How do you deal with guilt?

A soldier kills 2o people because it is his bounden duty to do it.He has undertaken the job and he has to perform. THis is professional justice.When he does it for pattriotic purposes his stance gets justified in a more forceful manner. On the other hand 'accidentally' killing any person or animal would definitely make a person feel guilty.

Hi kala and biswa... I agree with both of you. @mel, sexy, me..... noway. Good throw.

You look sexy in that beard. However I shouldn't say something like that as I run the risk of getting misinterpreted. About libido, that's exactly what the psychoanalysts usually say. Over time human mind has become more complex. We have developed, inside our mind, new ways to process and interpret information. The hard definition of right and wrong is responsible for feeling guilt. No two person feels same amount of guilt after doing the same thing. It depends on the context. A soldier may kill 10 enemy soldiers in the front and may feel no qualms about it. Whereas while driving if you hurt an animal accidentally you may feel guilty about it.

I wouldn't say that meditation makes you perfect, but it makes you feel better.

Meditation makes you powerful and perfect. When I first started meditation, I had no feeling of guilt. May be meditation prevented me from doing anything that could cause guilt. May be it shaped my psychology in such a way that any conflict could be resolved as soon as they arose. I really don't know the reason. However, meditation gives you calmness and indifference by which it becomes lot easier to take meaningful decisions. I am delighted to learn that you take interest in Buddhism. May be when we have time we will have some more conversation on this.

Thanks a lot for the BR Biswa.

I have been reading the autobiography of M.K.Gandhi. I will relate one incident from there. Once in his childhood he stole something to pay out the debt of his elder brother. Though he didn't steal it from anyone outside his family, he was tormented with an unbearable feeling of guilt. He couldn't sleep but didn't have the courage to confess it to his father. Then one day he wrote a letter and handed it to his father. In this letter he confessed everything sincerely and promised not to repeat this again. His father, who's ill and was lying on his sickbed, read the letter silently. A drop or two fell from his eyes. Then both the son and the father started crying. Father forgave the son because the truthful confession along with a pledge of not doing the same mistake again already made him forgive his son. Isn't it an amazing story?

That's the straight forward method for dealing with guilt. With this method you are capable of resolving the problem almost instantaneously. When you identify the thing that caused the guilt, your work is half done. Your next job becomes to stop justifying it and to confess it to yourself. Then you ask forgiveness from the Lord. At last, like you said, you prepare yourself to do whatever is necessary to finally overcome guilt. Yes, sometimes ego comes in between you and your objective. However if you are just you'll always end the conflict as early as you can.

You are absolutely right. Sometimes guilt arises quite unnecessarily. You know that you did what you did because it had to be done. Yet, you feel guilty thinking if you've hurt someone badly. If you know what your responsibilities and duties are then nothing should make you feel guilty. All you need to do is to identify your objective in life. This is the toughest thing to do. But once you've done that all you need to do is to follow that objective by all means. Whenever you need to make a decision you first verify whether it is in conformity with your objective. If it isn't you just throw it away and choose the other one. Having a definite aim in life makes your life free of guilt. Even if guilt arises, you always have the capacity to quickly resolve it.

That sounds like a pure soul. However sometimes you feel guilty even after doing the right thing. If justice is harsh it will surely hurt someone. Now if you are given this responsibility to do justice to the person you are not related to there is almost always a feeling of guilt afterwards. If it's personal you may not feel that much guilty about it. Since you don't know that person personally yet you were obliged to be harsh then sometimes you may feel guilty about it. Guilt usually arises from the friction between your social values and your instincts. Ego often justifies our instincts to cop up with the pressure from social values and the conflict mainly takes place within.

Yes, of course. It's your affair and if you can't handle it it's you who's going to face the consequences. Sometimes of course people do mediate and actively help in resolving the conflict. But if we do this ourselves it always makes us wiser and smarter. The only way to be mentally strong is to go through psychological stress, because only then people use their imagination to innovate novel ways to deal with the situation. However, realizing where you've done wrong is a difficult task. It's primary step and many people fail to understand it in time.

If you make mistakes there is no point in punishing yourself for the rest of your life just because of that. The realization is more important than repentance. There is a long held concept that without guilt there is no possibility of recovery or improvement. I believe that it's the realization that is wrongly interpreted as guilt. Sometimes people feel guilt so strongly that they instinctively attempt to repress it with something stronger. This quite natural as the first reaction to guilt. However if that feeling doesn't lead to self realization then there is nothing much we can do about it.

There are three psychological approach that we usually take to deal with guilt. If you want to resolve guilt immediately then you need to apologize to the concerned person or try to reverse the mistake which is causing you the guilty feeling. This is by far the most straight forward approach and you get rid of guilt almost immediately. Sometimes you know that you have done complete justice yet you feel guilty because you think the situation could have been handled in a better way. I wonder if there is any judge who did not feel this at least once in their lives. Sometimes you have to suppress guilt intentionally just because you had to deliver justice at any cost. In such a case you continuously reason with your conscience, convince yourself that it couldn't be avoided. This happens quite frequently and the method takes more time than the first one. The third method is quite painful. You feel the guilt and you want to reverse the action causing this guilt but you just can't do anything about it because it's gone out of your hand. You can't control the cause anymore and is already facing the consequences. In such cases one has to sincerely confess his mistake at least to his own conscience and make a vow not to repeat the same mistake again in his life. In such cases every time you remember your mistake it feels like you've been punished. You don't want to remember the incident because it's too painful. But other things reminds you of the incident. However, the memory is repressed successfully and the subconscious mind swallows it. It may take days, months or even years to forget such a thing. If it is too painful to bear, it may even come back in your dreams. The guilt, however, reforms your personality and subsides.

