Perpetual Guilt !!

[RikR]

I have been aware of this and it is written in many psychology books....guilt and shame from childhood that is kept alive with current thoughts and behaviors. Dr. Schubiner says guilt is a more powerful force than anger in TMS.

Talking with a young lady I know yesterday brought this to mind. She is from a poor family and she lies about it to her friends. She also steals from stores on occasion and she has IBS.

It is a curious human thing that we develop coping strategies and behaviors in childhood and while they once were beneficial they can be destructive when carried into adulthood.

It is also interesting that many of them are cloaked in denial and repression so we never see them for what they are. And here is the real smoking gun: they cause cognitive dissonance that tenses the body!

What are you thoughts about guilt and especially behaviors that cause unrecognized guilt?

 

[BruceMC]

It is a curious human thing that we develop coping strategies and behaviors in childhood and while they once were beneficial they can be destructive when carried into adulthood.

Not so curious, given the fact that as children, at least for the first 6 years, Rik, we are in a subordinate role to adults who are physically bigger than we are and can very easily control us, even kill us, if they go crazy and start acting out. This occurs during a critical stage in brain development too. During childhood we try to adopt behavior patterns that will, we imagine in our childish naive way, match the expectations of those adults and not "rock the boat". All those early childhood conditioned emotional strategies continue into adulthood because we've accepted and internalized those patterns in the unconscious mind or limbic system or whatever you want to call it back when we really didn't know any better. You notice that in the latest Allen Gordon call-in webinar where Alan detects that the first participant is still crying to his alcoholic mom for the attention he'd never gotten as a child. I think Alan was very perceptive when he detected the huge reservoir of rage beneath the young salesman's emotionally repressive coping style, always trying to measure up to other people's expectations, trying over and over again to get his mom to accept him as a separate individual with emotional needs of his own. When the young man was able to feel and articulate his anger at his mom's indifference, he achieved a sudden breakthrough to full adulthood.

You obviously can overcome that early childhood conditioning; however, it certainly does require a lot of deep, painful work.

 

[Stella]

I am trying to have a better understanding of guilt. I feel like I have woven a cloak that I constantly have wrapped around me made of guilt. RikR is Schubiner's comment about guilt in his book? I looked at his website/blogs but did not find anything real helpful. Most of my guilt is around my aging parents.

I feel guilty when they spend all day at the hospital and I am not with them. I must be a bad daughter. I feel guilty when they try to order their prescriptions and they get screwed up. I feel guilty when my Mother tries to pay her bill and she is all confused. I feel guilty if I don't visit them a certain number of times each week. Or call a certain number of times each week. I feel guilty when my Mother calls crying because she is depressed. I feel guilty because they are not happy with where they are living. I feel guilty because the relationship between my siblings is not good making my parents unhappy. I feel guilt because at times I wish they were dead. My life would be so much easier. On and On and On.

Intellectually I know I should not feel all this guilt (guilt is man made) but I can't figure out how to get rid of it or what to do with it. I have journaled about all the guilt. I would like to know how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, i.e. guilt, anger, perfectionism, worry. I know guilt plays a major role in my pain and depression. I am able to manage both fairly well by journaling. I can definitely relate to the man talking to Allen Gordon in the above example based on my experience with my Mother.

What can I read to get educated about guilt? I started a TMS Support group in my city. I would like to be more knowledgeable on this topic (perfectionism at work here)

 

[BruceMC]

But isn't the underlying psychological tension behind the generation of TMS pain symptoms often based on a conflict between the internal child (id) and the internal parent (superego)? One of the typical accusations the internal parent makes against the internal child is that it hasn't done enough, isn't good enough, is, in a word, unworthy of parental approval (i.e. love). That certainly sounds like guilt to me, and that guilt has to make the internal child very angry, especially when that sort of id-superego conflict has been internalized so that it goes on throughout a lifetime.

 

[Forest]

From a TMS perspective, and maybe even the growth perspective, it isn't the feeling, but the guilt about the feeling that is the problem.

For many of Eric Sherman's patients in Pathways to Pain Relief, real progress came from truly incorporating the idea that a feeling is just a private, personal internal experience, and that it is completely normal to both love and hate people in their life. In fact, the truly dangerous sign is when someone claims to only have love to the people close to them, rather then accepting the negative feelings which naturally arise.

A feeling does not mean action. If we have extremely intense anger at our parents, we think that it means we do not love them, and will do something terrible to them. This is why we feel guilty about having intense emotions. Once we learn that it is okay, and in fact normal, to have this anger the guilt will tend to fade away. Truly accepting our emotions happens when we no longer feel guilty about having them.

 

[Stella]

Thanks all ....very helpful.