«Great rest is to be free of guilt. »Marco Tulio Cicero
In our culture, guilt is a feeling that is very commonly experienced, it generates emotional anguish and discomfort due to the awareness of having carried out actions that cause harm to someone else.
From a cognitive point of view, guilt is an emotion that people experience because they are convinced that they have caused harm. In cognitive theory, thoughts cause emotions, guilt stems from the idea of being responsible for someone else's misfortune. It may be the case of people who constantly feel unjustified guilt due to the misinterpretation of their actions, These people tend to suffer a lot and feel guilty constantly without real reasons or without real guilt for what happened, in these cases, the feelings of guilt are dysfunctional.
Guilt can have benefits like protecting our relationships. Guilt feelings occur mostly in relationships with others, so it is like an alarm for us to identify the correct action to take and therefore helps to maintain good relationships with others.
According to statistics, a week we experience from 3 to 10 hours of feelings of guilt, this can be reduced through actions, but if it is not reduced, it becomes like an alarm that does not go off and generates discomfort, prevents concentration and tranquility, That is why it is recommended to carry out actions that resolve these feelings, for example apologizing, although this seems very simple, it is not always so, because it is important to know how to apologize in an assertive way.
There are many types of guilt, we can feel guilty for something we have done, for something we wanted to do and could not, for something we thought we did, for not having helped someone enough, for failing our moral codes, or for being better than other people.
One downside of guilt is that it avoids thinking clearlyBecause much of our attention can focus on this rather than the other demands of life. In addition, guilt generates self-destructive impulses in some people, as it can have a search effect for self-punishment to release the feeling of remorse.
Guilt has the negative effect of generating estrangement towards the people who have been harmed, Because being close to them works as a reminder, you can also withdraw to scenarios where actions have been carried out that have made us feel guilty.
To reduce feelings of guilt, it is important to accept the fact that we performed a certain action that already happened, apologize, and find a way to avoid committing the same act in the future.. Due to our natural tendency toward self-centeredness, we assume that others place more importance on our thoughts and actions than they actually do, so we shouldn't be too harsh on ourselves either.
In cognitive therapy, treatment for people with chronic feelings of unwarranted guilt often consists of teaching people to get rid of their "automatic thoughts" that they have caused others suffering, too. They are taught to recognize their "dysfunctional attitudes" so that they recognize when they are undergoing such mental processes as catastrophizing or over-generalizing.
It is important to learn from our behaviors and use guilt to learn from experience, the idea is to be less likely to incur the same actions in the future. Thus, guilt can help us to correct mistakes and learn to modify certain behaviors to feel more comfortable with ourselves.
Sources:
-http: //www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201411/10-surprising-facts-about-guilt
-http: //www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201208/the-definitive-guide-guilt
-http: //www.beyondintractability.org/essay/guilt-shame
-http: //psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/11/27/5-tips-for-dealing-with-guilt/
-http: //datingtips.match.com/deal-guilt-after-cheating-13197052.html