disappointed if he doesn’t go. She adds, ‘I know how much you love your gran, so wouldn’t you feel guilty if you hurt her feelings?’
Of course, some might argue that Joe’s mum may be using guilt in a manipulative, controlling way here. But let’s assume that she isn’t, and that she is simply using it to help her son become more empathic and kind.
There are many other different examples of anticipated guilt being used positively as a preventative aid. Instilling a sense of loyalty is a powerful way of getting people to conform of their own free will. It motivates people to keep ‘in line’ and avoid the guilt they would feel if they let the side down. Additionally, it doesn’t provoke the resentment that formal authoritarian power can induce.
Leaders of all kinds use the ‘threat’ of guilt to build loyalty within their staff or team members.
• CEOs will create values-based mission statements and urge their employees to live up to them.
• Sports coaches will motivate their teams by reminding them ‘not to let the side down’.
• Soldiers are regularly told that being part of a battalion is an honour, and to ‘stand by your mates whatever’.
• Actors are fed the message that for the sake of the audience and the other actors ‘the show must go on’, however tired or hungover an individual may be.
• Card manufacturers and social networks encourage us to keep our personal support systems alive by sending caring messages saying ‘Thank you’, ‘Get well’, ‘Good luck’ and ‘Congratulations’.
Anticipated guilt is also used more directly to encourage helpful behaviour. For example:
• donor cards sitting by shop tills and medical reception counters;
• the rattling of charitable donation tins in full public view;
• ‘Smoking harms others’, ‘Drinking and driving kills’ and Neighbourhood Watch scheme posters.
All these examples give our positive-guilt buttons a gentle push. Sometimes, however, guilt buttons need a stronger push to transform them into a positive force. Interestingly, a series of research studies done by Stanford University in the United States, led by Professor Francis Flynn and Becky Schaumberg, revealed a strong correlation between guilt proneness and leadership. Guilt-prone members of the research group seemed to the rest of the participants to be making more of an effort than the others to ensure everyone’s voice was being heard, to lead the discussion and generally to take charge. Even when they did the test in a real-world setting, a strong link emerged between a participant’s guilt proneness and the extent to which others saw the person as a leader. Becky Schaumberg reported that these guilt-prone people showed the most responsibility. They were prepared to lay people off in order to keep a company profitable, even though they felt bad about doing so.
… the most constructive response [to making mistakes], and the one people seem to recognise as a sign of leadership, is to feel guilty enough to want to fix the problem.
PROFESSOR BECKY SCHAUMBERG, STANFORD UNIVERSITY4
Is it any wonder that leaders tend to use guilt frequently to push or pull the people they lead?
Finally, it is important to remember that for guilt to work positively, there does need to be an element of caring involved. For example:
• The people involved are part of a group who love or respect each other such as a family, friendship group or team of close colleagues. Miguel, a star footballer, went out on a drinking binge to celebrate his brother’s birthday. It was the night before a big match and the match was lost. The coach had noticed that Miguel had not been performing anywhere near his best. When he confronted him, it was obvious that Miguel felt more than usually gutted and quickly confessed what he had done. He expressed his guilt to his teammates, apologised profusely and asked for their help to stop this happening again.
• The guilty party has empathy with the victim’s suffering and cares enough about them to want to make amends. Sometimes this empathy may have to be induced to prompt a caring feeling. For example, a ten-year-old boy had stolen from another child at school. The teachers arranged for him to meet with his victim and hear about how the boy felt and the difficulties that the theft brought him.
• The guilty party cares about the goal that has been mutually agreed and is still mutually wanted. When Carole had an affair, she and her husband Bob agreed to stay together and try to make it work for the sake of the children. A year later Bob started an affair himself. Six months later, his fourteen-year-old son uncovered his secret. Bob didn’t feel bad for his wife, but he did feel guilty that he had not been careful enough to hide it from the children. He broke off the affair and committed to couple counselling with his wife.
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
VOLTAIRE
Summary: Positive guilt
• If guilt is a justified response to some real wrongdoing and motivates the wrongdoer to take constructive action to repair the wrong, it is positive.
• Anticipated guilt can be used positively to strengthen and motivate individuals and groups of all kinds.
• Pressing our positive-guilt buttons can encourage us to be more empathic and helpful.
• If we are prone to guilt, we could make a good leader.
