Feeling Good: Overcome Depression and Anxiety with Proven Techniques

by David D. Burns

Even if your guilt is unhealthy and based on distortion, once you begin to feel guilty, you may become trapped in an illusion that makes the guilt appear valid. Such illusions can be powerful and convincing. You reason: 1. I feel guilty and worthy of condemnation. This means I’ve been bad. 2. Since I’m bad, I deserve to suffer. Thus, your guilt convinces you of your badness and leads to further guilt. This cognitive-emotional connection locks your thoughts and feelings into each other. You end up trapped in a circular system which I call the “guilt cycle.” Emotional reasoning fuels this cycle. You automatically assume that because you’re feeling guilty, you must have fallen short in some way and that you deserve to suffer. You reason, “I feel bad, therefore I must be bad.” This is irrational because your self-loathing does not necessarily prove that you did anything wrong. Your guilt just reflects the fact that you believe you behaved badly. This might be the case, but it often is not. For example, children are frequently punished inappropriately when parents are feeling tired and irritable and misinterpret their behavior. Under these conditions, the poor child’s guilt obviously does not prove he or she did anything wrong.