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

Dear Natie:

I brought an older thread of yours (different account), “ex wants another try”, to the first page of list of topics and will reply further tomorrow.

anita

Dear Natie:

July 2, 2021: “I am the eldest child and so if I got a bad grade at school my mom would be really sad and I felt like I had to write a letter to her to apologise“-  I used to feel so very disturbed and guilty when my mother looked really sad, or upset, or angry (and she often was these things). I wanted to make her feel better right away, and I would have done anything and everything to make her happy… I would have climbed the tallest mountain to make it happen, but there was no mountain to climb. I tried in the small ways a child tries.. and I failed. I used to dream about becoming rich and famous and making her very rich… I thought that big, flashy things will make her happy

“Or when my siblings were growing up, I was always up till now, uptight and worried that if they stayed out all night, they will cause problems at home, so I kept calling and chasing them and felt it in my bones because if I didn’t there will be a fight at the house between my parents”- I remember just that one fight between my parents (they divorced when I was about 6). It was dark and there was screaming and yelling and threats and commotion. It was the scariest night of my 6-years of life.

I lived with guilt for decades: as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. Guilt ruined so much of my life, I missed so much that others got to experience: a sense of togetherness with others; times of belonging, of love and happiness.

If you want to talk more about guilt, if you can relate to what I wrote here, please let me know. Otherwise, like I wrote before: I do wish you well, dear Natie!

anita