Dr. Mort Orman here and this week, I’d like to share some thoughts with you about guilt, regrets and verbal self-flagellation.
I recently held a one-day stress elimination workshop in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and questions related to these three problems were raised by participants several times during the day.
In this article, I’m going to share some of my thoughts about guilt. Then, in my next two articles, I’ll address the other two topics individually, even though all three are closely related.
The Anatomy Of Human Guilt
Guilt is an emotion that is intimately related to both Anger and Sadness.
Guilt is related to Anger because both of these emotions arise from the same basic pattern of thinking:
- Someone (or something) did something “bad” or “wrong.”
- Someone was hurt, harmed, or otherwise negatively impacted.
- Someone (or something) was unilaterally responsible or to blame for #1 and #2 above.
When we are angry, it is usually someone or something other than ourselves who we believe is unilaterally responsible or to blame for hurting, harming or negatively affecting someone else.
On the other hand, when we feel guilty, the finger of unilateral blame shifts 180 degrees, to where it is now pointing directly at us. This usually causes us to feel Sad, because we are now filled with Remorse or Shame for having done something bad or wrong that hurt others.
With both of these very common emotions (Anger and Guilt), we are still seeing the world from a nearly 100% polarized “black or white” causal frame.
This is the essence of both Anger and Guilt, and it is also the case that when we are feeling either of these two emotions strongly, we are not usually aware of how polarized and totally one-sided our thinking has become.
The Nature Of True Causality
One of the major unrecognized sources of stress in our lives is that, as both individuals and societies, we don’t understand the true nature of causality.
We have been conditioned to view causality in very linear, simplistic, narrowly defined ways.
For example, we’ve been taught to believe that coronary artery heart disease (the process that leads to angina and heart attacks) is caused mainly by genetics, by our diet, and by our blood cholesterol levels.
But this is a very simplistic, narrow way of understanding true causality.
In truth, there are more than 15 different causes of coronary artery heart disease, and these are only the ones we’ve been able to identify so far. There are probably others that still await future discovery.
It was also once thought that when young children develop severe emotional or psychological problems, therapy should be directed at “fixing” what is “wrong with the child.”
Now, however, it is well understood that you also have to look at the roles being played by parents, by the extended family, by the child’s friends and peer groups, by the local community and even the culture and larger society as a whole.
Thus, if you truly want to understand what causes most things to happen in life, you have to adopt a much broader, multi-dimensional, multi-causal perspective.
You Don’t Want To Hear This…
So far, you’re probably nodding you head in agreement with most of what I’ve been saying.
But when you connect the dots, and put the two pieces of information I’ve just revealed together, you come to a conclusion that most of you don’t really want to hear.
That’s because the conclusion is this:
WHENEVER YOU ARE FEELING ANGRY OR GUILTY…YOU ARE EITHER PARTLY OR COMPLETELY FULL OF BULLSH*T
“Did he really say that?”…yes I did.
Was it too harsh? Perhaps it was.
Is it true? Yes it is.
And do you need to hear it? Only if you’re interested in reducing your anger and getting rid of your guilt.
“The Truth Will Set You Free”
You see, whenever we are feeling either angry or guilty, we have consciously or unconsciously assumed that someone or something was unilaterally to blame for whether may have happened to upset us.
But is unilateral causality ever really possible?
If you really tell the truth, the answer is no.
It’s just an illusion we are responding to emotionally.
The real truth is that multiple causes are almost always at play.
And when you expand your perspective to identify some of these additional causes, your internal theory of unilateral blame will disintegrate immediately.
And so will your very strong feelings of anger and guilt, which owe their existence to these distorted, incorrect, one-sided ways of looking at causality.
To your health, happiness and success,
Dr. Mort Orman, M.D., International Speaker, Author And Founder Of The Stress Mastery Academy | http://DocOrman.com
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