To Have Regret, Remorse, and Guilt

"To err is human, to forgive is divine."

The statement is attributed to Alexander Pope but might be of ancient origin. The essence of it is that a human being is not perfect. There is no one, whether a saint or a sinner, who does not regret having done something in the past. The feelings of regret, remorse, and guilt are basically the same; the difference is only of degree. They are all related to one's conscience and they always pertain to the past.

This brings us to the question as to what is conscience. There is no generally accepted definition of conscience, but it supposes the existence of some faculty that produces feelings of approval or disapproval of one's own actions. In a sense it is a higher self-judging the lower one. The feelings of approval create no problems but those of disapproval last long, sometimes, even lifelong. It is here that the degree comes into play and determines the intensity of the prick of the conscience.

Strangely enough these feelings do not necessarily relate only to things actually done but also to things not done that should or could have been done. This is especially so in the case of human relationships; the more intimate the relationship, the stronger is the feeling of remorse or guilt. It is an unfortunate fact of human nature that the importance of someone or something is felt more acutely in the absence, especially so when it has an element of finality.

Conscience is related to the faculty of discrimination, which in turn is an attribute of the consciousness. It is the discrimination between right and wrong according to one's inner beliefs that depend on the conditioning of the mind. This conditioning is a result of external factors like religion, upbringing, and environment. Therefore the concept of right and wrong varies in individuals covering an incredibly wide range. The feelings of remorse and guilt in different people may vary from nonexistent to overwhelming depending on the nature of their conscience.

The main problem related to these feelings is how to overcome them. Since they relate to past actions or lack thereof, it is impossible to remove the root cause. The only thing that one can do is to learn from the error and avoid that kind of behavior in future. But in some cases even that may not be an option. Take for example, the remorse of a parent for having done (or not done) things to a child. The opportunity for doing or not doing those things is lost forever. So what is one to do?

This is where the significance of the above quotation comes in. We have to realize the fact that no one is perfect; everyone makes a mistake sometime or other. Forgiving is an act that takes away the effect of the mistake for both, the subject and object. It is divine, not in any religious sense but in the sense of purification of the Self. When it comes to forgiveness, the most difficult thing to do is to forgive oneself. The difficulty arises precisely because of the fundamental cause of all problems: the subject-object duality. In this case the offender and the offended are one, even though in the initial act the offended was another; in the context of remorse and guilt that offended person is no longer in the picture.  Forgiving is not forgetting either. It is a realization of the fact that there is no future in the past and, therefore, brooding over the past is futile. -Birdy

There is a Difference between Guilt and Shame

 One involves feelings about oneself; the other depends upon empathy for others. 

Although many people use these two words interchangeably, from a psychological perspective, they actually refer to different experiences. Guilt and shame sometimes go hand in hand; the same action may give rise to feelings of both shame and guilt, where the former reflects how we feel about ourselves and the latter involves awareness that our actions have injured someone else. In other words, shame relates to self, guilt to others. I think it's useful to preserve this distinction, even though the dictionary definitions often blur it:

Guilt: a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.

Shame: the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.

According to Dictionary.com,   [http://www.dictionary.com/] then, guilt involves the awareness of having done something wrong; it arises from our actions (even if it might be one that occurs in fantasy). Shame may result from the awareness of guilt but apparently is not the same thing as guilt. It's a painful feeling about how we appear to others (and to ourselves) and doesn't necessarily depend on our having done anything. I find this a little confusing but an example might help. I once said something hurtful to a friend, and on some level, I intended it to be hurtful. Afterward, I felt guilty because I could see that I had hurt my friend. More painfully, I also felt ashamed that I was the sort of person who would behave that way. Guilt arose as a result of inflicting pain on somebody else; I felt shame in relation to myself.

As I said before, in everyday language people tend to use these words more or less interchangeably; the distinction I'm trying to clarify is important and useful. Many people crippled by shame have very little capacity to feel guilt, for example. In order to feel guilt about the harm you may have done to somebody else, you must recognize him or her as a distinct individual, to begin with. Thus a person who struggles with separation and merger issues might not feel true guilt even if he or she were to use that word to describe a feeling. Many people who display narcissistic behavior often suffer from profound feelings of shame but have little authentic concern for other people; they don't tend to feel genuinely guilty. The lack of empathy to be found in narcissistic personality disorder makes real guilt unlikely since guilt depends upon the ability to intuit how someone else might feel.

When shame is especially pervasive (what I refer to as core or basic shame), it usually precludes feelings of genuine concern and guilt from developing; the sense of being damaged is so powerful and painful that it crowds out feeling for anyone else. In such cases, idealization often comes into play: other people are then viewed as perfect, the lucky ones who have the ideal shame-free life we crave; powerful envy may be the (unconscious) result. In those cases, we might take pleasure in hurting the person we envy rather than feeling guilty about it.

In others words, core shame reflects early psychological damage that impedes growth; the capacity to feel guilt depends upon that psychological growth and could be seen as emotional progress. If the early environment is "good enough," we develop a reliable sense of self that in turn enables us to view other people as separate and to feel concern for them. Although the experience of guilt is painful, our ability to recognize that our own actions may have hurt someone, to empathize with that person's pain and to feel remorse for having caused it are all signs of emotional health.  –Birdy