TIFT #113: Guilt and Responsibility

In earlier posts, I haven’t made much of the distinction between guilt and shame, but guilt has unique features that have recently come into sharper relief. I see how often adult clients still feel guilty for things that happened when they were children and how old guilt, appropriate or not, can intrude heavily on here-and-now adult life. In this post I want to talk first about how guilt is acquired, then about examining it together and finally about how it can heal.

Guilt and shame are both evaluative emotions. They are different from all other emotions in that they are formed by measurement against an internalized standard. Compared to shame, guilt arises at a later phase of development. Shame goes back to a time when one’s overall sense of identity and value as a human was still in formation. Most of us continue to carry a bit of doubt about this, but overall, we have a degree of solidity about our identity. Guilt, on the other hand, while assuming that our personhood is an established fact, questions whether we are a “good person” or a “bad” one.

Both shame and guilt bear the stamp of our evolutionarily earlier form of information processing. The limbic mind (also known as System 1 or “thinking fast”) operates in binary terms for both emotions. For this reason, guilt may have degrees of weight, but they are all in the spectrum of black.

A child’s moral world

Most children take morality very seriously. They do so because their parents do and maintaining their bond with parents is a matter of survival. They fully accept the reality of being good or bad and strive to be good. As a result, the dread of experiencing guilt becomes a major source of internal reinforcement.

To be a bit more technical, the brain apparatus responsible for guilt, according to Alan Schore, begins to mature around 18 months and actually becomes functional around 3 years of age. Once operational, it provides internal self-regulation by producing emotions of pride and guilt according to positive and negative judgments made in the light of internal values.

Humans are immensely social animals. Survival is more related to attachment bonds than to the ability to attack or defend. Internalized values are learned from caregivers and ultimately guard the cohesiveness of the group. The operation of this system is so closely tied to survival that its values are specially protected from revision. They tend to stay firmly in place throughout life, and attempts to change them are met with suspicion and strong resistance. The result is that childhood guilt tends to be kept out of sight but maintained and guarded throughout life.

Some, probably most, children take in moral imperatives in a very literal way. The firstborn may be or feel designated as the responsible one. Often older children give up their own innocent childhood to protect a vulnerable parent or a younger sibling. We call this the “parentified child.” Conversely, a child may experience impulses and wishes internally identified as unacceptable. These lead to an unspoken background sense of unworthiness or being different. Sexual feelings are especially susceptible to subtle or not so subtle signals from parents, interpreted by the child as moral condemnation. Anger is an emotion that a child can identify as morally bad or frankly dangerous, simply to carry within. Parents give signs, covertly as well as verbally and openly to indicate how they feel about many things and children listen attentively, adding their own unique interpretations. Because the stakes are so high, little is said overtly, and misunderstandings can become deeply embedded in the child’s inner being. Prohibitions can become categorical and extreme because it’s better to assume the worst case scenario and not risk asking too many questions.

In healthy families, the stakes are lower. The child gathers a sense that they are valuable, even if fallible, and are on safe moral ground as long as they manage themselves within their level of ability. On the other hand, even in a loving family, it is all too easy for this sense of safety to be broken. Adverse events such as death, illness, displacement, or change in economic status can disrupt basic security. Parent’s own guilt or vulnerability, tension in relationships, illness, and even casual comments with a moral tinge can be interpreted by the limbic mind as indications of existential danger. In unhealthy families, the risks are far greater and the stakes higher. Children feel more in control when they interpret dangerous circumstances as their own fault, leading to a quiet background noise of guilt and badness.

How children cope

Carrying a deep feeling of defectiveness or being bad leads to compensatory strategies. Children may try to be “very very good” or to compensate for a perception of badness by giving or sacrificing. This provides a counterbalance, but does not erase or remove the feeling of unworthiness. On the other hand, such strategies require a major added degree of self-sacrifice and self-denial. This comes at a huge cost. Giving up one’s childhood or practicing excessive vigilance and virtue are so costly that they can only be sustained through the unconscious hope of someday receiving a payback, usually in some childlike form similar to what was lost in the first place.

