Feeling guilty?

When a person complains about constant nightmares about a person recently dead, suspicion replaces sympathy, especially if you know the relationship.

Guilt is a fascinating emotion. Basically it means you’ve done something wrong and have neither atoned for it nor been punished for it. It also seems to me that it’s quite crippling.

Why would anyone want to live with guilt? I submit (she said in her finest Captain Kirk voice) that it’s fear of the punishment that makes people keep the guilt inside. Or they are afraid of losing face (being viewed as a lesser person) if they admit to what they did.

Okay, if you robbed a bank or killed someone, you have two choices to rid yourself of guilt — turn yourself in, or spend the rest of your life doing good for people without reward.

But if the sin wasn’t illegal, just immoral, then accept that it was done, try to never do it again in your life, and try to make amends with any people who were hurt by you.

Sometimes guilt surfaces as anger or aggression. Then you need to recognize the cause. If you don’t, you will only mitigate the situation, and that will make you feel even more guilty.

Above all, admit that you did wrong!

Remember the phrase ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life’; determine to not do whatever it is you do that makes you guilty, and start afresh.

• copyright Bonnie-Jean Rohner, 2013