People often feel guilty. They don’t always know why, or whether or not it is appropriate or sometimes even what it is about. How can we feel guilty and not know why or what about? How can we feel guilty when it is not even appropriate for us to feel that way? And so far I’m just talking about the Normies. PTSDers, I think, tend to experience guilt even more than the average bear. And I believe that the guilt that they experience is more complex and even less readily or easily explained. However, when it comes to guilt, I think that the experiences of Normies and PTSDers are in many ways alike. People often feel guilty in response to other people’s emotions and behaviors. We tend to feel guilty if someone around us is angry, sad, or in some other way upset. Sometimes we feel guilty even when none of these feelings are directed at us in any way.

I often tell my clients that there are no bad emotions. There are no useless emotions. Each emotion we have has a function to perform to help us live better. So what is the function of guilt? The function of guilt is to signal us that we need to make a change in our behavior. We feel guilty both for our “sins of commission” and for our “sins of omission” That is to say that sometimes we feel guilty for something that we have done and sometimes we feel guilty for something that we have failed to do. We feel guilty when we yell at a loved one, when we are not really upset with them, but are stressed out about something else. We say (or should say), “I’m sorry. I’m not upset with you. I just had a hard day at work and I guess I was taking it out on you.” We also feel guilty when we forget their birthday or that we had planned to stop and get them a card on the way home. Guilty feelings, if we pay proper attention to them, can help us to behave better toward one another. They can even help us behave better toward ourselves. Again this only works if we pay attention to and heed their signal. I feel guilty for having a dish of ice cream and for not exercising more. And guess what! I am eating a lot less ice cream and I am exercising a lot more. This by the way is a success that I wish to report here and now.

The typical scenario that leads to feeling guilty is when we deliberately do something that in some way hurts another person and we didn’t have a valid justification for inflicting that hurt. A valid justification would be like when we have to wrestle a drunken friend away from a fight and in the process cause him to twist a joint or pull a muscle. I guess that the nature of my example illustrates the point that there are very seldom situations in which violence toward others or even toward our environment is truly justified. The point is that it is good to pay attention to our guilty feelings and follow their guidance for our behavior.

As I stated above, it may be at times that we get this signal when it is not appropriate. However, it may be more accurate to say that the signal is always appropriate. The problem may lie more in our interpretation of the signal or in our perception about what behavior we need to change. I feel guilty when I see a homeless person. But if I give him or her money, I still feel guilty because I suspect that the money will not be used for food or shelter and I know that no matter how much I give it is not enough. So I give to charities that help the homeless and I still feel guilty because I know that what I really need to do is to change the whole societal system. So I do what I can and now I’m not feeling quite so guilty, but I’m feeling frustrated. But that’s another topic.

Guilt becomes problematic when we don’t use it to help us change our behavior and instead use it to assess our self worth. Obviously from the example of compounded guilt above, we can see that we are not bloody likely to have a day without guilt. Now that’s okay. Really, it is, especially if we are using our guilt to guide us. But if what we are doing is using it to convince us that we are not okay, that we are bad, then it’s a problem.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with PTSD. I thought that this time I would leave it for you to sort that out in our discussion.

Desired Outcome: To understand out guilty feelings better and use them more constructively.

Discussion Starters: When have I felt that my guilty feelings were confusing, inappropriate or counter productive? How has my trauma history impacted my relationship with my guilty feelings? How can I stop misusing my guilty feelings?

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