Suppressed guilt
This is the kind of guilt that occurs when someone is aware of the feeling but consciously keeps it hidden inside, although it does then have a habit of surfacing into the mind from time to time. This can happen without any obvious prompting, but more frequently a reminder will trigger it. The person may well intend to do something about their guilt one day, but as time goes on they find this harder to do. So their guilt grows, and then they beat themselves up for procrastinating. The longer they leave it, the harder it becomes to deal with.
Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.
PLAUTUS, ROMAN PLAYWRIGHT
Over the many years since my daughter Laura’s death at age 19 in a car accident, I have had quite a number of emails, cards and letters expressing this kind of guilt. They have come from a range of people, including many of her friends who were her age at the time.
Most have said similar things: they have often thought of Laura and felt bad that they had never expressed to us what she meant to them. They have then told me about the qualities they appreciated in her and how much they missed her. They have apologised for not letting me know this earlier, when others did come to see me and send cards. They say, or imply, that they have felt guilty ever since. What a shame that they were unnecessarily troubled internally for so long with this bad feeling. Their ‘wrongdoing’ was so understandable and forgivable.
Festering inner guilt does our mental health no favours. It eats away at our self-esteem and makes us more prone to anxiety. It can also cause people to behave in inappropriate ways. For example, a person who is having (or has had) an affair will often take out their tension on the family whom they love and don’t want to desert. Or they may do the opposite and overcompensate by spoiling the children and even the spouse they are cheating on.
The longer we leave suppressed guilt locked away, the harder it can be to confess and deal with. Firstly, the wrongdoing can become less forgivable by the victim, even though they may appear to have moved on.
Secondly, by the time the wrongdoer is ready to deal with it, the chance that trust and respect can be established between the parties has probably diminished greatly.
Thirdly, after a very long period even sensible people can suddenly get a now-or-never urge to confess or apologise. By then, their overwhelming emotional need is so strong that they can make a clumsy or inept attempt to talk to the victim. Here’s a sad example:
A well-known and internationally respected person recently confessed on the radio that she felt bad about the way she had run away from home some twenty-five years ago. She hadn’t spoken to her parents since. She found out that they were due to travel from a certain airport and decided to go there. She found their check-in queue and went up to them. She wasn’t recognised, so she told them who she was. They greeted her politely and then walked on, and she hasn’t seen them since. How very, very sad.
I was tormented with guilt for years and years. In fact, it was so bad that if I didn’t feel wrong, I didn’t feel right!
JOYCE MEYER, AMERICAN AUTHOR
Then fourthly, an overdue ‘outing’ of guilt often causes the victim’s and their supporters’ thirst for revenge to be intensified. This can lead to inappropriate and sometimes cruel punishment. Recently, for example, a number of court cases have taken place in our country against people who committed seriously dreadful crimes over 40 years ago. Several were given prison sentences, even though they are now in their late eighties and nineties and are seriously ill. Mercy was not considered an option, even when remorse was expressed.
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
OGDEN NASH, AMERICAN POET
Finally, the torment of suppressed guilt, especially when the above problems have been witnessed in others, can lead to these attitudes: I will be damned if I do, so I might as well not try, or more scarily, I’ll be damned if I do, so I might as well be even more evil or die.
In Chapter 7 I will be suggesting some more effective ways for dealing with suppressed guilt.
Summary: Suppressed guilt
• Suppressed guilt is the kind that is consciously felt, but is not outwardly expressed.
• It damages the mental health of the guilty person.
• It can have knock-on negative effects on the people with whom they interact.
• The longer the guilt is suppressed the more difficult it is to deal with and there is a risk that the consequences of outing it will be more negative.
Disguised guilt
This is guilt that has been suppressed, but the person feeling it is not currently consciously aware that they feel guilty. It becomes apparent only because of other mental-health symptoms or other problems. The mental-health symptoms can vary enormously from classified illnesses such as depression, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorders) and addictions. The other problems may be more everyday issues such as persistent relationship difficulties, career issues, low confidence or anger mishandling. It is during the investigation of possible causes of these problems that buried guilt is uncovered as a contributing cause. Traditionally, and probably most commonly, this takes place with a therapeutic professional such as a psychiatrist, psychotherapist or counsellor. At the start of consultations clients often say, ‘I have no idea why – everything was fine. I have a good job and a great family. The first panic attack came out of the blue. I didn’t know what was going on. That started me off getting anxious. I just worry about what to wear, about getting lost, food contamination – you name it and I worry!’
