Guilt & Regret ~ Messages from the Past

The wise quote featured on the header, comes from Roy T. Bennett, from The Light in the Heart. The advice here is clear – let’s use our past emotional experiences as a resource to learn and grow. But, let’s not dwell there.

This opportunity exists with all of our emotional experiences, but some feelings can get so stuck, that we revisit them over and over again in the present. Two emotions that often show up long after the events surrounding them are two inter-connected emotions – guilt and regret.

Complex and deep, distinct in their qualities, both emotions are about loss. Both are akin to sadness. Both, as all emotions do, rely very much on the cognitive narratives we construct as we live. Guilt and regret belong in the category I call, emotions of comparison and the moral emotions.  Much of their life force is derived from our mental comparisons with the lives of others – and often, the context of the times we live in.

Guilt

Since the 1960’s gave us the term “guilt trip,” guilt’s never been the same. According to the Urban dictionary it means “when someone tries to make you feel guilty for thinking, feeling and doing things a certain way.”  The “social liberators” of the ‘Sixties’ weren’t having any of that post-Depression, post-WWII thinking about personal and social constraints. The straightjacket of guilt was off and guilt in its post-Victorian form hasn’t been seen since.

A hundred-plus years ago Freud created an internal iconography about guilt that had previously only been transmitted through religious doctrine.  Freud believed that guilt was an affective state experienced as internal conflict about something one believes is “wrong.”

This feeling persists because, as Freud explained, we are in violation of our conscience (our inner moral code) engaged in the battle between what he called the ego and superego. While Freud rejected the role of God in this struggle, the harsh super-egoic stand-in was parental authority, broadly representing the rules and norms of society. Freud strongly believed that one of guilt’s purposes was self-punishment.

Although Freud, a brilliant explorer of the uncharted psyche of the late 1800’s,  did not significantly advance his theories on the origins of guilt, neuroscience has shown connections between guilt and certain regions of the brain associated with anxiety and depression.

Carl Jung, who Freud once called his “adopted eldest son, crown prince and successor,” (before the rupture in their bond) had a dramatically different concept of the role guilt served in the individuation of the personal psyche.

In a 1945 essay on guilt, Jung wrote,” Guilt has been a subject of special interest to me for many years. I learned that guilt is far more complicated than the conventional explanations for its psychic existence. The conventional view of guilt’s role is that it helps us remain “good.” Guilt keeps us within boundaries deemed acceptable. It helps us resist doing things that would disturb or harm our individual and collective interests.”

Jung’s subversive (at the time) contribution to our understanding of guilt’s purpose was clear; he did not believe we could grow without experiencing guilt. Jung believed that we needed to be “bad” at times which he called “good guilt.” The “good” in doing “bad” comes from the freedom people experience when they break from oppressive rules that are not intrinsically natural to them.

Jung gave the examples of divorces, separations from partners and friends and giving up family (read societal) approved careers or even marriages.  Breaking with these conventions would have been far more guilt-producing in Jung’s times, but they still are emotionally costly for many people today.

Intuiting some guidelines from Jung’s thinking, it’s instructive to understand that guilt often has a strong social context.  The collective norms of the times are always changing and influencing the experience of guilt passed down in a culture.

Guilt is a complex social emotion.  There’s been a great deal written (post-Freud) about the motivational value of guilt. After all, guilt gets us to do things that could be construed as socially (morally) good.  “Motivated” by guilt, we act in ways that keep us from taking some actions that we believe are wrong (lying) and compel us to take actions we believe are right (visiting grandma).

While we can generally agree this serves the greater good, the quality of the satisfaction that results from these actions may not be that self-nourishing or advance our emotional growth much. Obligation has its limits.

Guilt Taps me on the Shoulder

I don’t subscribe to the idea of negative or positive emotions. Surely, I’d rather feel enthusiastic and confident instead of  guilty and regretful but I strongly advocate that every emotion has the potential to deepen our understanding of our true internal life.   I like to think of guilt as a messenger that taps me on the shoulder when I  violate my own deepest principles and values.  When I think of guilt this way, I befriend it – even though the friend sometimes out stays the welcome.

Guilt’s often a persistent reminder that we are out of alignment with our values.  As with many matters of the mind, we often don’t think about what our values are, or where they come from (surely they are in part also social constructs).  But values, created and transmitted through thought, can also be deeply felt and are directly connected with our actions.

Like so many other emotions that drive us, unless we become familiar with the true message of our guilt, we’ll be lost to its reactivity.  Disavowed guilt gets stuck, and stuck emotions tend to become chronic and reactive.

Mindfully experienced and expressed, listening to our guilt can reconnect us to our own inner compass. If we commit to ferreting out unhelpful, even oppressive, societal voices from our intuition, guilt can help guide us along paths whether we are in familiar or uncharted territory. The more discerning we are in understanding the source of our emotions (the apex of emotional intelligence) the better able we are to use guilt as a resource for creating a fuller and richer life.  Maybe we’ll even come to agree with Franz Kafka who said, “My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”

Regret

Regret is a hard place to live. Regret, more than guilt, can drift into becoming an internal state, which sadly dominates life. Carl Jung believed that “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  Many great minds have dramatized the energy-draining pit of living with regrets. The truth is most of us have regrets.

I’m slightly surprised when someone states; I have no regrets. Well more power to them, but they are definitely in the minority – unless they are fifteen. Research shows that the more we age, the more regrets we have. Perhaps, it’s that we believe we have less choice or the loss of hope also takes its toll.

I think regret’s bound up with so many other emotions that it is often hard to unravel its ecology. There’s often grief for the road not taken, the childhood we didn’t have and even the last words we spoke (or did not) in an important relationship.

When we use the wisdom of our emotions, even feelings of regret can be a directional signal.  When repetitive regret seems to keep showing up, it offers the opportunity to more deeply understand what we need in our present experience. Taking a risk, standing our own ground or acting with more kindness in the now; like guilt, our emotions often tug at our hearts until we get the message.

It’s only when guilt and regret and other  emotions get stuck without expressin, do they fail to offer the potential to enliven us. Whether we are 18 or 80, emotional choice is always an option. While social media is filled with appealing messages like, Have no Regrets and Life’s too Short for Guilt, the reality is that the depths of life occur in the light and in the shadows.

In Healing through the Dark Emotions, author Miriam Greenspan writes, “The word shaman means to “see in the dark.” There is a shamanism of the dark emotions – a way of maintaining awareness in the midst of the chaos and the turbulence of the darker regions of the psyche that ultimately affect our perception of who and what we are. Painful emotions challenge us to know the sacred in the broken; to develop an enlarged sense of Self, beyond the suffering ego, an awareness that comes from being mindful of life’s difficulties, rather than disengaging from them.”

Thanks for reading!

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Consultants
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