Dear Natie:

Welcome back! To answer your question: I don’t think that it is a good idea for you to apologize yet again because (1) although apologizing yet again may give you a quick relief from your guilt, the relief will not last long, and (2), like you said, it may “end up hurting them more“, (assuming all of the people you think you hurt, really did hurt because of you).

On June 7 this year, more than half a year ago, I wrote to you in your other thread: “Guilt, like any other emotion, has a purpose. Its purpose is to motivate a person to correct one’s behavior, and in so doing,  to become a better person- through speech.. and through action… To suffer guilt, to express it on and on and on without any practical use is a form of self- indulgence..  of the masochistic type“. Half a year later, there it is, the same guilt.

Psychology Today/ The Workings of Persecutory Guilt (Sept 2019): “Persecutory guilt is a form of self-inflicted punishment that results from a harsh and vindictive conscience. Aggression and hostility is turned against the self. Symptoms of this self-inflicted guilt include anxiety, depression and psychosomatic symptoms… A person is haunted by unconscious guilt that moves them to suffer and act against their own interests… This type of self-guilt is a way of seeking out punishment from which one then draws unconscious pleasure“-

– do you think that there is any truth to this, as far as your guilt goes?

anita