Guilt is a sentinel that tells us that we are wrong, that others have suffered from our actions, and tells us what we did wrong and to whom. And in this regard, it is constructive and acts as a moral regulator of behavior: a person devoid of guilt is capable of anything. Driven by guilt, we may apologize, correct our mistakes, draw conclusions, rethink and change behavior. If we don’t notice this feeling, it remains in us, but turns into internal discomfort and mistrust - it seems like you consider yourself right in everything, but you still feel like something is oppressive and disturbing.
News on the topic Guilt constantly accompanies women - psychologists
I'll fix everything!
Guilt entails regret about what happened and empathy for the person we feel guilty about. It is important to acknowledge this, to express it. The very fact of recognition (“Yes, I did wrong, I apologize!”) brings relief to the one you offended.
It happens that confession and repentance alone are not enough. You need to correct your mistake with real deeds and action. And a responsible person will readily agree to this, especially if the one who suffered the damage (moral or material) tells him how to compensate for it. This is a conversation between two adults: “I’m sorry, I didn’t keep my promise, but I’m ready to fix everything.” - “Okay, this can be done then and there.” Thus, the situation is resolved, the damage is compensated and the feeling of guilt goes away.
If the victim still takes the position of a victim, reminds you of how bad it was for him, expresses dissatisfaction and continues to initiate feelings of guilt in you, this is manipulation. Forgiving you, leaving the situation in the past is not interesting for him; it is beneficial for him to continue to pull your emotional strings and demand compensation. If you succumb to this, you may never get out of difficult experiences and unhealthy interactions.
Scientists have identified the part of the human brain responsible for conscience
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How to get rid of shame about the past
Psychologists say: forget everything that happened before, accept yourself. But few people will understand what it means to accept yourself and few will help this phrase. I know from myself that it is very unpleasant and bad at heart and shame when you remember your bad deed in the past, perhaps during your school or student years. The fact is that it is precisely this feeling of shame, of hostility towards an action in the past that means that you are already a different person, that you have grown up, that such behavior is alien and unpleasant to you.
It turns out that this should be treated as a stage of development. Yes it was, but now I am a completely different person, this is my path of evolution to my current self. You may have heard of the neural network, which I talk about often. So, that action is already in a different neural network, today it has new parameters. The body is the same, you have the same memory, but it was a different person. Perhaps there was alcohol in that network, stupidity due to youth, bad manners, or some other parameter that does not exist now. Analyze what parameters were then and what they are now.
Perhaps witnesses to the act will remind you of this, someone will use it against you, someone will try to let it go, to prick... But you must understand that he is talking about another person. Treat such people as enemies and keep your distance.
Merciless Judge
Of course, not all mistakes can be corrected. And then the feeling of guilt covers up helplessness and powerlessness to change anything. For example, people faced with a serious illness and death of loved ones blame themselves for not doing everything to save them. And this happens even if it was impossible to actually do anything. If a person does not have a guilt complex brought up from childhood, such experiences are replaced by grief and acceptance of what happened. Otherwise, the trauma of loss can last for many years, burying the person alive under the weight of non-existent guilt.
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Scientists: guilt makes a person mentally increase his weight
Sometimes the feeling of guilt becomes persistent, total and burning from the inside. People live with him for years, in eternal self-condemnation and self-accusation, constantly hearing an inner voice that pronounces the sentence: “You are to blame, you have no forgiveness.” Chronic guilt is destructive, it weakens and devastates, deprives you of self-confidence and, most importantly, prevents you from making the right decisions. Feeling guilty, we get stuck in the past, although we should live in the present and look to the future.
What it is
An amazing property of human consciousness is conscientiousness. It cannot be touched, it cannot be bought or sold, it cannot be given as a gift, but it exists. She can be seen by others, she can sleep peacefully or torment a person.
Some consider conscience to be a useless attribute or an atavism. After all, such an “accessory” only interferes with normal life activities and prevents you from “getting high” from being. Conscientiousness seems to gnaw at a person’s soul from the inside; he cannot let go of his own wrongdoing; he is tormented by a feeling of guilt, which is much worse than the reproaches of the surrounding society. The words of strangers can easily be ignored, but the voice of conscience cannot be drowned out.
Therefore, the expression of remorse should be understood as a kind of means of self-control, like an inner voice extinguishing that since you have messed things up, it would be nice to correct them, otherwise it will be worse.