Sometimes guilt arises from the friction between what you want to do and what you are taught to do. Sometimes when you are mad at someone you may yell. However since you have been taught that yelling is not a good behavior later you feel bad about it. You feel guilty and you wish this could never happen. But you were out of control with anger and you did not know exactly what you are doing when you were doing it. What is responsible for the guilty feelings is our own education, culture and social values. It's rather your own point of view that is being instrumental in producing guilt. In some cultures there are behaviors that people in your community may consider violent and rude. Now if you accidentally demonstrate any such behavior, you may feel guilty afterwards. Whereas people from that culture may do it every day, naturally.

I completely agree with you. Guilt is something you have to resolve immediately. Sometimes we just can't reverse it because our ego, instead of assisting us, start working against us. "Why should I apologize?", "What is he/she is thinking about me?", "How will I face him/her?" all these questions start haunting our mind and it becomes quite impossible to sleep with such an overwhelmed state of mind. Guilt is often created when your ethic clashes with your instincts. The feeling of guilt doesn't always mean that you've done something wrong. Someone may have a superstition and if he accidentally does anything that fixed belief he'll feel guilt. It is a typical psychological behavior and may or may not be caused by wrongdoings.

You are absolutely right there. Positive thinking is the essence of wellbeing. However, spirituality can induce positive thinking faster than anything else. With spirituality you'll be almost free from guilt. Believe me, I have been there. As long as you feel guilt your mind can't function properly. It completely blocks your view and the same feelings pops out every now and then. No matter how you try to drive it away it returns, just like a fly hovering over your face. It gives you extreme discomfort. However if you are willing to resolve it in a straight forward way, there is nothing to worry about.

I completely agree to that. Guilt arises when you do something that's wrong according to your own moral values. However, these moral values are imparted by one's own society. Guilt is a mental disturbance that can make you stay awake on bed for hours. It is necessary that we resolve it as soon as we identify it. We all make mistakes. Sometimes we become perfectionists and develop great expectations from ourselves. Perfectionists can't allow themselves to make mistakes and whenever they make mistakes they want to punish themselves harshly for it. A person with a high and rigid moral value is often an easy victim of guilt.

Do what? I was answering your question about guilt. Not sure I get where you are coming from? Are you a counselor or?

Let's try to find the origin of guilt here. You feel guilty because you think you have done something wrong. How did you know it was wrong in the first place? Because you have been taught so. Who taught you so? Of course, your society did. There are aborigines in some African countries who think it's beneficial to use a human skull as pillow. Do you think it's obscene? Well, you may think so because it's taught by your culture. But they feel no qualms about doing it. So there is no question of guilt. So in practice there can be two major way in dealing with the guilt. First, you can try to reverse your mistakes and second, you will have to unlearn all the things that are telling you it's wrong. The second method is difficult and more thorough. However it's not safe because it slowly wipes out the thing called conscience.

Apologizing has its own advantage. It gives you humility. Why do we need humility? We need this first to identify our follies and then to cleanse ourselves in order to make us better. You are right in saying that the best way to resolve this is by undoing it. However sometimes we need to do things that are justified yet harsh. There we must reason with our own mind. Sometimes we may even have to unlearn our ethics or amend it. You were absolutely right about promises. If you make any promise that you can't keep it will certainly lead to guilty feelings. We shouldn't commit to anything unless we're sure on two grounds - it's ethical and it's achievable.

It's the intention that is the most important. If you did something with the best of your intentions and yet it goes all wrong then you may feel bad about it but never guilty. However, if you had any ill intention even in the slightest amount, then you will feel the sharp bite of guilt inside your heart. It's severe and intolerable. It can even take away your sleep. Our main objective in life is to acquire mental peace and true happiness. Guilt goes against that objective, so we must find a way to resolve this problem as soon as it arises. The longer it stays the harder it becomes to reverse.

If you're sincerely sorry for what you've done and if you confess it to yourself and take the vow of never repeating yourself then you shouldn't worry much about the formal apology and all. When I feel guilt, I approach the issue and try to reverse my actions to the best of my capacities. But even before that I sincerely repent and ask for forgiveness to Lord. Then I promise myself that I won't do the same mistake again. Only when all these things were done, I start considering what to do with the mistakes that I have done. Even if my apology is not accepted I don't mind, because I have learned a great many things from my experience and that's what matters the most to me. Every time I resolve the feeling of guilt, I become a better man myself.

I know exactly how you feel. Sometimes it's too hard to take the responsibilities. You know that it's you who's responsible for everything that's happening to you, yet you are not strong enough to accept that fact. Sometimes we find fault in others just to show that they are flawed like ourselves. Since we are imperfect and we know it more than anyone else, we always try to justify our faults by pointing out others' imperfections. This is a common practice among us and often triggered by our inherent defense mechanism that protects us from stress. However, this is only a quick fix and can, in no way, provide any permanent solution to the conflict. So it'd be best if we just start reversing things until we get back the mental peace that we had lost in the process.

Yes of course, you can add me and be my friend. You don't need my permission to send an add request. I will be more than happy to have a friend like you. You mentioned something about the voice that calls upon inside you. This is what we usually call conscience. The conscience is nothing but our early learnings. The education that we get in our childhood builds our moral foundation. They stay with us for longer than we can imagine. It's this moral lessons of childhood that forms the basic structure of the 'inner voice'. However life can be a learning process in itself. During adulthood some of our values change and some get replaced by others. Our conscience sometimes turns to flexibility. However there are people who are quite obsessed about ethics, conscience and stuffs. They are perfectionists and often cause a lot of sufferings for themselves.