Guilt: Setting yourself free!
25th July 2011 | By Mary Miller
Do you feel guilty when you do something to take care of yourself? Do you hesitate to invest time, money and energy in your own well-being? Do you wait until you are desperate before asking for help? Guilt is one the most common, most powerful and most debilitating human conditions. As a former psychotherapist, I can say that personal guilt was the topic of many a session. From what I could see, more people suffer from guilt than they do from the common cold. It is, in my opinion, a contributing factor to many serious physical health problems. So, where is this affliction coming from and how do we stop it now?
There are two kinds of guilt that must be distinguished. First, is genuine guilt which involves “an awareness of having done wrong or committed a crime, accompanied by feelings of shame and regret.” The first kind of guilt, guilt for committing a specific misdeed, is a sign of psychological health. It means that the person who has done something wrong at least recognizes the wrongdoing, and may be able to take responsibility and possibly make amends.
The second kind of guilt is an experience of feeling shame, or regret for something without having committed any crime or wrongdoing. This is false guilt and is often chronic in its nature. Jane feels guilty when she asks for help. Tom feels guilty when he asks for a raise or goes on vacation. Kathy feels guilty when she stops people from taking advantage of her. Jack feels guilty when he gets sick and needs someone to care for him. Mike feels guilty when he takes a day off from work. This type of false, chronic guilt is often kept very private and it is both debilitating and self-limiting. And, ironically, the people who suffer from it most often have the most difficult time seeking relief from the condition because they feel guilty whenever they think about doing something positive for themselves. This false guilt drives many protective, limiting behavior patterns and be an underlying source of physical and mental health problems.
In this article, I would like to explore the most common source of false, chronic guilt. I have been fortunate to be involved with a long-term research effort aimed at understanding the most common emotional imbalances and how to correct them. While this article does reflect my personal opinion, it is an opinion based on 30 years of research and observation. Knowledge about the nature of our difficulties often helps alleviate at least some of the problem. And, perhaps this understanding of false guilt will set some readers free! Furthermore, in my experience people can go to therapy for a decade trying to figure out why they fell chronically guilty and never find the answer. Perhaps this information will save some readers a little time and money.
Chronic guilt most often stems from a single source that can be traced back to the first five or six years of life. When a child is born into a family, the parents (or those in the parent-roles such as grandparents) either want the child or they do not want the child. Parents who want their children have emotional, financial and personal interest in having and their raising kids. And, most importantly, they have the available emotional resources to care for children. Parents who do not want their children are usually not bad people. They are just too overburdened with their own lives and lack the resources required to raise healthy, wanted children.
In order to determine whether you are a Wanted or an Unwanted child, you must to do your own math. You cannot go back and ask your parents if you were Wanted because most parents would have trouble facing the idea that their children were Unwanted. Doing the math means that you take a look at all of the significant adults in your past. You can place the heaviest weight on your mother and father but you must also account for grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings and any other significant adults who may have participated in your care. If the most significant adults in your life wanted you and invested in your well-being, you will come out a Wanted child. If you had one parent who wanted you and several other adults who wanted you then you probably add up to be a Wanted child. If however, your parents argued often and their relationship was not stable or you had one parent who felt particularly burdened by the presence of children, then you are probably sum out as an Unwanted child.
Again, Unwanted children are usually born to parents who are struggling with their own problems and do not have the resources to take care of children. Perhaps one parent is an alcoholic. Or, maybe the marriage is discordant and the parents spend their energies arguing and struggling to manage their own mismatches. Maybe there are financial problems in the family or maybe the parents are just psychologically unequipped to care for children. When a child discovers that he or she is Unwanted (and therefore a burden to his or her parents), the child must develop a psychological system to survive within in his or her family.
Remember that children under the age of five or six must depend on their parents for food and shelter regardless of what is happening with the parents. Every human being naturally seeks equilibrium regardless of the surrounding conditions. To establish equilibrium, Unwanted children have to figure out how to take care of their parents enough so that the parents will at least provide minimalist care. Unwanted children usually sense very early on that they are a burden to their parents. They have this experience of being a burden before they have the mental and emotional circuitry to figure out that there is nothing wrong with them as children, and that the real source of the problem is the parents’ lack of capacity to provide proper care. In other words, Unwanted children fell like a burden to their parents and they experience themselves as the problem rather than their parents. They usually conclude that because there is something wrong with them as children, they are the reason their parents feel burdened.
Wanted children feel loved and supported by their parents. They experience themselves as an asset to their parents’ lives and a source of joy and well-being. Wanted children rarely suffer from chronic false guilt. Unwanted children feel guilty for being alive, for breathing the air in a room and for asking for anything that they might not be able to provide for themselves. When an Unwanted child is sick, he worries about being a burden to his parents. When he needs physical support, he learns to ignore his own body. When he needs emotional support, he braces himself against his own emotional needs.
Wanted children, on the other hand, expect to be cared for when they are ill. They have no need to hide their problems or live in fear that they will be asking too much of their parents. And, again, Wanted children RARELY feel guilty. Unwanted children feel guilty chronically and most often when they need or want something that it important to them. That chronic guilt does not disappear in adult life. Once the experience of being Unwanted is programmed into the consciousness, the patterns of hiding one’s needs, not asking for help, and feeling guilty when help or support is needed remain in place. The Unwanted child grows up to be an Unwanted adult and approaches life, relationships, jobs etc from the place of being Unwanted and therefore a burden to those around him or her.
Unwanted children also carry their parents’ guilt in addition to many other emotional burdens. While most parents who are unable to care for their children would have trouble admitting that their children were Unwanted, the parents usually know at some level that this is the case. Any parent in this position with a conscience naturally feels guilty for not being able to do the job. The Unwanted children sense that guilt and in an effort to relieve their parents of this burden, they absorb the guilt of the parents and carry if for them, usually for the rest of their lives. This is a key element in understanding why chronic guilt is so difficult to resolve. In reality, Unwanted children have done nothing wrong unless you consider being born a wrongdoing. Unwanted children had the right to proper childcare including all the necessary physical and emotional support to become a Wanted child. They just did not receive the care that was needed. While we cannot go back and make our parents want us. We can begin to want ourselves. We cannot redo the past but we can change the future. We can accept our right to invest in ourselves and our own well-being as a natural part of living. We can move forward knowing that we have the right to fulfill our greatest wishes, goals, and dreams. Knowledge really is power.
To learn more about I Ching Systems revolutionary approaches to emotional balance contact ICS today at: ichingsystems@yahoo.com or call 1-508-944-4250
Copyrights: Mary E Miller MSW
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