Alternatively, they could deny they have a problem or lay the blame on others: ‘She thinks I’ve become anti-social and prefer my tablet to people. Yes, I like games, but I’m not addicted – I’m shattered after work and they relax me.’
Professional therapists are trained to look for hidden causes of problems, especially where there seems to be no obvious reason for symptoms. They are skilled listeners who will focus as much on body language and what is not being said as on what the person is saying. If the cause isn’t evident in their present life, they will also take an interest in the person’s past as well. In this way they may uncover guilt about a wrongdoing that the client may have completely forgotten about, or not considered relevant to their current issue. Sometimes this guilt is rational and sometimes it is not. Very often it is a mixture of the two.
In my twenties I was diagnosed with serious depression. Luckily for me I was referred to an excellent (and very patient!) therapist. The main reasons for my mental state were plentiful and complex and I don’t need to spell all these out now. But it is relevant to share with you how disguised guilt played a part in stopping me from moving forward once my depression had lifted.
Leading up to my depressive illness, I had made myself jobless. I had failed miserably (in my eyes) at two jobs that I had desperately wanted to succeed at. My first was as a childcare officer. One of my clients had beaten his first child so badly that she was taken into care. When the couple had their second baby he and his wife sincerely wanted to make sure that this couldn’t happen again. They both adored their new little girl. I visited them regularly and my colleagues and supervisor agreed that they had made great strides in their parenting and stress management. They didn’t think it would be necessary to admit the baby to care while I was on holiday. However, when I returned I was told that the father had lost his temper and killed the baby. No one for a moment thought this tragedy was in any way my fault. And in my rational mind I knew that this was true. But my guilt and despair were too great, and I resigned. I vowed to give up social work forever.
After working for some months quite happily as a shop assistant, a friend of a friend told me that a housemother of a children’s home was urgently needed. He thought I would be ideal and should apply. As I had spent the majority of my own childhood in children’s homes, I was keen to try. And try and try I did. But ultimately I failed. As staff our days were spent stopping the children from beating each other up. The quality care I had wanted to give them, and my staff, was an impossible dream. This time I blamed the system and underfunding and resigned. I felt angry and hopeless and eventually got so seriously depressed that I ended up in hospital.
My psychotherapist cleverly sniffed out guilt as a persistent issue in my troubled history. She unearthed a mountain of forgotten remorse and self-blame dating back to my early childhood. My habitual way of disguising my guilt was to become a rescuer of others. As a child it had started with my kid brother and sister and children weaker than me. By the time I reached adulthood my cause had become global.
As you have probably guessed, this habit is still with me. It is, however, no longer disguised. This means that I can control it and use it in a more focused and constructive way. An added bonus is that this personal experience has left me with a nose for sniffing out buried guilt! Here’s an example:
Jeff came to see me because his marriage was falling apart. It emerged that one of the main causes was that his wife thought he had a drinking problem. He didn’t accept that his drinking was an issue. He spoke defensively about it and said it was just part of his job. He had to drink sometimes, as that was the way you met and started relationships with new customers.
I encouraged Jeff to tell me a little more about his job. It was one that involved quite a bit of travel. We talked about some of the places he had been to. It emerged that one of them was Budapest. In sharing our impressions of this city he recalled having a one-night stand with a Hungarian colleague. He had virtually forgotten the incident. He laughed it off, saying he was young then and they had both been drinking a little too much that evening. At first he couldn’t even remember her name or the year it had taken place, but when we explored it a little more his memory became clearer. As it did, he started to fidget and his hand started covering his mouth. He then recalled that, at the time, his wife had been pregnant with their first child. I noticed that his eyes were looking watery and I quietly asked him how he was feeling. He said, ‘Guilty, I suppose, and a bit fearful.’ The fear that he felt was that he would end up like his dad, who was ‘a true alcoholic and womaniser’, and that he, too, might lose his family. He felt immense guilt about not having been able to help his mother more. She remained depressed and bitter until the present day. Jeff was feeling less and less inclined to spend time with her and so feeling even guiltier.
The good news at the end of this story is that Jeff and his wife did repair their marriage. Jeff found new ways to network for new customers and gained a clearer and more rational perspective on his responsibilities towards his mother.
As we know, many people are unwilling to go to a therapist, especially if their problem doesn’t feel like a big issue to them. Jeff did, but I don’t believe most people need to do so. If the disguised guilt is caught early enough, a partner or close friend who knows the person well may spot it. In Chapter 8 I will outline some guidelines and give some tips on listening in a way that helps people to open up.
