Inappropriate “should” statements represent the “final common pathway” to your guilt. Irrational should statements imply you are expected to be perfect, all-knowing, or all-powerful. Perfectionistic shoulds include rules for living that defeat you by creating impossible expectations and rigidity. One example of this would be, “I should be happy at all times.” The consequence of this rule is that you will feel like a failure every time you are upset. Since it is obviously unrealistic for any human being to achieve the goal of perpetual happiness, the rule is self-defeating and irresponsible.
A should statement that is based on the premise you are all-knowing assumes you have all the knowledge in the universe and that you can predict the future with absolute certainty. For example, you might think, “I shouldn’t have gone to the beach this weekend because I was coming down with the flu. What a jerk I am! Now I’m so sick I’ll be in bed for a week.” Berating yourself this way is unrealistic because you didn’t know for certain that going to the beach would make you so ill. If you had known this, you would have acted differently. Being human, you made a decision, and your hunch turned out to be wrong.
Should statements based on the premise you are all-powerful assume that, like God, you are omnipotent and have the ability to control yourself and other people so as to achieve each and every goal. You miss your tennis serve and wince, exclaiming, “I shouldn’t have missed that serve!” Why shouldn’t you? Is your tennis so superb that you can’t possibly miss a serve?
It is clear that these three categories of should statements create an inappropriate sense of guilt because they do not represent sensible moral standards.
In addition to distortion, several other criteria can be helpful in distinguishing abnormal guilt from a healthy sense of remorse or regret. These include the intensity, duration, and consequences of your negative emotion. Let’s use these criteria to evaluate the incapacitating guilt of a married fifty-two-year-old grammar-school teacher named Janice. Janice had been severely depressed for many years. Her problem was that she continually obsessed about two episodes of shoplifting that had occurred when she was fifteen. Although she had led a scrupulously honest life since that time, she could not shake the memory of those two incidents. Guilt-provoking thoughts constantly plagued her: “I’m a thief. I’m a liar. I’m no good. I’m a fake.” The agony of her guilt was so enormous that every night she prayed that God would let her die in her sleep. Every morning when she woke up still alive, she was bitterly disappointed and told herself, “I’m such a bad person even God doesn’t want me.” In frustration she finally loaded her husband’s pistol, aimed it at her heart, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired and did not go off. She had not cocked it properly. She felt the ultimate defeat: She couldn’t even kill herself! She put the gun down and wept in despair.
Janice’s guilt is inappropriate not only because of the obvious distortions, but also because of the intensity, duration, and consequences of what she was feeling and telling herself. What she feels cannot be described as a healthy remorse or regret about the actual shoplifting, but an irresponsible degradation of her self-esteem that blinds her to living in the here and now, and is far out of proportion to any actual transgression. The consequences of her guilt created the ultimate irony—her belief that she was a bad person caused her to attempt to murder herself, a most destructive and pointless act.
The Guilt Cycle
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.
Your self-punishing behavior patterns intensify the guilt cycle. Your guilt-provoking thoughts lead to unproductive actions that reinforce your belief in your badness. For example, a guilt-prone neurologist was trying to prepare for her medical-board certification examination. She had difficulty studying for the test, and felt guilty about the fact that she wasn’t studying. So she wasted time each night watching television while the following thoughts raced through her mind: “I shouldn’t be watching TV. I should be preparing for my boards. I’m lazy. I don’t deserve to be a doctor. I’m too self-centered. I ought to be punished.” These thoughts made her feel intensely guilty. She then reasoned, “This guilt proves what a lazy no-good person I am.” Thus, her self-punishing thoughts and her guilty feelings reinforced each other.
Like many guilt-prone people, she had the idea that if she punished herself enough she would eventually get moving. Unfortunately, quite the opposite was true. Her guilt simply drained her energy and reinforced her belief that she was lazy and inadequate. The only actions that resulted from her self-loathing were the nightly compulsive trips to the refrigerator to “pig out” on ice cream or peanut butter.
The vicious cycle that she trapped herself in is shown in Figure 8–1. Her negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all interacted in the creation of the self-defeating, cruel illusion that she was “bad” and uncontrollable.