Not infrequently, sacrificed and unmet needs erupt in acting out behavior which, of course, meets the individual’s own conscious or unconscious self-condemnation. When loss of control happens in adult life, it can become the overt proof that the lifelong sense of unworthiness has a genuine and valid basis. “See I really am a bad person and I have been one all along.” Unmet childhood needs and wishes can also be justified or blamed on others. “I have a right to this because…”

In one more twist, self condemnation is one thing, but when clients carry a sense of badness, especially when justified or compensated for by some virtue, a minor criticism can lead to a raging response, “How dare you accuse me of…” That’s one place where it is helpful to identify three people in the room, the therapist, the client, and the inner self, suddenly awakened.

When childhood guilt meets therapy

Clients come to therapy bringing a very wide range of entrenched maladaptive patterns but are not likely, in the early stages, to reveal their moral doubts. It is far too dangerous. What if the therapist’s opinion turns negative? These childlike but existential doubts weigh on clients’ ability to expect support and help. Since the vulnerability remains deep in the limbic mind, the doubts may remain entirely outside of awareness or indirectly articulated as a vague sense of not being OK. In time, the limbic mind begins to seek answers with the aim of finding internal peace. One client said, “I never raise that kind of question unless I’m pretty sure of the answer.” But the child inside does so much want relief from the dread of thinking they are bad. 

I can’t emphasize enough, how often these questions remain areas of frank uncertainty, where the limbic logic continues to prevail. Clients are genuinely not sure if their revelations might show them to be “a bad person.” The job of therapy is to create enough safety for these concerns to come into consciousness where they can be evaluated. When a deep worry about the morality of past acts becomes overt I may say something like, “OK, let’s bring this to trial. We will be fully open and honest about all the relevant circumstances. You will be the jury and I’ll be the defense counsel.” 

The purpose for having a “trial,” a real discussion of the morality of childhood and adult actions, is to show the inner child how they were truly innocent. To the client the trial is not at all a sham. It is deadly serious because, for the adult client, the dread is entirely real of an outcome proving their ultimate moral depravity.

The morality of actions vs. feelings and thoughts

 Since these discussions are so literal, it is important to realize that for many clients, thoughts, feelings, and impulses, even if not acted upon, can condemn one as morally bad. Here I have to differ with childhood beliefs and sometimes religious views about the morality of the mind’s spontaneous products. The limbic mind, operates autonomously and mostly outside of consciousness. It provides information to consciousness in the form of thoughts, feelings, and impulses. This information processing is not subject to conscious will or control, and is manifested only as tiny electrical impulses. Therefore, I don’t accept that its products can have a moral value, positive or negative. It is only when they influence conscious choices and lead to actions that they have moral value. Just as it is not fair to attach moral judgment to the acts of an animal, it is not fair to judge a person based on the automatic and involuntary products of the limbic mind.

Chosen actions, on the other hand, do have both consequences and moral value. So it is only at the level of actions that morality, in my view, has a genuine role. As I recently discovered in discussion with a client, this area is not at all simple. In the sections that follow I will to try to find natural cleavage lines and moral principles as an aid to clear discussion and processing.

Responsibility and the actions of children

The law generally gets it right for children and adolescents in terms of responsibility. Even if legal remedies tend towards primitive retribution and ineffective punishments, the idea of taking on more responsibility with age corresponds to the reality of human development. We start as babies with total limbic dominance. Emotional responses are not at all modified or modulated by conscious awareness. Gradually the cortex comes on line and consciousness begins to exert some control over emotional reactions. Do you remember when you first became able to override your natural horror with the thought that a skinned knee could be soothed with a kiss and a bandaid? That is an example of the conscious mind suppressing a limbic response. It is a step in the gradual change from limbic dominance to where conscious decision making becomes the final determinant of action. Only with control over our actions do we become responsible for their consequences.

Even though children’s limited ability to master themselves shields them from real guilt for their actions, they are still capable of doing regrettable things. As we will discuss below, the emotional aftermath of failures of self-management, while not subject to moral judgment, can be a cause for deep sadness and regret. Before discussing emotional healing, let’s look at the topic of compromised self control in adults.