Summary: Disguised guilt
• This is guilt that the person is not aware they are currently feeling.
• It can produce emotional and behavioural symptoms that are attributed to other causes.
• The habit of disguising guilt (real or imagined) can often be traced back to childhood.
• The process of outing this kind of guilt needs to be done skilfully and sensitively. A therapeutic professional often does this. Others who know and care for the person can also achieve it.
Childhood guilt
This is a subject that I could easily write a whole book about, and so could most psychotherapists. Childhood guilt is one type that surfaces so frequently. It is one of the main contributing causes of chronic low self-esteem and a host of other common mental-health problems.
As is now common knowledge, our default emotional auto-responses are largely ‘wired in’ during our childhood years. This makes them much more difficult to control. This is especially so if we experienced guilt repeatedly or it arose as a result of a traumatic experience. Even when, as adults, we can see that many of these responses are not rational and are indeed harmful to us, they still have stubborn sticking power.
Additionally, parents, or other significant adults who had power and influence over us when we were children, induce much of this guilt. Here are a few brief examples of these kinds of ‘messages’ that I have come across through words, attitudes or consequences:
You’re supposed to be a bright boy; the trouble is that you’re just lazy. That’s why you failed … I feel so ashamed of you when I hear this from teachers.
You’ll drive me to an early grave with all that noise. I’m shattered. [From a mother who died of breast cancer in her thirties.]
Now look what you’ve made me do. [From a father who had just turned over a table in anger and cut his hand picking up a broken glass.]
Having to do this hurts me more than it hurts you, but you deserve it. [When being given an overly severe punishment.]
She’s a bully and a liar … I suppose every family has a black sheep. She’s my cross. [Overheard telephone conversation.]
I told you to watch them … now look at what has happened. Your brother is in A&E. [Told to an eldest child when she was nine years old.]
You’re going to end up just like your father – you just can’t be bothered and think only of yourself. [Father abandoned the family and has been on benefits most of his life.]
I told you that you looked like a slut in that dress …What do you expect when you dress like that? [After a 14-year-old had been through an upsetting sexual advance.]
And, of course, damage can also be done indirectly through nobody’s fault. I met someone in her eighties recently who, when she found out what I was writing about, said she still feels guilty about her own birth. She was premature and her mother was unable to have any more children afterwards.
Here are some other examples I have known where people feel guilty about being who they were born to be:
Being born blind, and knowing that his disability has restricted his parents’ and siblings’ lives.
Being less intelligent than average and needing private tutoring before all her exams.
Being more intelligent than her brothers and sisters and getting a scholarship, which enabled her to go to university and have a good career.
Being a promising sports person whose training and matches have required sacrifices from all his family.
Being born illegitimate and “… bringing shame on the family and ruining my mother’s life’ (shared by a very elderly man).
And then, of course, there are the guilty secrets that some children felt they had to keep (rightly or wrongly), such as:
stealing from Mum’s purse and Dad’s wallet;
hating a brother the parents favoured and praying he would die;
lying repeatedly to cover up hurting a younger sister;
blaming a school friend for doing something you know he didn’t do;
masturbation and other sexual explorations;
feeling attracted to the same sex;
missing Dad and secretly meeting him after the divorce;
going to the synagogue even though they no longer believed;
lying repeatedly about where they had spent the night;
being sexually abused by an uncle.
Of course, many people have these experiences and grow up to be able to talk about them or laugh them off. Others unfortunately cannot do this. When they are ‘confessed’ or discussed, the emotion of guilt visibly floods back into their system. They typically bow their heads or cover their faces with their hands. Unsurprisingly, they commonly feel shameful guilt, which we will be looking at later.
Having guilt from childhood still live within us in adulthood renders us more vulnerable to feeling guilt in the present day. We shall look at ways of dealing with childhood guilt in Chapter 7.
Summary: Childhood guilt
• Many of the behavioural responses that we used to deal with this guilt in childhood become hard-wired into our brains and become our default emotional responses. This makes them hard, though not impossible, to change.
• Parents and other significant adults in our childhood usually induce this guilt, and our relationship with them would have coloured our responses.
• Some of this guilt is no longer relevant to us as adults. It relates to the value systems of other people and not to our own current values. It can, however, still trigger inappropriate responses, which need to be kept under our control.
