When we use depression as an excuse

We often use depression as an excuse for not doing something we don’t want to do or afraid to do. When someone suggests that we go ahead and do whatever we are trying to avoid, we usually agree and say, “I think you’re right, but I’m just to upset right now to do it.” For example, your company is downsizing and you lose a good job through no fault of your own. You tell me what happened and how depressed you are. I try not to pay much attention to your depressing. Instead, I say, “I know it’s hard, but don’t sit around; get out your resume.”

But you are depressing for a good reason. You have just been laid off and feel rejected, even though it was not your fault. You are afraid of another rejection, of facing the fact that there may be no good jobs for you at your age and with your experience. As painful as depressing is, it’s less painful at this time than looking for job and getting rejected again and again.

William Glasser, Choice Theory

Murder Confession Tattoo

A Los Angeles gang member was convicted of murder because he had his crime tattooed on his chest. Seven years after the 2004 killing, the 25-year-old was arrested for another crime. That’s when a police officer noticed the scene inscribed on the man’s torso. It included a lifeless body and the outline of a liquor store. A law enforcement officer went into the man’s cell, pretending to be another member of the same gang. The confession given to the undercover cop led to the man’s conviction on first-degree murder charges.

Each of us has secrets hidden underneath carefully guarded masks. Whether or not we wear them as tattoos, their itch reminds us of how they have impacted our lives.

Stephen Goforth

Wallowing in Guilt

No one heaps guilt on themselves when they don't have to do so. Right? Actually, there is much to gain from wallowing in false guilt.

* You gain control over others. You are telling others to orient themselves around your need for 'restoration.'

* Removes responsibility from your shoulders. They can’t expect much from you when you are broken and bleeding, can they?

* You get attention. "Look at me! Don't pay attention to others. Focus on me! See how guilty I am?"

* Get others to pump you up. "I'm so bad." "Oh no, you're a wonderful person.."

* You do for yourself what you wish others would do to you. "I wish other people would punish me because I don't feel worthy of good things happening to me."

* You avoid resentment. It’s easier to admit guilt rather than resentment. What you’d like to do to someone else (punish them) you do to yourself.

* You may have an inadequate view of God. To hang on to your guilt, you distort the truth of forgiveness.

* You may have false guilt because of expectations. You could be trying to live up to everyone’s expectations-and, of course, you can’t. Or you might be trying to live up to a peer group’s expectations.

* You may have a fear of repeating a wrong or the fear of being tempted toward it.

* You may be following some unhealthy teaching. You may have been taught to feel bad over wrongs you’ve committed—forever.

* Your family has been inconsistent in forgiving you and only showed you conditional love.

* You are trying to fulfill unhelpful injunctions you heard from people in childhood. Others may have tried to motivate you by guilt by getting you to focus on the negative aspects of yourself.

* You could be covering up feelings of anger with feelings of guilt. Perhaps you are not making a distinction between guilt and disappointment.

* And finally, you may have done something wrong and are experiencing true guilt but want to avoid dealing with it.

Stephen Goforth

Someone else’s umbrella

Most of us want a dictator—albeit a benevolent one—so we can pass the buck, so we can say, "You made me do that. It’s not my fault." But we can’t spend our lives hanging out under someone else’s umbrella and then complain that we’re getting wet. 

Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice

Guilt v Shame Culture

In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad. 

David Brooks writing in the New York Times

Guilt and Blame

No one in a relationship problem is ever totally innocent or totally guilty. With this belief, people can always keep the door open to their own faults without engaging in excessive, guilty-provoking self incrimination. Holding back anger for even a short time and engaging in self-analysis in private has the effect of tempering the expression of anger. Confession alters our goals from changing others to changing the relationship. 

Mark Cosgrove, Counseling for Anger

Who can you trust?

A person’s ability to anticipate the guilt they will feel—even before the act takes place—is an indicator of trustworthiness. That’s according to University of Chicago researchers who call it “guilt proneness.” They say this is a positive trait, not the same as feeling guilty. Those who possess it are less likely to exploit others for personal gain. Read about the study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Stephen Goforth

A Peaceful Mind

 Frequently, I find that people who are lacking in inner peace are victims of a self-punishment mechanism. At some time in their experience, they have committed a sin and the sense of guilt haunts them. They have sincerely sought Divine forgiveness, and the good Lord will always forgive anyone who asks Him and who means it. However, there is a curious quirk within the human mind whereby sometimes an individual will not forgive himself. 

