GUILT - is it a correct emotion?

Guilt. Guilt has been something that has played a large, large part in my life. It's something that is a bane in my existence because I've grown up in an environment where quilt was used very heavily by both my mother and my father to have control and a hold over my mind and my actions. Now, I've spent a great deal of time trying to reverse engineer this guilt in me and why I have it and what it does to me and I find that because I have been so tainted through abuse by the overuse of false guilt that I am now this person who within me, I don't actually know whether (logically) guilt is a natural thing. I am internally of the mind that guilt is not a natural thing; that to feel guilt is not actually good; that we as humans aren't actually supposed to feel it in any way; that it is a construct that has been implanted into us over time for a very long time and now it's become an emotion that we accept as a normal, 'healthy in some respects' emotions. And aside from my guilt abuse, I don't believe I have ever seen or experienced guilt, in myself or in others, as being an emotion that comes without very adverse side effects. Actually, I see guilt itself as being entirely a negative side effect.

I would like to get to the root of this because similar to what Decius has described in his 'My Perception, Your Responsibility' thread, I am of the mind that maybe I am so deeply affected by the trauma of guilt that perhaps I have emotionally swung into this other realm where I incorrectly view guilt as a inherently bad, negative emotional reaction.

I would like it if people who sincerely believe that guilt is a natural reaction argued their point with me - debate that with me because I am emotionally of the mind that it is not a natural reaction and perhaps in doing that you will shed light on it for me or I will shed light on it for you and one (or both) of those paths will determine the answer. I am pretty certain that those who will debate me will come from the angle that guilt is okay, that there is a middle ground, just like there are middle ground in alot of different things, that guilt is normal and healthy and even necessary in certain situations. I expect that I the strongest common argument that will be thrown at me will be ones that say things like if a person kills another then they have to feel guilt because it will show that they see their mistake. I admit that I am not clear within me that about whether I think such an argument is not correct, but this is part of my dilemma because somewhere in me I believe that ideally the killer should not feel guilt, that he should feel something, but not guilt.

My definition of guilt which is what I believe guilt really is: Guilt is self loathing that occurs very specifically when you perceive yourself to be hurting or have hurt somebody some through some action/thought that belongs to you.

I don't know if what I have written so far has been convoluted because it is still often hard for me to express the things I want to say. A specific question that I leave with you is this: Do you agree with my definition of guilt? If not, then what is your definition??

I mean if you never feel guilt your probably a sociopath. Would it be good to be a sociopath? It would probably be pretty empty to not feel remorse or to have no morals.

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Guilt is self loathing that occurs very specifically when you perceive yourself to be hurting or have hurt somebody some through some action/thought that belongs to you

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I would just define guilt as a form of remorse or regret.

I mean I have felt guilty for hurting myself. Like for eating mcdonalds or not eating healthier or not exercising. I think your definition is missing that. Your missing the fact that you can feel guilty for the things you did to yourself. People feel insecurity about there weight and go on diets? That could be a form of remorse in that you are ashamed of your appearance. I think your definition is missing that insecurities can be a form of remorse.

As well you can feel guilty about things you fail to do. Like maybe you feel bad that you didn't help somebody up. You regret something you failed to do.

I think that perhaps you feel to much guilt and I think you have to realize that nobody's perfect and that everyone's going to make mistakes and you just have to try and fix them.

P.S. 1000 posts wooo!

Guilt to me is the nagging feeling that I did something wrong, or didn't do something, to some degree of detriment to myself and or others.

It appears as though it can manifest itself primarily as anger with myself, or self loathing, if I failed to do something due to cowardice, laziness, or greed.

But what I feel is most impotant here is the notion of emotions. Decius has offerred a thoughtful pragmatic analysis of key factors to take into account.

I will now offer a greater conceptual and even more simplified notion of relevance based on new information I've been encountering.

Emotions are a tool, they are their to guide us. there is a use for all of them.

We have a natural state of being, it is one of contentness and happiness. This is evidenced by the studies of the affects of positive and negative energies produced by thoughts and feelings on the health of the body itself.

When one acts in accordance with healthy, positive, loving, forgiving manners, human cells react in a coherent and envigorating manners, supporting immunity, regeneration, etc.