• Some childhood guilt relates to secret wrongdoing from childhood, which may need our attention because it is affecting our life, relationships or peace of mind today.
• Childhood guilt is often mixed with shame and therefore diminishes our self-esteem.
Parental guilt
Now to the other side of the coin! There cannot be a parent who hasn’t been besieged by guilt at some time during their lives. It is a role that the vast majority of us desperately want to do more perfectly than any other we may take on. But, of course, we don’t and we can’t.
I’m trying to avoid, you know, guilt, even though before the child is born you’re already thinking you’re doing things wrong … Why do I think that will probably carry over until the day you die?
EMILY MORTIMER, BRITISH ACTRESS
Once you become a parent, guilt is guaranteed. Nowadays, it even starts nudging us before the baby is born. Recently, I was scrolling through a pregnant mums’ internet forum and here are just a few of the ‘sins’ they were confessing:
sleeping in the ‘wrong position’;
drinking a coffee;
eating chocolate, Brie and goat’s cheese, a fried runny egg and a biscuit that had fallen on the floor;
drinking one glass of wine in a week;
moving furniture without asking for help;
getting stressed at work;
not doing my yoga breathing;
not playing classical music for ‘the bump’.
After more years than I care to mention, just writing this list managed to trigger guilt in me, too. And that happened, even though in my time we didn’t know such ‘sins’ might harm our unborn babies.
Health professionals with positive intentions induced this guilt. Through leaflets, adverts and face-to-face advice, they pass on the wisdom that has been accumulated from research into pre-natal care. They want mothers to feel guilty if they don’t take this new knowledge seriously. When the guilt starts to feel too weighty, most will joke it off in the way they are doing in the kind of forum I mentioned. However, many parents can’t do this. This kind of guilt-inducing information stresses them out and frightens them. They can’t change the habits of a lifetime overnight.
When the baby is born, that guilt burden will undoubtedly grow. Their pre-natal guilt will leave them predisposed to absorbing more and more. Parental guilt is now a common subject of casual conversation and is regularly addressed in parenting manuals, magazines and websites. But to my knowledge there hasn’t been any serious academic research that has proved this rise or pointed conclusively to the reasons for it. From my own practice of working with parents, I have noticed a number of issues that in recent years have kept reoccurring and can cause this accumulation of guilt:
• Dual careers. A recent survey by the website Mumsnet.com claims that fewer working mothers are feeling guilty, but now I find that working fathers are adding to the numbers.
• Financial restraints. Perhaps some of these are due to lifestyle choices, but many are not. Many people cannot afford to meet their own and their children’s needs and expectations. The latter are soaring as globalisation increases and advertising has become so sophisticated. Not so long ago smartphones and individual computers for children were a luxury, but now, when your child’s best friend is moving to the other side of the world and they want to keep in touch, and 50 per cent of their class have this year’s model, it becomes difficult to say no.
• Longer working hours. This may be a problem particularly in the UK where our working hours are extra-long, and it is hard and expensive for families to find quality childcare. Because families are increasingly geographically distant, traditional support is becoming less available.
• The strains of marital break-up and blended families. Although these problems are now commonplace, the parental guilt that they trigger seems as high as ever.
• Rapid rise of mixed-culture families. This is an exciting development, but it is also challenging for parents. It appears to demand extra commitment, time and negotiation skills. The clash of parenting values and expectations often leaves at least one party feeling guilty about not giving their children the upbringing they believe to be right.
• The increasing volume of information about childcare available through the internet. Much of this is good and supportive. However, to unconfident parents encountering difficulties, it can be overwhelming and confusing.
• The trend that appears to equate a parent’s worth with the success and behaviour of their children. This has become increasingly internalised and parents’ self-esteem and confidence are being affected by this trend, too. This has become an increasing problem as the media constantly confronts us with the images of perfect parents with perfect children. These beautiful images stick and make us wish, ‘If only …’ When parents do seek help, guilt is always the first issue that therapists and counsellors have to deal with before they can move on to their main issues. This is happening in spite of our increasing knowledge of the role that genetic, physiological and cultural issues play in shaping our children.
So if it is true that parental guilt is on the increase, it is imperative that we learn how to manage it well. Laughing at it or ‘giving up’ by slipping defensively into laissez-faire parenting brings only very short-term relief and does our children no favours. Almost all the advice and strategies in this book will help. In Chapter 8 there are some tips on how to help children with their guilt, too.
Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch.
JOHN STEWART, AMERICAN SATIRIST
Summary: Parental guilt
• Parental guilt is virtually inevitable for everyone who has a child.
• It arises because parents are naturally programmed to want to do this role as perfectly as possible, and perfection is unachievable for humans.
• It has increased because the contemporary world floods parents with an overwhelming amount of information, which is often contradictory, and due to the stresses of everyday life parental aspirations are often unachievable.
• Parents associate their self-worth today with their children’s successes, and this often causes additional guilt. When their children fail or commit a wrongdoing parents are commonly blamed or blame themselves.
Survivor guilt
This kind of guilt was first identified as a special type in the 1960s. It was first applied to survivors of the Vietnam War. But, of course, it did exist before that time, and is now applied to numerous kinds of survival issues. Sometimes it has a rational element and sometimes it does not. Whatever kind it is, it needs to be managed well because it can block sufferers from being able to move on from their traumatic experiences. These are the kinds of thoughts that continually chain survivors to their past:
I had no right to survive.
I don’t deserve to be here still when they are not.
If only I had been able to do something differently.
I should have helped.
I should have been there.
It is disrespectful to be happy when they cannot be.
I shouldn’t be successful on the back of their misfortune.
Let’s look at some examples of people who have experienced this kind of guilt. These brief quotes illustrate how it can occur in a wide range of life situations and at any stage of life.
I felt guilty for years that maybe I should have run back and tried to get her to stay with me. Maybe I didn’t do enough to stay together. Maybe I was too selfish about saving myself.
JOSEPH, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
I have started to experience what I can only describe as survivor guilt. Some of my classmates were also good candidates and had similar grades, but they didn’t get a place. I have also heard about people who have applied loads of times and they didn’t get in either.
FERN, AN 18-YEAR-OLD GIRL IN HER FIRST YEAR OF A POPULAR UNIVERSITY COURSE
I felt so bad about being among the few that didn’t get made redundant. I still haven’t made contact with anyone to see how they are getting on, so the guilt is getting worse. No one expected this crash, but perhaps we should have done.
ALAN, AN INVESTMENT BANKER
He may have walked away with his life, but he has been haunted by survivor’s guilt ever since.
RELATIVE OF PETER, WHO WAS ON A PLANE THAT CRASHED, KILLING HIS FATHER AND 69 OTHERS
Mum, it should have been me. At least I have had more life.
MY 21-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AFTER HER 19-YEAR-OLD SISTER DIED IN A CAR CRASH
He couldn’t get past it, he felt really guilty and he kept saying it should have been him that died.
SISTER OF A SOLDIER WHO WAS FOUND HANGED AFTER RETURNING FROM THE AFGHAN WAR AFTER HIS TWO BEST FRIENDS DIED
I did not feel survivor’s guilt until two years or so after my bonemarrow transplant. It took me another six months to finally pick up the phone and call my doctor to ask if other bone-marrow transplant survivors ever had these dark feelings of depression and guilt (although I would not have recognised it as guilt).
A 47-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO SUFFERED FROM LEUKAEMIA AND HAD A TRANSPLANT
The soldiers I’ve talked to involved in friendly-fire accidents that took their comrades’ lives didn’t feel regret for what happened, but raw, deep, unabashed guilt. And the guilt persisted long after they were formally investigated and ultimately exonerated.
NEW YORK TIMES WAR REPORTER
A dozen decisions that I made over the course of a two-month period could have been wrong but that didn’t occur to me at the time. Any one of those made differently may have saved his life. I am still dealing with the guilt of having cost him his life.
A RETIRED ARMY OFFICER TALKING ABOUT THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF ONE OF HIS SOLDIERS
All this recent unveiling of sex abuse in the past has made me think back to my own schooldays. There was a history teacher who I am sure was dodgy. He invited me a couple of times to his flat for some extra tuition. He started being different with me – friendlier, putting his arm round me. I didn’t go back. Now I am haunted by the faces of the boys who did – they were quite shy. I should have said something.
MAN IN HIS SIXTIES WHO HAS STARTED TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT NOT RAISING THE ALERT ABOUT A TEACHER AT HIS SCHOOL
Would you believe that I still get pangs of guilt about my twin Peter. I wonder if he would have made a better job out of his life than I did. My parents so much wanted a son and she couldn’t have any more after our births.