He feels that he deserves punishment and therefore is constantly anticipating that punishment. As a result he live in a constant apprehension that something is going to happen. In order to find peace under these circumstances, he must increase the intensity of this activity. He feels that hard work will give him some release from his sense of guilt… Peace of mind under such circumstances is available by yielding the guilt as well as the tension it produces to the healing therapy of Christ. 

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

Moral Hypocrisy

It pays to be wary of those who are the quickest and loudest in condemning the moral failings of others – the chances are that moral preachers are as guilty themselves, but take a far lighter view of their own transgressions. In one study, researchers found that people rated the exact same selfish behaviour (giving themselves the quicker and easier of two experimental tasks on offer) as being far less fair when perpetuated by others. Similarly, there is a long-studied phenomenon known as actor-observer asymmetry, which in part describes our tendency to attribute other people’s bad deeds, such as our partner’s infidelities, to their character, while attributing the same deeds performed by ourselves to the situation at hand. These self-serving double standards could even explain the common feeling that incivility is on the increase – recent research shows that we view the same acts of rudeness far more harshly when they are committed by strangers than by our friends or ourselves.

Christian Jarrett writing in The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest

Digital Hoarding

I have a confession: there are 20,577 unread emails in my inbox, 31,803 photos on my phone and 18 browser tabs currently open on my laptop. Digital clutter has invaded my life and I have no idea what to do with it.

Emerging research on digital hoarding – a reluctance to get rid of the digital clutter we accumulate through our work and personal lives – suggests that it can make us feel just as stressed and overwhelmed as physical clutter. Not to mention the cybersecurity problems it can cause for individuals and businesses and the way it makes finding that one email you need sometimes seem impossible.

Instead of berating ourselves for having too many unread emails or taking too many selfies, perhaps we’d be better off setting aside time to regain control of our digital clutter – one virtual photo album at a time.

Kelly Oakes writing for the BBC 

5 internal contributions to anger

1-Self-esteem

People who try to be self-sufficient are easily frustrated and angered when they see evidence of their dependence on others. They get angry at themselves for needing others and they get angry at other people for “keeping” them in this weakness.

2-Desire for Power in Relationships

Some people feel threatened by the need to give up power in love relationships. For instance, a batterer may use anger to intimidate others in a quest for power. It’s a way to caution the abused person against using their own power. To avoid rousing their anger, spouses end up tiptoeing around the other to avoid confrontation because the price is too high to pay.

3-Desire to be Perfect

Unrealistic standards must be met for the person to feel worthwhile and accepted.

Whenever there is a perceived loss of perfection, the person becomes depressed (angry with themselves) for small failures. The student who gets a B-plus instead of an A, etc. These people also set up high standards for others to achieve and are quickly judgmental. They are hurt by others who do not join them in the quest for perfection. Even though they may be chronic confessors, but growth comes slow because they don’t want to accept their limitations.

4-Guilt

Unresolved guilt can lead to irritability. People have trouble admitting their faults.

5-Rejection

Rejection leaves people feeling hurt and worthless. When significant others disdain our contributions or act as if we are inferior and unimportant we bolster self-esteem by rejecting others ourselves, using the weapons of anger and hostility.  Since it does not heal the relationship or self-esteem, it is a temporary fix. 

Dealing with False Guilt

Here are 4 options when dealing with false guilt.

1. Remove the Source of Guilt (the conscience)
This may only desensitize us to actual wrongs and could lead to a denial of real evil in our lives.

2. Emphasize Self-Potential
This fails to address the underlying problems and ignores any real wrongs.

3. Emphasize Punishment
This can lead to feeling guilt when caught, ignoring legitimate conviction.

4. Emphasize Forgiveness
If the guilt is false, there lacks a basis for forgiveness and the person may feel they haven’t suffered enough.