When one acts counter to this, engaging in fear, anger, and depression, the body loses coherence, all manner of energies become dissonent and actually harm natural bodily functions.

One of the best scientific examples of this is the water experiments done where the scientist focused intentions of emotional expressions towards water and frose it viewing the crystaline formations unders a microscope, its been posted here and seen in the movie what the bleep etc.

But love produced beautiful symetric geometric and stable structures, like snowflakes.

Whereas fear and anger were distorted, mudlike, one looking like bubbling toxic waste.

With our bodies being somewhere near 80 percent water, you can imagine the effects of our emotional states and thought patterns on our bodies.

As Decius said and, luckily he has my posts hidden from him because he wouldn't like me agreeing with him, or pointing out how he agrees with me, heh, that it comes down to you taking responsibility for yourself.

If the feeling of guilt is occurring from an interaction or confrontation, you have to ask yourself, am I doing something wrong? If it is no, then you must assume that there is something wrong from the outside factor.

Being wary of denial of course, but from all parties, not just you.

If you remain confident that you are doing the best to be honest and loving and forgiving and helpful for yourself and others, there isn't much else that can be done.

But if you continue to feel dissonent and guilty, then either you need to reevaluate your actions or your thought patterns, are you doing something wrong, or are you convincing yourself that you are (likely due to someone's influence).

Be greatful for emotions, even guilt, for being there to give you warning of something good or bad occurring within or from without.

If you are carying around old guilt, why? Is there something you can address and fix? Then do so, if not, acknowledge if you or someone else has done something wrong, learn from it, express and relieve all pent up emotion, forgive, and move on.

Jacker_Jones>>

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I mean if you never feel guilt your probably a sociopath. Would it be good to be a sociopath? It would probably be pretty empty to not feel remorse or to have no morals

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Or, if you followed Decius's elaboration of guilt and why it occurs, if a person never feels guilt, it could be that their conscientious reaction is never hindered or manipulated, hence they are clean, so to speak. I note your point about sociopaths, but I am not here to discuss such people, it would dilute the conversation too much.

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I mean I have felt guilty for hurting myself.

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Although I did not mention it, my definition of guilt is very applicable to oneself. However, I think the level of self loathing one feels towards outcomes of actions that pertain only to them is much less severe and less long lived.

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People feel insecurity about there weight and go on diets? That could be a form of remorse in that you are ashamed of your appearance. I think your definition is missing that insecurities can be a form of remorse.

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By definition if a person feels 'insecurity' they feel bad about themselves, hence that feeling is one of self loathing. Hence it fits my definition of guilt and the remorse/regret they may feel is directly associated to their feeling bad towards themselves. Additionally, remorse and regret are negative feelings, they are not feelings that quickly spawn positive actions towards a positive change, in fact to me it appears that after feeling regret/remorse a person has to work their way out of it to some capacity in order to move on from the negativity those feelings generate before making any positive change.

With your examples of eating mcdonalds, did you actually stop eating mcdonalds after you felt the guilt? I guess most likely not, hence the guilt you felt was not productive. Which adds to my point - that guilt is unproductive hence not a positive emotion.

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I think that perhaps you feel to much guilt and I think you have to realize that nobody's perfect and that everyone's going to make mistakes and you just have to try and fix them.

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Of course I feel too much guilt, that's what the first portion of my previous post displayed. I have tried telling myself I should not feel guilty, but it simply does not work. In one way or another, guilt perpetuates itself into my life in abhorrent ways when there is absolutely nothing for me to feel guilty about. So to me, your suggestion is a temporary 'pick-me-up' sorta fix and it may work for some people but it simply does not work for me.

If you associate the pain and self loathing of insecurities with guilt, and know for a fact at times that you are feeling guilty for no good reason, then you are either not feeling guilty at all and confusing the issue, or as you say, you are feeling guilty for your insecurities.

Sounds pretty simple to me, your insecurities are eating you alive, this is what you must address.

The fact that you have given an example of people making you feel guilty for no good, or inaccurate, reasons supports this. That's what insecurities are, giving in to unrealistic expectations, or even hurtful notions of others, and society, to the point of loathing one's self rather than loving one's self.

None of us are big fans of not fitting certain perceptions of perfection, but we all have our genius and places where we shine, this should be your focus, if you focus on the negative, than negative you will get.

