On Guilt Versus Regret

Guilt is defined as, 

“an awareness of having done wrong or committed a crime, accompanied by feelings.”

 “I’d define it more as,

“the perception of having done something wrong with accompanying feelings…it may be appropriate or inappropriate.”

Regret is defined as,

“sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment.”

I’d define it more with,

“realistic mild feelings of sadness associated with a realistic evalutation of something done or not done.”

We all make mistakes.  We all sin.  We all do wrong.  It’s inescapable.  If you don’t feel or believe that, you’re a psychopath.  But for the rest of us, we feel it.  Sometimes as an adaptive regret, sometimes, as maladaptive guilt.  Not to say that feelings of guilt cannot sometimes be adaptive, because they can.  Only to the extent to which they result in a change in future behavior.  You can only learn from your past experiences and make appropriate adjustments. 

And adaptive way of looking at things would be,

“I did wrong.  I shouldn’t have hit her.  I will do everything I can to avoid doing anything like that again.”

A maladaptive way of looking at things would be,

“I’m such an ass.  I hate myself.  I shouldn’t have hit her.  I hate myself.”

There’s nothing truly adaptive in that statement.  There is no future orientation.  It serves no purpose.  It is useless.  It can often end up being manipulative,

“Honey, I hate myself.  I treated you badly.  I know I’m an ass.”

And the response,

“That’s okay.  I know you were just angry.  I shouldn’t have made you so angry.”

So, you can guess what happens next in this scenario.  Completely predictable.  He beats up on her again.  He says he feels like an “ass” and she forgives him.  Now lets see the difference with regret.

“I’m sorry I hit you.  I feel very badly about that.  I’m going to get some help.  I know I have an anger problem.  I think we both need counseling too.  Let’s get counseling.  I’m going to get counseling for myself too.”

Now, it’s not just the words.  It’s the actually following through on the words that demonstrates that genuine regret is felt.  If the words are not followed through on, it is a manipulation.  Irrelevant, and maladaptive pattern that will be unlikely to change.

So, the moral of the story is, that when you do something wrong, you learn from it.  You feel some sadness about what you did, and you look forward.  You think to yourself that in the future you will handle a similar situation in a different way.  You have asked God for forgiveness, and you trust that He has given it.  You realize that you may fail, but you are ever committed to changing and improving.  That’s the best we can do, and no better.

Hindsight is 20-20 and Guilt

I’ll start out with combat veterans to illustrate a point.  Some combat veterans will come to feel intense feelings of guilt about something that they did or didn’t do while in combat conditions. 

“My buddy was about a foot away from me when he was shot.  I should have done something.”

“There was shooting all over.  A guy was running towards us.  I yelled for him to stop, but he kept running toward us.  I shot him.  I later went out and looked and it was a 12-year-old boy who was unarmed.”

“I commanded my men to go on patrol that day.  Half of them got killed.  I should have known better.  It’s all my fault.  People died because of my mistakes.”

Research shows that people generally make the best decisions they can at the time with the information that they have.  After the outcome is seen, people will often come to believe that they should have forseen the negative outcome.  They look back and judge themselves based on what they know NOW, not based on what they knew THEN.  Most of the time, intense feelings of guilt involve a distortion of responsibility.  It fails to take into account actions of others and unpredictable occurences.  So, the reality is that a person often bears some degree of responsibility, but they take 100% responsibility.  Their actual degree of responsibility may be more like 30%, or some other percentage, but it is rarely truly 100%.

I’m all for taking responsibility, but this intense guilt involving a distortion serves no useful purpose for a person.  If you’re a Christian, you ask for God’s forgiveness.  The hardest part for folks is often forgiving themselves.  If you’re a Christian, you have no right to judge yourself.  That’s God’s job.  Ask for forgiveness, and trust.  It’s really…really…hard sometimes I know.  But that’s the place you want to get to with your guilt.

So, when thinking about guilt you want to truly consider what you knew THEN, not NOW.  The fact that you feel intensely guilty implies that you learned something after the fact that you did not know at the time.  So, it’s good that you know that now.  All you can do is take what you have learned and go forward.  Learn from what happened.  That serves a purpose.  Intense guilt does not…