The Irresponsibility of Guilt. If you have actually done something inappropriate or hurtful, does it follow that you deserve to suffer? If you feel the answer to this question is yes, then ask yourself, “How long must I suffer? One day? A year? For the rest of my life?” What sentence will you choose to impose on yourself? Are you willing to stop suffering and making yourself miserable when your sentence has expired? This would at least be a responsible way to punish yourself because it would be time-limited. But what is the point of abusing yourself with guilt in the first place? If you did make a mistake and act in a hurtful way, your guilt won’t reverse your blunder in some magical manner. It won’t speed your learning processes so as to reduce the chance you’ll make the same mistake in the future. Other people won’t love and respect you more because you are feeling guilty and putting yourself down in this manner. Nor will your guilt lead to productive living. So what’s the point?
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Figure 8–1. A neurologist’s self-critical thoughts caused her to feel so guilty that she had difficulty preparing for her certification examination. Her procrastination strengthened her conviction that she was bad and deserved punishment. This further undermined her motivation to solve the problem.
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Many people ask, “But how could I behave morally and control my impulses if I don’t feel guilt?” This is the probation-officer approach to living. Apparently you view yourself as so willful and uncontrollable that you must constantly castigate yourself in order to keep from going wild. Certainly, if your behavior has a needlessly hurtful impact on others, a small amount of painful remorse will add to your awareness more effectively than a sterile recognition of your goof-up with no emotional arousal. But it certainly never helped anyone to view himself as a bad person. More often than not, the belief that you are bad contributes to the “bad” behavior.
Change and learning occur most readily when you (a) recognize that an error has occurred and (b) develop a strategy for correcting the problem. An
attitude of self-love and relaxation facilitates this, whereas guilt often interferes.
For example, occasionally patients criticize me for making a sharp comment that rubs them the wrong way. This criticism usually only hurts my feelings and arouses my guilt if it contains a grain of truth. To the extent that I feel guilty and label myself as “bad,” I tend to react defensively. I have the urge to either deny or justify my error, or to counterattack because that feeling of being a “bad person” is so odious. This makes it much more difficult for me to admit and correct the error. If, in contrast, I do not harangue myself or experience any loss of self-respect, it is easy to admit my mistake. Then I can readily correct the problem and learn from it. The less guilt I have, the more effectively I can do this.
Thus, what is called for when you do goof up is a process of recognition, learning, and change. Does guilt help you with any of these? I don’t believe it does. Rather than facilitating your recognition of your error, guilt engages you in a coverup operation. You want to close your ears to any criticism. You can’t bear to be in the wrong because it feels so terrible. This is why guilt is counterproductive.
You may protest, “How can I know I’ve done something wrong if I don’t feel guilty? Wouldn’t I just indulge in a blind rampage of uncontrolled, destructive selfishness if it weren’t for my guilt?”
Anything is possible, but I honestly doubt this would happen. You can replace your guilt with a more enlightened basis for moral behavior—empathy. Empathy is the ability to visualize the consequences, good and bad, of your behavior. Empathy is the capacity to conceptualize the impact of what you do on yourself and on the other person, and to feel appropriate and genuine sorrow and regret without labeling yourself as inherently bad. Empathy gives you the necessary mental and emotional climate to guide your behavior in a moral and self-enhancing manner in the absence of the whip of guilt.
Using these criteria, you can now readily determine whether your feelings represent a normal and healthy sense of remorse or a self-defeating, distorted sense of guilt. Ask yourself:
1. Did I consciously and willfully do something “bad,” “unfair,” or needlessly hurtful that I shouldn’t have? Or am I irrationally expecting myself to be perfect, all-knowing, or all-powerful?
2. Am I labeling myself a bad or tainted person because of this action? Do my thoughts contain other cognitive distortions, such as magnification, overgeneralization, etc.?
3. Am I feeling a realistic regret or remorse, which results from an empathic awareness of the negative impact of my action? Are the intensity and duration of my painful emotional response appropriate to what I actually did?
4. Am I learning from my error and developing a strategy for change, or am I moping and ruminating nonproductively or even punishing myself in a destructive manner?
Now, let’s review some methods that will allow you to rid yourself of inappropriate guilty feelings and maximize your self-respect.
1. Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts. In earlier chapters you were introduced to a Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts for overcoming low self-esteem and inadequacy. This method works handsomely for a variety of unwanted emotions, including guilt. Record the activating event that leads to your guilt in the column labeled “Situation.” You may write, “I spoke sharply to an associate,” or “Instead of contributing ten dollars, I threw my alumni fund-raising appeal in the wastebasket.” Then “tune in” to that tyrannical loudspeaker in your head and identify the accusations that create your guilt. Finally, identify the distortions and write down more objective thoughts. This leads to relief.
