Guilt: A Learned Emotion and its Context

Guilt as the Fundamental Origin of the Need for Forgiveness

Forgiveness, whether toward ourselves or others, does not arise in a vacuum.

It is born out of the need to resolve a deeply uncomfortable and often corrosive emotion: guilt.

Guilt is the foundation upon which the scaffolding of resentment, resentment and the need for reparation is built.

It is the feeling of having committed a mistake, a fault or a transgression that has generated a moral "debt".

It is this feeling of having done something "wrong" that places us at the pole of fear and separation, and distances us from love and inner peace.

The trinity of the ego, as described by Kenneth Wapnick, is made up of fear, guilt and shame.

In order to effectively address forgiveness, it is critical to first understand the nature and origin of guilt, the emotion that makes it necessary.

A Learned Emotion, not Innate in the Human Being

One of the most liberating understandings about guilt is that, unlike primal emotions such as fear or anger that seem to be hardwired into our reptilian brain as survival mechanisms, guilt is a learned emotion.

We are not born feeling guilty; we learn to feel this way through our interaction with our social and cultural environment.

This emotion is the product of our belief system, a complex web of rules, mandates and values that we have internalized throughout our lives.

These rules come from multiple sources: our family, society, religion, education and culture in general.

We learn from a very young age to distinguish between what is "right" and what is "wrong" according to these external codes, and guilt is the social control mechanism that alerts us when we deviate from the norm.

The Guilt Mechanism: The Transgression of the Internal Norm

Guilt is activated within us through a process of self-evaluation.

We possess a kind of internal "meter", a judge that constantly compares our actions, thoughts and feelings with the moral code we have adopted.

This code is based on our value system. Guilt arises at the precise moment when we perceive that we, or someone else, have transgressed one of these internalized norms or mandates.

It is the feeling that accompanies the belief that we have moved from the side of "right" to the side of "wrong," even if only slightly.

It is, in essence, a moral judgment we make about a behavior.

Therefore, the intensity of the guilt we feel does not depend so much on the action itself, but on the importance we attach to the norm we believe we have violated.

The Emotional Ecosystem Surrounding Guilt

Guilt rarely presents itself as an isolated emotion. Rather, it acts as the center of a mutually reinforcing ecosystem of negative feelings and moods.

When we feel guilt, it is very common for us to also experience shame, which is the feeling that not only have we done something wrong, but that we are bad.

Guilt towards others often manifests as resentment, anger or rage, and can become entrenched in a state of long-lasting resentme