A 77-YEAR-OLD FRIEND OF MINE WHOSE TWIN DIED SOON AFTER SHE WAS BORN
Most of these people did, of course, move on with their life after their trauma. But many will have suffered with their survivor guilt for longer than they needed to. There are some tips on how to help anyone with similar issues in Chapter 8.
Summary: Survivor guilt
• Survivor guilt was first identified as a condition in the 1960s and for a long time was just applied to people who survived war traumas and felt guilty about living when others died.
• Nowadays it is increasingly accepted that anyone can feel this guilt if they have survived a major trauma of any kind while others were less fortunate.
• This guilt can seriously block sufferers from moving on with their lives.
Affluence guilt
This kind of guilt is about feeling uneasy with having a comfortable lifestyle while others do not share that privilege. It has become an increasing challenge for people in developed parts of the world. The media constantly broadcasts images of those in pain and poverty. Financially strapped charities are now quite understandably using powerful advertising techniques to turn the knife into the consciences of those who are better off.
Cheap travel has also let many more people see for themselves the contrast between their lives and those of people in less-developed countries. The latest global financial crisis has also brought many face to face with the hardship of others. We don’t need statistics to tell us that, in spite of all the aid programmes, the gap between the poor and the rich has widened.
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me – the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
BEN HECHT, AMERICAN AUTHOR
Of course we need to face these uncomfortable facts, but we also need to remember that affluence guilt can become a burden to bear. When this happens we can lose the will to aid those whom we wanted to help. When people become depressed by their guilt they can sink into cynicism or powerlessness.
This tragically ironic quote from John Lennon says it all.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
JOHN LENNON, WHO WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN HIS FORTIETH YEAR
There are many people who would argue with me that the very opposite of affluence guilt is starting up. They might point to the incredible queues that I, too, have seen outside designer shops in some of the poorest countries. They might also draw my attention to the ‘canonisation’ of celebrities and the way they are worshipped. They would say that their expensive clothes and wealthy lifestyles are emulated rather than criticised.
I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it.
JOHN SYLVAN, A MULTIBILLIONAIRE, ON THE GROUND COFFEE CAPSULE HE INVENTED
Ultimately, everyone has to choose which of these positions to take. The choice will affect the amount of guilt they carry themselves and notice in others. I know it is a subject that troubles many of the people I meet and encounter via the media.
But you don’t need to have billions before you feel this guilt. It has been a lifelong issue for me. My childhood experiences undoubtedly were a major influence.
As I have mentioned before, for much of my childhood I was brought up in poorly funded children’s homes. From an early age I was aware that I was more deprived than the children around me at school. However, the nuns who schooled me kept me aware of others who were worse off than myself. When I had to choose a saint’s name for my first communion, I chose Elizabeth. This saint was a noble lady who was beatified because, in spite of her mean and aggressive husband, she found ‘miraculous’ ways to help the poor. Throughout my childhood I prayed to this saint to help me become like her. Although during my life I have worked for and given to charities, I have never been able to match her and I never will. No wonder I continually battle with affluence guilt!
At this time my only guilt comes from having to charge for the work I do, otherwise I can’t put a roof over my head!
FRANCESCA, A TRAINER AND DEDICATED VOLUNTEER
The tips in Chapter 7 are based on those that have helped me and many of my clients to manage this guilt, which I hope I will never be without.
Summary: Affluence guilt
• Contemporary life presents a constant and often overwhelming stream of information and images of people who are less fortunate than those in affluent, developed countries.
• Charities are using increasingly sophisticated means to nudge the public’s conscience, but most people have only limited amounts of money and time to donate.
• Some people are programmed by childhood influences to be more vulnerable to this kind of guilt.
Carer’s guilt
This is the guilt we feel when we know we should be caring more effectively for members of our family or others who feel like part of our wider family. The latter could be a friend or neighbour, or a colleague with whom we have a special emotional connection. It is a condition that is now widely acknowledged in most developed countries. Generally, it is applied to people who have members of their family in need of extra-special nurturing and attention because they are unable to manage well on their own, usually because they are elderly or sick or have a disability. There are others – some pregnant mothers, for instance – who may have a temporary need for extra help.
Like most of the guilt types we have discussed, carer’s guilt does appear to be on the increase. For centuries, women have traditionally taken on the role of carer within families and communities, but in contemporary society this is no longer necessarily the case – most women have careers as well as families that make heavy demands on their time. In addition, we are living longer and needing more care in our old age. Improvements in medicine have also meant that sick younger people are being kept alive when only a few years ago they would have died.