Don't bury or repress it, face what you are unhappy about, so you can do your best to correct your thinking when you begin to focus on things you cannot change, and change your focus to things you can.

Don't think your life's work of training yourself to loathe yourself is going to go away overnight, but if you don't start working at it now, its going to get worse and take longer once you finally decide to do something about it.

Decius>>>

I agree and believe in everything that you described.

To consolidate what you're saying, what you're describing then is that my conscientious reactions were tricked through the my mother, for one, specifically faking instances that portrayed her survival being threatened. To further that in relation to my life, if my mother, father and eventually siblings all used this manipulation where they independently falsely convey to me that their survival is threatened - and I repeatedly/constantly tried to help them and failed, it would explain my large propensity to feel guilty, perhaps guilty for even existing because I believe I am unable to successfully fulfill an important, basic, human trait.

Mother fuckers.

That makes me feel really angry.

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"Will my trying to prevent her pain/sadness increase the likelihood of her survival?"

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No because the pain/sadness she is displaying to me is all a lie hence her the question of her survival is bullshit and (I am quite emotionally driven with this next sentence) she should in fact die because she is a plague and a stain on humanity. God I feel sick. (side note: I feel very insecure and threatened by saying that second last line, as though my survival is threatened somehow).

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So perhaps the best place to start is to loosen the hold the outside world has put on your ability to question the initial conscientious reaction - in other words, don't worry about the guilt, but ask yourself simply, "should I even be concerned about her happiness or unhappiness, health or death, confusion or understanding?"

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The question you pose here is something that I have been working on for a little while now. However, not worrying about guilt is something that I have not done - guilt affects me so much on a day to day basis that I have never thought about not paying attention to it. Are you saying that no matter when I feel guilt that I should somehow tell myself not to get overly disturbed by it and accept that it will be there until I have removed to root problem being the manipulation of my conscientious reactions? (The thought of this idea actually feels good to me, perhaps it is a freeing thought somehow?)

Decius, aside from your specific suggestions that should lead to me solving my guilt abuse problem, do you personally believe that the guilt reaction is a good thing in anyway? Because to me, what you have described feels like it supports my notion that guilt is a negatively conditioned and implanted response and that we, ideally, should be completely guilt free in all and everything that we do. It being a secondary response to something innately positive strongly says to me that it is artificial and exists for very incorrect reasons.

Ironwood >>

You come in here and off the bat state something that sounds like you're complimenting Decius:

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Decius has offerred a thoughtful pragmatic analysis of key factors to take into account.

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and then immediately follow it with a very derogatory statement specifically geared to elevate yourself and make it seem like what you're about to say is superior to Decius's response:

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I will now offer a greater conceptual and even more simplified notion of relevance

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Don't come and post in my threads when the sole reasons you're doing it is step on Decius because he exposed your delusions. And not only that, the very fact that you think that what you have said is somehow better then what Decius wrote is very, very misleading, because your statements are vague airy-fairy ideas that any masquerader who reads a new age self help book can spew out AND they are filled with wrong information. I want to illustrate an example of your nonsense for any new reader to whom your lying qualities are unknown to:

All that stuff you wrote about the water molecules has been disproved - You'll find on wikipedia lots of awesome information - like the guy who invented the idea (Masaru Emoto) "not sharing enough details of his approach with the scientific community. In addition, Emoto has been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that leave them open to human error influencing his findings."
and more awesome stuff like:
"In the day-to-day work of his group, the creativity of the photographers rather than the rigor of the experiment is an explicit policy of Emoto. Emoto freely acknowledges that he is not a scientist, and that photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs."
AND to top it off, this guy makes money of selling magic water ("$35 for an eight-ounce bottle") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

You've severely disproved your credibility in the last little while so I suggest you learn from it or accept that until you stop masturbating you are not going to be taken seriously by people who know about your bullshit now.

First, though you can't see this, but for those who can and sake of record.

By greater concept, I by no means meant better, I meant bigger, overall, conceptual, whereas his are minutia, both equally valid.

I appreciate your information on the water, hadn't heard that, will gladly look in to, however, the science involved in positive vs negative is by no means limited to him, are you denying the placebo affect too?