Thus, pangs of conscience are the mental discomfort that any individual experiences after causing an offense, committing a bad act, or insulting someone. The sufferer gives himself an assessment of his own actions or thoughts. If actions go against one’s own internal censor, the result is mental discomfort.
All unpleasant experiences, as well as remorse, are usually provoked either by a discrepancy in one’s own eyes between existing moral principles and the actions taken, or by the anticipation of unpleasant educational “acts” on the part of censure and condemnation. After all, everyone wants to consider themselves a worthy person, everyone likes to think well of themselves.
Mental anguish is directly proportional to the virtues that are instilled in a person and are alive in him, and not to human vices.
Thus, human subjects may feel remorse as a result of an act committed, a word spoken, or even a thought, but this is inherent in an adult, mature personality.
Don't put pressure on the child!
People bring chronic feelings of guilt into adulthood from childhood. The child is defenseless and dependent on his parents, so he easily takes upon himself everything that close adults cannot take on - any guilt, any responsibility: for the fact that dad drinks or left the family, for the fact that mom is having a hard time, she is lonely and is not satisfied with her life. Some parents, wittingly or unwittingly, take advantage of their children's feelings of guilt and turn this feeling into a means of control and management. This is convenient: an eternally guilty child is obedient and will do whatever you want.
Growing up, such a person continues to take responsibility for the problems of other people: they experience unpleasant emotions, and he feels guilty (even if he has nothing to do with it), tries his best to please them and fix something. As a result, he feels eternally indebted to everyone, adjusted and deeply unhappy.
Brainwashing: scientists have found a mechanism that includes conscience
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Everyone feels shame
It is worth understanding that, despite the harmful effects, everyone experiences shame, regardless of personal factors. Research has shown that men and women experience shame in exactly the same way, but the reasons are always different.
The first reason for women's shame is appearance. Many representatives of the fair sex feel that they are not young, slim, or attractive enough. This is not surprising, given the canons of beauty imposed on society. In addition, in a conflict situation, a woman will always be insulted based on her appearance, which only aggravates the situation.
“Good” advice doesn’t make it any better, such as: “You should touch up your eyelashes and lips, then you’ll be beautiful,” “You should lose a couple of kilograms,” “How about changing your wardrobe? This blouse looks terrible!”
The second reason is motherhood, which is directly related to femininity. Many women feel inadequate if they are not married and are not mothers. At the same time, they are also forced to endure daily uncomfortable questions from outsiders, which also only bring discomfort. It is this attitude of society towards women that makes them feel ashamed of themselves, their lives and their choices.
The main cause of male shame is weakness. Physical or not is not so important. The fact of weakness undermines masculinity, which is why a man feels insufficiently strong, powerful and, as a result, successful. Coping with this feeling is just as difficult for them as it is for women.
There is an alternative!
Article on the topic
Is envy not a vice? Why do we react to the successes of others? The feeling of guilt will not grow to enormous proportions and poison life if you know that it has an alternative. This is a sense of responsibility. For any word, action or inaction. There are no perfect people in the world, we all make mistakes, but we can also be responsible for them. Accept responsibility for the fact that because of you (even against your will) other people suffered, compensate for the damage, correct the situation, if possible, draw conclusions and move on without depriving yourself of strength and without tormenting yourself with self-recrimination. And of course, remember: it is impossible to be responsible for the well-being of other adults. Any messages from others in the spirit of “it’s because of you that I have...”, “if you do this, I will suffer”, causing you to feel guilty, should suggest that you are being manipulated and that there are no honest, respectful and equal relationships here there is no talk.
How to clear your conscience?
In the apostolic reading of the fifth Sunday of Great Lent, we hear the following words: “...The blood of Christ, who through the Holy Spirit offered Himself immaculate to God, will cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living and true God!” (Heb. 9:14).
The Apostle Paul speaks about conscience... At any mention of such a subject as conscience, the most honest person will feel a little uneasy. Who among us does not feel guilty before the most incorruptible judge - conscience? Who could say as Paul once answered the Pharisees: “I have lived with all my good conscience toward God until this day” (Acts 23:1). And the apostle himself probably did not want to convey his sinlessness in this phrase. In this case, he rather meant the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law than the inner purity of the soul.
“Who understands the Fall? “Cleanse me from my secrets” (Ps. 18:13), David cried to the Creator, testifying with these words the deepest contamination of the human soul, and therefore a certain uncleanness of conscience even among righteous people. Who can live life without ever sinning? Whose lips have never uttered a rotten word? Whose eyes have never looked where they should not have looked? Who kept their ears safe from gossip and slander? In what heart were not thoughts of malice, revenge, condemnation born?