Adult failures of self-management

Once again, the law gets it largely right. With some modest room for mental illness robbing people of the capacity for adult reasoning, adults are considered responsible for the morality of conscious choices and their consequences. From that general principle, things get complicated and the law begins to have trouble. The complexity comes from the fact that the limbic mind can be so powerfully influential in spite of conscious judgment. Strong feelings, intense impulses, and rationalizations can all lead to actions we might regret and that have consequences. Each of these happens frequently and can lead to confusion and controversy.

One place where this arises constantly is the field of addiction, where compulsive actions are the rule and impulses are particularly strong. In that area I find useful a category that does not exist in the law, “not guilty but responsible.” An addicted person may not be morally guilty for compulsive intoxication or even acts taken while under the influence, but they are responsible for recognizing the pattern and making use of effective help in managing it. I’ll say more below about our role as therapists in such mixed and confusing situations.

Before a choice

Moral discussion about a potential action is very different before it is chosen than after it has taken place. Before the action is taken, there may be room to discuss and evaluate its consequences, motivations, justifications, etc. That is where judgment has a place, helping evaluate the role of the limbic mind and whether its motivation and products should be followed or resisted.

Destructive actions have a way of presenting themselves as positive, even though following them will lead to trouble. In the face of rationalizations and justifications, the client is often not clear about the wisdom and morality of a potential choice. The best technique I know for helping with such evaluations is to consider the consequences of the action. Will it ultimately lead to positive and helpful results or will it worsen damage and suffering.

The trial: When it’s too late and the act is done

Processing an action after it is done is very different. It is usual and expectable for clients to have a clouded understanding of the deeper motivations and real consequences of the action. More often awareness is diminished by justifications and rationalization. It doesn’t help to condemn or blame the person, but it is important to perform what AA calls a “searching and fearless inventory.” This means helping the client to examine with courage and open eyes their actions and the consequences as well, developing an unbiased view of the limbic influences that led to a failure of judgment or self control. Of course this requires a degree of self-honesty, of which some people, especially those with active personality disorders are not capable. This examination, “going to trial,” is a necessary part of bringing the event to an end point where it can ultimately be possible to go on with life.

Processing emotions around genuine guilt

The process of mentally going to trial can lead to clarity not only about childhood events but also about real adult failures with real consequences and real guilt. This will normally bring up intense emotions and the opportunity to process them so as to achieve a degree of closure. 

The rector of a church received a letter from a self-identified alcoholic expressing his sorrow for having burned down the now-rebuilt church years earlier. He was seeking to make amends for his earlier negligence. He was not in a position to repay the damage he had caused, only to express his sadness and regret. Acknowledging the harm or suffering one has caused has a healing effect when there is a genuine empathic sense of the pain that has been caused. The healing of emotional wounds received or caused is a weighty process whose success depends on the depth of understanding and empathy for the pain inflicted on others. The event is a rip in the fabric of one’s relationship with self and the world. The process of healing is the same as coming to forgive oneself or to accept forgiveness. It is akin to grieving for a loss and has a similar time course and characteristics. It takes time and emotional processing to approach peace. In a way similar to other losses, a degree of peace is possible but some part will remain.

It does help to share this emotional process with one or more trusted and empathically attuned others. There is something important about articulating the facts and feelings that makes the emotional healing “real.” We could think of the sharing as eliciting “accurate empathy” in the witness. That’s a role we, as therapists, can fulfill, but we are not the only ones capable of participating in this universal human interaction.

Importantly, this healing is not possible until the heat of immediate upset has cooled and until hope of settling accounts have been put to rest. Reparation, whether it is “doing time” or compensating for damages may be important in the interest of fairness, but does little psychologically until there is a genuine empathic understanding of the pain that has been the result of an action.

Conclusion

This discussion has covered three areas. First, we discussed how therapy can be a place where childhood guilt is absolved and the consequences of regretted actions processed emotionally. Second, we looked at how the consulting room can be a place for honest and real evaluation of adult behavior as the client undertakes a searching and fearless inventory. And finally, we looked at how empathy is the key to a process of emotional healing in which wrongs can be processed to the point of being forgiven but not forgotten.

In the next post, I plan to discuss in more detail the process of evaluation of morality and responsibility in areas of adult interaction.

 Jeffery Smith MD

Photo Credit: K. Mitch Hodge, Unsplash