{"id":12707,"date":"2016-03-19T09:29:36","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T01:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=9767"},"modified":"2016-03-19T09:29:36","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T01:29:36","slug":"guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2016\/03\/19\/guilt\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilt is a feeling that should inform action, not paralyze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally 0532<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Guilt is a feeling. It\u2019s often a legitimate feeling, and it\u2019s a signal from the mind\/body that something is wrong. The signalling mechanism itself might be broken, which means it\u2019s possible to feel either too little guilt or too much guilt. In both cases, we\u2019re not deferring to some moral authority about what is an absolute, objectively appropriate amount of global guilt. Rather, we\u2019re talking about guilt as a signalling mechanism for influencing behavior. If guilt makes you do things that are in your broad self-interest, it makes you a good person, father, husband, friend, colleague, and it drives you to do things that also make you satisfied and happy, then it\u2019s probably a good thing and it should be a part of your life. If you just need to confess to a priest once a month or you need to have beers with a friend to deal with that, then so be it, that sounds like a legitimate coping mechanism. If having absolutely no guilt enables you to go on and create incredibly amazing things, like iPhones and Facebook, and millions of people are helped as a result, that\u2019s pretty much great too.<\/p>\n

And really, that\u2019s looking at it from an outcome-centric POV. The person whose judgement you\u2019ll have to bear is your own. That much seems rather inescapable, unless you\u2019re really disassociative or are able to run away from your own mind. (I don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s ever really succeeded at this and I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s worth trying.) Beyond that, it\u2019s partially up to you, and partially whatever you\u2019ve inherited. If you believe or were raised to believe in a vengeful god, you might be worried about his or her judgement. Then there\u2019s family and friends and peers and \u201cothers\u201d. We\u2019re often socialized to care about what other people think, and we seem to have some innate system for caring about others a priori, too. The two are interconnected.<\/p>\n

But the point is, all of that is negotiable and navigable. Guilt begins when you feel that you have failed your duty\u2013 to yourself, to your family, to your peers, to society, to God. All of those things are really ideas, but sometimes ideas are backed up with violent force or threats\u2013 ie your parents might expect you to get certain grades or marry somebody of a certain type, and if you don\u2019t do it, they might ostracize you, make you feel bad, withhold your inheritance, even be violent towards you, etc etc. Beyond that though, once you get into a position of strength, you get to renegotiate what your duty is\u2013 to yourself and to everyone else around you. So I think if you want to deal with guilt issues, that\u2019s the sort of framework you have to work with. What is my duty to myself, first and foremost? How do I know if I\u2019m honoring that duty? And then you work your way outwards.<\/p>\n

Guilt is an unpleasant feeling, and nobody should feel crippled by guilt to the point where they can\u2019t function, can\u2019t get anything done, get driven to suicide, or simply live a miserable life. Life is just too short for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally 0532. Guilt is a feeling. It\u2019s often a legitimate feeling, and it\u2019s a signal from the mind\/body that something is wrong. The signalling mechanism itself might be broken, which means it\u2019s possible to feel either too little guilt or too much guilt. In both cases, we\u2019re not deferring to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[586,576,577],"tags":[605,610,611],"class_list":["post-12707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-searching-for-truth","category-self-repair","category-perception","tag-brainworm","tag-emotions","tag-guilt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5gxNz-guilt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}