All this “wealth” is kept by our conscience. Memory will forget, but she will remember. The mind will say: nonsense, everyone does this. And conscience will answer: you are rubbish, brother, before God and before people. She is like a sponge that, after cleaning a dirty apartment, continues to store the washed away dirt within itself.
How can you clear your conscience? For example, try to adequately compensate for your past iniquities, replacing previous sins with appropriate virtues. Fornicating? Become chaste. Drank? Love sobriety. Have you eaten enough? Kiss the post. Stole? Give alms.
However, it is not always possible to clear your conscience in this way. There are irreversible actions, and there are irreversible words. It is impossible to adequately correct, for example, the sin of murder - you cannot bring a person back. It is not always possible to reunite a once-destroyed family. Today we cannot ask for forgiveness from all the people who have offended us. The river of time has irrevocably carried away not only countless of our crimes, but also many of those to whom we are guilty.
Therefore, this method of clearing the conscience is good, but it does not always work. The variability of life and the murderous nature of sin prevent it from being universal.
There is another option to “deal with your conscience,” which is very popular today – a visit to a psychologist. A representative of this profession in our time is more and more engaged in the function that the priest always previously performed - working with the human soul. But a modern psychologist is unlikely to tell us that conscience is Vox Dei, the voice of God in man. Rather, he will explain that it can be authoritarian - imposed by educational institutions such as the Church, family, tradition, and humanitarian - an independent reaction of the individual, the voice of our “true self”. And, of course, we will be called upon to obey our humanitarian conscience, “be ourselves,” do what we like and “don’t bother.”
Today people perceive conscience as a problem - it bothers everyone, they literally want to get rid of it. Psychology sometimes means conscience this way: “a complex psychological problem.” And a problem is something that needs to be solved, eliminated.
But the Apostle Paul obviously takes a completely different view of the “problem” of conscience. He says that it cannot be bypassed as a nuisance, but it can indeed be cleared. And just as conscience is not of earthly origin, but of heavenly origin, then this cleansing occurs not by human means, but by divine ones. “The blood of Christ, who through the Holy Spirit offered Himself blameless to God, will cleanse our conscience from dead works,” says the preacher.
Let us not ask how this happens, brothers and sisters. We can understand very little of the mysterious processes occurring in spiritual reality. Paul writes that it was there, in the upper world, that Christ sacrificed His Blood for us, entering the heavenly tabernacle. And here on earth, what? And on earth we accept the Body and Blood of Christ for the remission of sins, and therefore for the cleansing of our conscience, because the conscience is unclean precisely because of sins.
In this Sacrament we receive such strong evidence of the cleansing of our conscience that we no longer need other evidence. I think that each of us at least once in our lives has experienced a feeling of real, undoubted cleansing of conscience after communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Of course, the Sacrament always has the same power, just as Christ always has the same divine power. But sometimes the Lord reveals to us in a special way the greatness of this Sacrament, and we feel with all our hearts how we become different: how the burden on the soul disappears, the mind becomes enlightened, this or that passion weakens or completely disappears, and the conscience is cleared. At such moments, to every “Lord, have mercy,” we hear the answer: “Your sins are forgiven.” Go in peace." At such moments you want to die, not in the sense of “not living,” but to be separated from the body and be with the Lord.
Such cleansing of conscience is complete and complete, since Christ is perfect. But “let it be done to you according to your faith” (Matthew 9:29). A believer is purified to the extent that he himself wants it and to the extent that he believes in it. The Lord does not save man without man.
Let us pay attention to the end of the apostolic thought. “He will cleanse our conscience from dead works,” he says, “to serve the living and true God.” Christ does not cleanse our conscience so that we lie on the couch and say: I am saved; but for the service of God! A cleansed vessel must be filled with grace, otherwise disaster may occur. The Gospel warns us: “When the unclean spirit comes out of a person, it walks through dry places, looking for rest, and does not find it; Then he says: I will return to my house from where I came. And, having arrived, he finds it unoccupied, swept and put away; then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and entering they live there; and the last thing for that person is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:43–45).
Christ cleanses us, forgives us, saves us, has mercy. But all this is so that we serve Him “every one with the gift that he has received” (1 Pet. 4:10). Of course, every Christian in one way or another serves God by fasting, prayer and labor in fulfilling the commandments. But, in addition, there must also be one’s own, individual service. Or preaching, or volunteering, or some kind of special alms, or charity, or something else. You need to find your calling and serve in the Church!
