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I should have done more.
I should have known.
Why didn't I…?
Guilt doesn't always introduce itself as guilt.
Sometimes it arrives as a question we can't stop asking. Sometimes it's a conversation we replay, changing what we said or imagining what we might have done differently. Sometimes it's simply a nagging sense that, somehow, we should have done more.
Guilt appears frequently in counselling, alongside bereavement, relationship difficulties, family conflict, parenting, trauma and many of life's bigger transitions. Sometimes people recognise it immediately. At other times, it takes a while before we realise that guilt has been sitting quietly underneath everything else.
Which raises an interesting question.
Why are we so good at feeling responsible, even for things we may never have been able to control?
Guilt has a habit of making us look backwards. We revisit what we did, what we didn't do and what we might have done differently. Unlike fear, which often responds to something happening now, guilt can keep an old moment remarkably alive.
Psychologists generally understand guilt as an emotion that arises when we believe we have caused harm, failed in some responsibility or acted against our values (Baumeister et al., 1994; O'Connor et al., 1999).
It is also a deeply relational emotion. We are particularly likely to experience guilt when something involves people who matter to us — partners, children, family members and close friends (Baumeister et al., 1994).
And guilt isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the right amount, it can tell us something important. It can prompt an apology, encourage us to repair a relationship or make us think differently about how we want to behave in the future.
The difficulty begins when guilt stops guiding us and starts punishing us.
One of the most striking aspects of guilt is that its intensity is not always related to actual responsibility. Many people feel guilty for events they could not reasonably have prevented.
Research has shown that some individuals are particularly prone to assuming responsibility for the wellbeing, choices, and actions of others (O'Connor et al., 1999). This can create a pattern in which people blame themselves for outcomes that were never fully within their control.
Relationship breakdown provides one example. A person may spend months replaying every disagreement, missed opportunity, or decision they made, searching for the moment where everything changed.
Parents often do something similar. Many carry guilt about not spending enough time with their children, not making the "right" decisions, or not being as patient as they believe they should have been.
The common thread in many of these experiences is hindsight. Hindsight gives us an unfair advantage over our former selves. We know how the story ends. The person who actually lived through it didn't.
Yet we often judge that earlier version of ourselves using information that only became available afterwards. We look back and see the warning sign because we now know it was a warning sign. We recognise the significance of a conversation because we know what followed it.
From the present, everything can look much clearer than it did while we were actually living through it. Guilt rarely makes that distinction.
This process can become particularly powerful after bereavement. After suicide bereavement, guilt often appears with extraordinary intensity. Many people find themselves repeatedly asking questions that have no clear answers.
Why didn't I see the signs?
Could I have done more?
What if I had said something different?
These questions can be extraordinarily difficult because each contains the possibility that there was something we could have done.
And, strangely, that possibility can sometimes be easier to hold than the alternative.
Because “I should have prevented this” leaves us with a sense — however painful — that the outcome might somehow have been within our control.
Accepting that we loved somebody, would have helped if we'd known how, and still could not control what happened can be much harder.
Research suggests that people bereaved by suicide frequently revisit events leading up to the death, searching for missed opportunities to prevent what happened (Jordan & McIntosh, 2011; Dyregrov et al., 2003).
While understandable, this process can keep people trapped in cycles of self-blame.
The reality is that we rarely have complete knowledge of another person's internal world. Yet guilt often convinces us that we should have known what was unknowable.
For some people, part of living with bereavement involves beginning to recognise that guilt may say as much about the depth of their love and concern as it does about actual responsibility.
It's a small change in language with an enormous difference in meaning. Guilt asks us to look at something we have done. Shame can make us question who we are.
That distinction matters because guilt can sometimes move us towards repair: I did something wrong, so perhaps there is something I can do about it. Shame is more likely to pull us inwards: There is something wrong with me, so perhaps I should hide it.
Research reflects this difference, with shame more strongly associated with withdrawal, secrecy and self-criticism, while guilt can encourage reflection and reparative behaviour (Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney et al., 2007). In therapy, helping clients separate guilt from shame can be an important step towards greater self-understanding and self-compassion.
Not all guilt serves a useful purpose. Sometimes guilt reflects genuine responsibility. Sometimes it reflects impossible expectations.
Many people hold themselves accountable for outcomes that no single person could realistically control. Others judge themselves against standards they would never apply to anybody else.
In these situations, guilt ceases to function as a guide and instead becomes a form of ongoing punishment.
Research has distinguished between realistic guilt, which is proportionate to actual responsibility, and excessive guilt, which is driven by unrealistic expectations and self-blame (Tangney et al., 2007).
Learning to recognise the difference can be transformative.
Perhaps the first question shouldn't always be, “How do I stop feeling guilty?”
Perhaps it's worth asking: What is my guilt actually asking me to take responsibility for? Sometimes there will be an answer.
We may have hurt somebody. We may have acted against our values. There may be something to acknowledge, apologise for or repair.
But sometimes, when we look more carefully, we discover that guilt has been asking us to take responsibility for something that was never entirely ours to control.
Another person's choices.
An illness.
A relationship ending.
Something we couldn't have known at the time.
A decision we made with the information we had then, rather than the information we have now. Those are very different burdens.
Meeting guilt with curiosity rather than immediately accepting its verdict can help us begin to distinguish between them. Compassion-focused approaches suggest that responding to guilt with understanding rather than self-criticism can reduce unnecessary suffering while still allowing us to take responsibility where appropriate (Gilbert, 2010).
Guilt is a deeply human emotion. Sometimes it tells us that we need to take responsibility. Sometimes it tells us how deeply we cared.
And sometimes it asks us to carry responsibility for something that was never ours to control.
Therapy cannot change the past. But it can give us somewhere to look back at it with the information we had then, rather than only the information we have now.
And perhaps to ask one final question: Does this guilt belong to me, or have I simply been carrying it for so long that I've stopped asking?
Baumeister, R.F., Stillwell, A.M. and Heatherton, T.F. (1994) ‘Guilt: An interpersonal approach’, Psychological Bulletin, 115(2), pp. 243-267.
Dyregrov, K., Nordanger, D. and Dyregrov, A. (2003) ‘Predictors of psychosocial distress after suicide, SIDS, and accidents’, Death Studies, 27(2), pp. 143-165.
Gilbert, P. (2010) Compassion Focused Therapy: Distinctive Features. London: Routledge.
Jordan, J.R. and McIntosh, J.L. (eds.) (2011) Grief After Suicide: Understanding the Consequences and Caring for the Survivors. New York: Routledge.
O’Connor, L.E., Berry, J.W. and Weiss, J. (1999) ‘Interpersonal guilt, shame and psychological problems’, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 18(2), pp. 181-203.
Tangney, J.P. and Dearing, R.L. (2002) Shame and Guilt. New York: Guilford Press.
Tangney, J.P., Stuewig, J. and Mashek, D.J. (2007) ‘Moral emotions and moral behavior’, Annual Review of Psychology, 58, pp. 345-372.
Written by: Stuart Walker BSc (Hons), Dip.Couns, MBACP. Integrative Counsellor & Psychotherapist. Me In Time Counselling & Psychotherapy. MSc in Psychotherapy and Counselling at Bath Spa University
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