Shame cuts you down to size

Shame is universal, but the messages and expectations that drive shame are organized by gender. These feminine and masculine norms are the foundation of shame triggers, and here's why: If women want to play by the rules, they need to be sweet, thin, and pretty, stay quiet, be perfect moms and wives, and not own their power. One move outside of these expectations and BAM! The shame web closes in. Men, on the other hand, need to stop feeling, start earning, put everything in their place, and climb their way to the top or die trying. Push open the lid of your box to grab a breath of air, or slide that curtain back a bit to see what's going on, and BAM! Shame cuts you down to size.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Trusting Ourselves to Live Without Self-Made Barriers

My weekend of "sleeping" on the decision of whether to apply for a potentially exciting job evolved into a familiar frenzy of circular, useless thought and internal list-making, as well as reading everything I could get my hands on, including a book one of my journalism professors gave me, titled "Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes," which I have yet to finish for good reason.

I initially plunged into the book, knowing my super-speedy reading skills would yield another "achievement" of having yet another book to bring up at parties or feel particularly good about myself when I can tell others, "Yeah, I've read that," as if some book fairy was waiting on the last page to plant a huge gold star on my forehead for being on the fast track to personal enlightenment. There I go again. Fast as I can. Trying to get to the finish line before anyone knows I'm in the race. But something slowed me down. Something made me stop trying to rush through a book intended to help me enjoy, or at least cope, with life's gentle lulls.

Amid my mental commotion, I managed to pick up another book by Geneen Roth, "Women Food and God." That one was impossible NOT to read in about three hours - again, for good reason. It was a book I needed to read ten years ago. And it led to a few realizations:

The constant drive I feel to keep climbing whatever ladder happens to be in front of me at the moment has a lot to do with the fact that weight loss has somehow programmed to me think that PROGRESS is actually REPAIR for a person I've always been convinced is broken. I'm not skinny enough, so I "fix" myself with a rigid diet. I'm not smart enough, so I digest information at every possible opportunity to seem less inadequate. I haven't accomplished enough, so I keep seeking professional outlets for which to prove to a judgmental world that I'm aware of my shortcomings and want to overcome them.

This self-inflicted rat race has never been about personal growth; it was always about internal repair. And these moments of murky transition scream to my compulsions, saying, "Wait, there is no way that YOU could be good enough to slow down. You've never been good enough. What makes you think you are now? Keep pushing. Keep working. Keep killing yourself to prove you have value. It's the only way."

Any sort of educational, professional or personal structure I've ever maintained in my life was an excuse to keep a cage around Broken Me. I adhere to strict, torturous diets and workout plans because if I don't, Broken Me (who obviously can't be trusted) will screw up and gain weight. I maintain impossibly difficult schedules because Broken Me would waste her life away if left unattended. I've spent my life devaluing everything about myself in order to justify having my own predetermined life track. I've also convinced myself that if I don't spend a life obsessively submerged in all that I love, simply loving it has no value in itself, hence the all-too-predictable desire to jump at the opportunity to apply for the job.

And the truth is, I would love that job. I would learn from it. But, would I grow? My news judgement and management skills would likely improve. I would be able to gain a new type of experience. But, would taking on a position like that enhance my education or serve as yet another comfortable crutch for a girl who convinced herself long ago that she couldn't stand on her own two feet?

Alex McDaniel

the Mask of Guilt

The fear of repeating a wrong or a fear of repeating past failures can produce an anxiety that can be mistaken for lingering guilt. Rising to meet even the simplest of expectations can be difficult. We become angry at ourselves and guilt-ridden. The bar is so low. Why can't rise above it?  But guilt isn't the culprit. Fear wears the mask of guilt, fooling us into wearing its chains.

Stephen Goforth

False Guilt

Real guilt is a conviction over wrong, a belief about actions. False guilt is only a feeling of goodness or badness, not attached to specific acts. Don't honor false guilt by giving it a place in your life it doesn't deserve.

Stephen Goforth

dealing with false guilt

Here are 4 options when dealing with false guilt.

1. Remove the Source of Guilt (the conscience)
This may only desensitize us to actual wrongs and could lead to a denial of real evil in our lives.

2. Emphasize Self-Potential
This fails to address the underlying problems and ignores any real wrongs.

3. Emphasize Punishment
This can lead to feeling guilt when caught, ignoring legitimate conviction.

4. Emphasize Forgiveness
If the guilt is false, there lacks a basis for forgiveness and the person may feel they haven’t suffered enough.

Stephen Goforth