The most recent change in society that has affected this issue and is a constant feature of media attention is that the quality of care given by the state and private institutions seems to have deteriorated. Regardless of whether or not the scare stories we hear are misleading or unrepresentative, our overall impression is that institutional care is best avoided. This has triggered even more guilt in those who have no alternative other than to put their loved ones in a home.
Carers will always feel guilty – it’s part of being a good carer and feeling that there is always more that we can do.
ALZHEIMER’S SOCIETY
Everything I have learned from working with carers myself and from the organisations who currently support carers has convinced me that guilt feelings are inevitable. This is because, as a carer of someone in need, we will always feel guilty when we:
leave them;
say no to them;
begin to feel resentful;
snap at them because we are so tired and stressed;
have to leave them with someone they don’t know;
see them look sad or hear them beg us to stay;
forget to ring them or check up on them;
learn that they are ill and think we should have noticed;
see other carers who appear to be doing so much better than us;
know we are neglecting our family and friends;
are less effective at work and take time off in crises;
don’t have enough money to give them a better life;
recall something we did or didn’t do that hurt them in the past;
start to feel sorry for ourselves;
take time to give ourselves some nurturing or treats.
Our aim must not therefore be to eradicate carer’s guilt completely. We need to rid ourselves of the irrational stuff and learn helpful strategies and techniques to manage the inevitable rest. You will find some tips in Chapter 7.
Summary: Carer’s guilt
• This is guilt we feel when we think we should be caring more effectively for people in our lives who have a reduced capacity to look after themselves.
• Women have traditionally taken on the role of carer, but as most now work they cannot necessarily do this any longer.
• Through the media we are being made increasingly aware of the inadequacies of institutional care and the rising tide of people who are dependent.
• A certain amount of guilt is inevitable for every carer.
Shameful guilt
I’ve got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame, and it’s a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.
KEVIN KLINE, AMERICAN ACTOR
We have already looked at the difference between guilt and shame in Chapter 1. Shameful guilt is simply a combination of two kinds of guilt. We feel it when we have done, or think we’ve done, something wrong and also have a sense that this proves that we are intrinsically bad or not as good as other people. It therefore attacks our inner confidence, which is the bedrock of our mental health. The consequences of feeling shameful guilt are bad for us, and often bad for others as well, because we may:
not own up to what we have done, or think we have done, because we don’t want even more people to think we are bad;
feel less inclined to apologise, because we believe that they won’t want to listen to us;
not believe someone who says they have forgiven us and wants to wipe the slate clean;
not make amends for what we have done because being bad means we will probably do it again;
go on to do even more and possibly worse deeds because that’s what people as bad as us do;
consciously or unconsciously seek out the company of people who are as bad as us;
become cynical and very negative in our thinking;
isolate ourselves or not allow people to get too close for fear that they will discover who we really are and the bad things that we are capable of doing;
start to ‘worship’ people whom we believe are better than us, and allow that to blind us to their failings;
become a ‘rescuer’ of others to the extent that we neglect ourselves in order to be regarded as ‘good’;
become very religious, because only a higher power can forgive us;
become overly self-obsessed and introspective, and so have less empathy with others;
become depressed and suicidal;
not seek help because we are worthless and/or others are more deserving.
You may have noticed that some of the possible consequences above are contradictory to each other. This is because shame and guilt are essentially different emotions and have different effects. They can therefore pull you in different directions. So, unsurprisingly, shameful guilt is the most difficult kind to both feel and overcome.
This may also be why it is used to exert power and influence over people. Throughout history, dictators and politicians have used shameful guilt as both a threat and a punishment.
Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal law, and they will avoid punishments, but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition to developing a sense of shame they will order themselves harmoniously.
CONFUCIUS, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER
Teachers were also using it in the days when they put the dunce cap on children, and still do when they make children answer questions in class they know they will get wrong. Even parents use it; for example, when they tell their seven-year-old child in public that they’re behaving like a three-year-old.
Inducing shameful guilt is also one of the techniques that advertisers use to sell products. Sometimes they will use it in a direct way by showing, for example, pictures of people with zits on their face or without deodorant looking isolated within a crowd, or indirectly by showing people using their products being super happy and successful. Political parties will also employ advertisers who use shameful guilt to win elections or get people to change their views or behaviour.