Your obvious bias against me, someone who has done nothing to you but try to help, is also obvious that it based on a bias towards Decius, someone I have no problem with, but do fear is succumbing to all manner of accusations he is leveling at me.

You've been here long enough, are honestly trying to suggest that he is never unreasonable or defensive, even manipulative? Fascinating. I wonder if he shares the same view of you over all that time.

I hope you see your mistake in interpreting my meaning in describing my information, I have long taken such avenues to add the larger conceptual after his detailed minutia, nothing new there

And I certainly meant no disrespect to anyone. A concept I can't say you share after you post, which is obviously very emotional, maybe your feeling a bit guilty, because maybe you want to remain in sufferring, I'll probably never get to know, because apparently you won't be allowing for discussion.

Decius has proved my delusions, and I've severly disproved my credibility.

First, these are both things that Decius has proclaimed, but I've had plenty of people already disagree with him, though do to fear of reprecussions, have kept such comments private.

Which leaves me confused and unsure, as I wish to know the truth behind such allegations, that I suddenly qualify for after almost 6 years.

But, there is another possibility, that he may be incorrect, hard as that may be for you or some to conceive, and if so, you may be following suit, and perhaps sharing in a delusion that may not be mine.

I'm willing to brave all manner of emotional diatribe and threats of censorship to know the truth here, but I am left to do so fairly alone, showing that coming to a conclusion of actual truth may not be in some people's interest.

I'm even more than willing to concede my delusion once understanding can be gotten through my apparently very thick skull. Obviously such a notion of stubborness only applies to me.

Yes, such information that I am sharing can be found in all manner of new age, religious, historical, paranormal, fringe science etc.

And now, more and more in mainstream science, Lynne McTaggerts books are far less airy fairy if you would like some info that is also appearing to desire to cut through the crap to find truth in such matters.

But even if mainstream science and everything else proves truth, Decius may not, so I can't expect for you to get to enjoy such revelations.

This is going to be fun.

So I finally looked at your link about the water.

Did you read the whole thing? Hahaha...

If you did, your bias blinded you from what it had to say, for only getting what you did out of it.

There is criticism indeed, as what is being found is that these studies of intention are difficult indeed. There are so many sources of influential intention.

However, not only was the challenge made to produce results with a double blind study, at the bottom of the link was the noting of the publishing in a peer reviewed journal of a double blind study producing results.

And if you do any further investigation in this field of intention you will find that he wasn't the first or only person to come across this information.

He was the first to focus on the crystaline formations.

The effect of intention on water has been proven through multitudes of various forms of scientific study, such as healers and magnets.

For example, in the 60's Dr. Bernard Grad of McGill University in Montreal chemically analysed water by infrared spectroscopy and discovered that water treated by a healer had minor shifts in its molecular structure and decreased hydrogen bonding between the molecules, similar to the effects of a magnet, which was confirmed by a number of other scientists.

For the minutia.

For the larger picture...

Once more rigorous controls were in place for protocol standards in scientific double blind studies, most rigidly in the late 90's, but also throughout, these intention studies had produced recorded results in all manner of test subjects, from water, to plants, animals, and even humans.

From reducing disease and helping fight cancer and aids.

And again I would ask you, would you attempt to wiki me a half assed attempt to discredit the placebo affect?

Do you even know its significance?

You want to air you bias distortions while claiming it is me doing so, you are pathetic.

You would let your elitist mentality hinder the progress of humanity just to protect yourself from facing yourself. That is disgusting.

But thankfully, not only are people allowed to think for themselves, it is never too late to see the error of your ways.

And there are those of us who would not give up on you as you do others.

Because though I may speak critically of you, even harshly, I do so for the sake of honesty and truth and the attempt to reach out to you in your closed off world you have created for yourself where only you are allowed to be right.

You may think these things are airy fairy, but that is because you are ignorant to them and in biased judgement against them, understandable, so was I.

Then I got my teeth into the science behind it, I still cut out as much fruity shit as possible, but I am no longer closed off to these realities and am actually benefiting from and expanding my experiences and potential due to them.

So again, if you wish to revel in negativity, you will get all of it you need to do so. If you want to change that, then do so.

But your guilt is there for a reason like all other emotions, as stated by all, in one way or another, and they are there to teach and guide you when you are out of balance and in need of correction.

Whether by your own acts or believing things others convince you of.