Guilt

Nietzsche said that all of man's old impulses now turned inward on himself in modern men and this is disease, and this is why we feel guilt. I don’t agree with Nietzsche but idea is beautiful J Guilt is not a personal disease but social. Guilt is a way for society to rule the person. And this is a bad way – rules become behavioral patterns and they in turn never change disregarding anything.

That’s not all yet.

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” © Mark Twain

The worst here is that the “dark side” never changes while nobody sees it. Why should it be changed. Because it limits us, limits our abilities. There’s a lot of stuff about guilt in the Internet, I don’t want to repeat it all. What I write about is overcoming the limits. The clue is watching.

You can feel guilt about action or it’s result, furthermore the feelings of guilt are different:

1.       Social – when you feel all the world around you looks at you and blames

2.       Personal – you feel that you did something wrong toward others and you blame yourself

3.       Intermediate – you did something wrong and it affects your relations

So if you feel guilt the first thing you can do is “rating” your guilt

	Action	Result
Social
Personal
Intermediate

Just think about it and find its place in this table – there must be only one. This action has no real meaning except watching the guilt from outside.

Next step is to understand where it limits you. What’d you do without this feeling. Try to imagine this thing causing you to feel guilty never happened.

The last step is treating. The idea of treating is changing your understanding of your guilt in such a way that it doesn’t limit you anymore.

It works like this: recall some case from your life when you felt really happy. You need this state of happiness. Now, while watching your guilt from outside, become happy because of your guilt, just smile like an idiot and bring this state of happiness to the situation. I know it looks stupid, but it works.

Now when you did it (if you did it) you shouldn’t be limited or guided by your bad feelings, otherwise just repeat the trick.

 

P.S.
Same way it works for shame and conscience. Good luck :)