Guilt is an aversive emotion that—like shame and embarrassment—arises from a self-conscious reflection on one's behavior. It differs from shame by its focus. Guilt involves feeling bad about doing something wrong or harmful or not living up to one's values; shame encompasses the whole of self-worth, making you feel bad about who you are.
People may feel guilt for a variety of reasons, including acts they have committed (or think that they committed), failure to do something they should have done, or having thoughts that they think are morally wrong. Guilt serves many important psychological and social functions. It also has a distinctive physiologic signature.
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What Is Guilt?
When one causes harm to another, guilt is a natural emotional response. Guilt is self-focused but also highly socially relevant: It serves important interpersonal functions by, for example, encouraging the repair of valuable relationships and discouraging acts that could damage them.
Guilt is a highly sophisticated emotion. It relies on such advanced cognitive skills as the capacity for empathy, a sense of morality, self-judgement, and the distinction between your behavior and your identity. Perhaps nowhere is the sophistication more acute than in the enjoyment of guilty pleasures.
But in excess, guilt may needlessly burden those who experience it. Guilt in distinct pathologic forms is a component of depressive disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Despite being a "negative" feeling, guilt can be good. It is thought that the discomfort of guilt is meant to provide strong motivation to apologize, correct, or make up for a wrong, and behave responsibly. Doing so helps preserve social bonds and avoid harm to others.
As with most traits, people naturally differ in the degree to which they feel guilt. Research suggests that guilt-proneness—defined as a tendency to worry about the potential harm one's actions cause—has benefits beyond repair of damage. It may be related to empathy and trustworthiness. It also suggests that those prone to feeling guilt are especially resistant to corruption.
Not necessarily. The degree to which we feel guilt varies, and people with certain personalities may experience relatively little (if any) guilt. A lack of guilt and remorse is a distinguishing feature of psychopathy and a characteristic that experts have used to diagnose the disorder.
Shame and guilt are two closely related concepts. While each has been defined in different ways, guilt is typically linked to some specific harm, real or perceived, and shame involves negative feelings about oneself more generally.
Excessive guilt can be a feature of certain forms of mental illness, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The tendency to feel shame has also been associated with depression, anxiety, and other psychological conditions, often as a secondary effect of diagnosis with a mental disorder. In OCD, guilt and shame drive the cycle of compulsions.
Children begin to feel guilt and may try to make up for guilt-inducing acts between two and three years of age, research suggests. That is when they begin to internalize family rules. However, the experience of guilt and associated behaviors continue developing throughout childhood, as children gain a deeper understanding of others and recognize when they may be transgressing.
Survivor's guilt (or survivor guilt) is an emotional response to being relatively unharmed by a situation compared to others. When one emerges from an accident or a conflict alive while others have died, for example, that person may experience survivor’s guilt—despite not being responsible for the others’ deaths.
Survivor's guilt can manifest in feelings of unworthiness, intrusive thoughts about why you lived while others died, and physical symptoms like insomnia and irritability. Research suggests that 31 to 46 percent of military veterans may develop survivor's guilt, while up to 60 percent of those who survive mass casualty events may do so.
How to Cope With Guilt
Feeling guilty after a misdeed is normal. It is best resolved by apologizing and taking steps to make amends. But many feel guilt that is disproportionate to the harm they have caused. In such cases, it may be necessary to reflect on the reasons for one’s feelings of guilt—perhaps in conversation with a counselor or therapist, especially when an underlying mental health condition may be involved.
Although pervasive feelings of guilt are not necessarily a sign of an underlying mental health condition, they can be. Widely used criteria in the diagnosis of major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder include the presence of regular feelings of excessive or inappropriate guilt. Guilt plays a role in other disorders as well, notably obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety. Guilt may be related to over-assuming responsibility for events or repeatedly thinking about minor failures, even those that are not actually within a person’s control.
Yes. Someone may feel survivor's guilt despite bearing no responsibility for circumstances that have harmed others. People with certain kinds of mental illness may feel unwarranted guilt as part of their condition, such as guilt for having “bad” intrusive thoughts, in the case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
When guilt stems from something you did to someone, apologizing and seeking to avoid repeating your behavior is one clear way to respond and could help you achieve self-forgiveness. But sometimes guilt is unrelated to actual misbehavior or becomes counterproductive. Remedies for unnecessary guilt may include reflecting on factors that were beyond your control, acknowledging what you know now that you didn’t in the past, and considering whether your standards for yourself are too unforgiving.
Yes. When guilt is excessive or undeserved, it may be associated with some mental health conditions; therapy can help address intense guilt. There are evidence-supported treatments for depression, for post-traumatic stress disorder, and for other conditions that involve pronounced feelings of guilt (though therapy may be helpful even in the absence of a diagnosed condition).
When someone tries to instill guilt to get another to behave a certain way or to take responsibility for another's suffering—a form of manipulation—responding with empathy, while also setting limits when necessary, could help in getting out of the guilt trip. That may include acknowledging the importance of what the guilt-tripping person wants while also asking them to express their wants directly and to respect your decisions.