An example of this is demonstrated in Figure 8–2. Shirley was a high-strung young woman who decided to move to New York to pursue her acting career. After she and her mother had spent a long and tiring day looking for apartments, they took a train back to Philadelphia. After boarding, they discovered they had mistakenly taken a train without food service or a lounge car. Shirley’s mother began to complain about the lack of cocktail service, and Shirley felt flooded with guilt and self-criticism. As she recorded and talked back to her guilt-provoking thoughts, she felt substantial relief. She told me that by overcoming her guilt, she avoided the temper tantrum she would normally have thrown in such a frustrating situation (see Figure 8–2, page 209).
2. Should Removal Techniques. Here are some methods for reducing all those irrational “should” statements you’ve been hitting yourself with. The first is to ask yourself, “Who says I should? Where is it written that I should?” The point of this is to make you aware that you are being critical of yourself unnecessarily. Since you are ultimately making your own rules, once you decide that a rule is not useful you can revise it or get rid of it. Suppose you are telling yourself that you should be able to make your spouse happy all the time. If your experience teaches you that this is neither realistic nor helpful, you can rewrite the rule to make it more valid. You might say, “I can make my spouse happy some of the time, but I certainly can’t at all times. Ultimately, happiness is up to him or her. And I’m not perfect any more than he or she is. Therefore, I will not anticipate that what I do will always be appreciated.”
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Figure 8–2.
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In deciding about the usefulness of a particular rule, it can be helpful to ask yourself, “What are the advantages and disadvantages of having that rule for myself?” “How will it help me believe I should always be able to make my spouse happy, and what will the price be for believing this?” You can assess the costs and benefits, using the double-column method shown in Figure 8–3.
Another simple but effective way to rid yourself of should statements involves substituting other words for “should,” using the double-column technique. The terms “It would be nice if” or “I wish I could” work well, and often sound more realistic and less upsetting. For example, instead of saying, “I should be able to make my wife happy,” you could substitute “It would be nice if I could make my wife happy now because she seems upset. I can ask what she’s upset about and see if there might be a way I could help.” Or instead of “I shouldn’t have eaten the ice cream,” you can say, “It would have been better if I hadn’t eaten the ice cream, but it’s not the end of the world that I did.”
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Figure 8–3. The advantages and disadvantages of believing "I should be able to make my wife happy all the time."
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Another anti-should method involves showing yourself that a should statement doesn’t fit reality. For example, when you say, “I shouldn’t have done X,” you assume (1) it is a fact that you shouldn’t have, and (2) it is going to help you to say this. The “reality method” reveals—to your surprise—that the truth is usually just the opposite: (a) In point of fact, you should have done what you did; and (b) it is going to hurt you to say you shouldn’t have.
Incredulous? Let me demonstrate. Assume you’ve been trying to diet and you ate some ice cream. So you have the thought, “I shouldn’t have eaten this ice cream.” In our dialogue I want you to argue that it’s really true that you shouldn’t have eaten the ice cream, and I will try to put the lie to your arguments. The following is modeled after an actual conversation, which I hope you find as delightful and helpful as I did:
DAVID:
I understand you’re on a diet, and you ate some ice cream. I believe you should have eaten the ice cream.
YOU:
Oh, no. That’s impossible. I shouldn’t have eaten it because I’m on a diet. You see, I’m trying to lose weight.
DAVID:
Well, I believe you should have eaten the ice cream.
YOU:
Burns, are you dense? I shouldn’t have because I’m trying to lose weight. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. How can I lose weight if I’m eating ice cream?
DAVID:
But in point of fact you did eat it.
YOU:
Yeah. That’s the problem. I shouldn’t have done that. Now do yo
u see the light?
DAVID:
And apparently you’re claiming that “things should have been different” than they were. But things were the way they were. And things usually are the way they are for a good reason. Why do you think you did what you did? What’s the reason you ate the ice cream?
YOU:
Well, I was upset and I was nervous and I’m basically a pig.
DAVID:
Okay, you were upset and you were nervous. Have you had a pattern in your life of eating when you’ve been upset and nervous?
YOU:
Yeah. Right. I’ve never had any self-control.
DAVID:
So, wouldn’t it be natural to expect then that last week when you were nervous you would do what you have habitually done?
YOU:
Yeah.
DAVID:
So, wouldn’t it be sensible therefore to conclude that you should have done that because you had a very long-standing habit of doing it?
YOU:
I feel like you’re telling me that I should just keep eating ice cream and end up like a fat pig or something.
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Page 19