It is difficult for us to do this, because our consciousness, like the consciousness of every modern person, is consumer. That's how we were raised. We are accustomed daily to acquire and consume, acquire and consume. We deal with some kind of goods all the time: from food to metro cards. We bring this consumer consciousness to the Church. We come to the temple, light candles, write notes, and remain calm - they say, I gave what was mine. And, of course, we expect something in return. And in return we receive the Body and Blood of God, we receive cleansing of conscience. In church we plunge into a whole ocean of grace, we absorb the living water of Orthodox sermons, we leave the earth and touch eternity. We are reborn, we are healed.
And after all this we can quite sincerely say: well, thank you, I’m off. But we receive all this wealth not for momentary pleasure, but “for serving the living and true God”! A ray of grace, a spark of the word of God should ignite in us a flame of zeal for the Lord and a desire to serve Him “each with the gift that he has received.”
But how can I determine what my gift is? How to find yourself in all the diversity of human ministries? It is important to at least revive this thought itself. If the thought of serving God is understood and accepted, the mind and heart will begin a creative process that will certainly lead a person to something. You just need to ask yourself every day: how can I serve God? And ask Him: Lord, how can I serve You? And then the seeker will find, and to the one who knocks it will certainly be opened.
All the gifts invested in us by the Creator must open up in the Church, like flowers open in the spring, open up to serve God and our neighbors. It is for this purpose that we are given cleansing of conscience and spiritual healing. Or vice versa - they don’t apply because of our stubborn egoism and unwillingness to serve anyone other than ourselves.
Let us today try to combine in our minds two thoughts from the current Apostle. Christ grants cleansing to our conscience so that we can find our place in the Church and serve God through our neighbor or neighbor in the Name of God. This is the Church - the Kingdom of God, which begins on earth; a spiritual union of renewed people serving the Almighty and each other. The Lord serves people, and people serve the Lord - isn’t this heaven? And into this paradise, dear Christians, we can enter. Enter with a cleansed conscience and a firm determination to serve “the living and true God,” just as He came to earth to “serve and give His life” (Matthew 20:28). In this experience of purification and self-surrender, may a new life be revealed to us, which constitutes Christianity - the Kingdom of God on earth - the Kingdom of purity, love and service.
The “residence” of conscience in the human body
Few people know, but there is a very interesting theory. According to it, each organ also has a spiritual function, in addition to the physiological one. For example, the heart is responsible for mental pain. Ear diseases, as it turns out, arise due to the fact that a person is sensitive to refusals and reproaches from other people. At the same time, the stomach, digesting food, “absorbs” impressions along with it. And the kidneys are supposedly responsible for conscience in the human body.
The spiritual and physiological functions of this paired organ are similar. At the physical level, the kidneys cleanse the body of waste and toxins. On the spiritual level, they similarly try to “bring out” all the worst things that poison our consciousness. True, it doesn’t always work out.
Advice from psychologists: how to forgive yourself?
For the mistakes of the past
The thought “I wish I hadn’t done this” arose in every person.
Understanding the truth that ideal people do not exist is the first small step.
The second thing you need to realize is that mistakes are minimal for someone who is a professional or an expert in their field. For example, the chance of correctly repairing a wire is higher for an electrician who has spent time studying and mastering the craft through practice.
A practical conclusion follows from this: allow yourself to make mistakes. If you haven't mastered something, you'll still stumble, sometimes over silly or obvious details.
The most important thing is to have a development mindset, to know that you will use the experience gained and become more competent. Moreover, the more often you “mess around” while learning, the faster you will gain extensive experience.
Famous basketball and football players like to talk about situations when they failed to score the ball at the most decisive moment. And it was disappointment, anger at oneself, resentment, it was these feelings that were melted into determination and perseverance in the next training sessions.
Moreover, such an attitude towards life, the position of an eternal student, allows you to progress without stopping. After all, when you achieve mastery, there is a high probability of becoming proud and relaxed, gradually starting to move back.
The second piece of advice is to change your attitude towards experience.
A lucky coincidence of circumstances, success, is one side of the coin.
You cannot realize the color white if black does not exist, there must be polarity.
It's the same with failures. Sometimes, success becomes even more valuable after a loss . Since the fact is obvious, it doesn’t always work out and you need to value your achievements, because they might not have happened.
