How we use guilt

Those who’ve followed my writings over the years know, if nothing else, I’m unpredictable in the topics I cover. So they won’t be the least surprised by today’s offering on a matter that relates to each of us in our own ways.

We’ve all used this both to manipulate others and to find ourselves manipulated. This often destructive force in our lives can have both negative and positive effects, depending on who’s inflicting it and how the recipient perceives it.

Still, I’m convinced that alongside religion, the greatest emotional manipulator of human choices and actions is guilt.

Some examples of pricking another’s conscience to achieve an end, you might ask:

“You mean I drove all the way over here and now you’re going to make me go alone?”

“I remember when you used to call me all the time. But no more. Do you not like me anymore?

“You don’t send me flowers (or candy or gum or rutabagas or shampoo) anymore.”

Guilt and its sibling I’ll call shame are deeply embedded spiritual and emotional forces in the human psyche. We continually use them (and are used by them) to control our behaviors and those of others. We very often suffer greatly, even fatally, from the terrible feelings they instill.

I have far too many examples of my own to count when it comes to both using and receiving guilt, which I suspect means you do, too.

While making others feel somehow inadequate, unworthy or less than caring or cooperative with what we want often does create the desired effect, it also creates a resentful recipient. And while I’m far from being a counselor or psychologist, it seems common sense that using guilt to manipulate has far-reaching psychological and emotional effects in others, especially those closest to us.

For example, if I tell my son who failed to make a family event how wonderful his sister was for making the effort to be there and how sad it was he “couldn’t find the time,” all I’ve achieved is making him feel guilty (and shamed) by needlessly planting a comparison designed to achieve exactly that end. Yep, no doubt it’s effective.

And the guilt trip I’ve implanted with my words is rooted in my own bruised ego and selfish, unmet needs.

The only reason I’d want to do that kind of thing, when I analyze it, would be to send my son a controlling message that I expect his presence in the future, or perhaps just teach him a lesson by hopefully making him feel bad. Either way, we both lose.

That’s only one example of the countless ways we use guilt to control behavior in others. Guilt trips seem especially prevalent in families. Psychology Today calls guilt trips forms of verbal and nonverbal communication trying to induce feelings of guilt in others who aren’t doing what the inducer wants or expects.

The magazine offers suggestions for how those on the receiving end can most effectively respond to a guilt tripper. For instance, you can tell the guilt-tripper you understand just how important it is that you do what he’s trying to guilt you into doing or feeling.

You also can say using a guilt trip to manipulate you into complying makes you resentful, even if you should wind up going along with it. It’s important they know what you recognize and how it makes you feel. You also should explain your concerns that these kinds of resentments are bound to make you feel even more distant from him.

You should ask the guilt-tripper to express his wishes directly, own what he wants rather than indirectly appealing to your conscience, and to respect your decisions when you make them.

The guilt tripper might say: “Your niece will have her feelings hurt terribly if you don’t show up at her confirmation.” Compared with the mature approach: “It would mean a lot to me if you came to your niece’s confirmation, but I’ll understand if your schedule doesn’t permit it.”

All in all, the bottom line in curbing guilt trips is to become assertive and say what you think and feel in the kindest way possible. It’s also helpful to have reminder chats and point out when you see yet another guilt trip laid before you.

As with everything in life, change takes time, especially for those who have learned to successfully use guilt to achieve their own ends.

Glittery disconnect

Hollywood’s elitists rake in huge fortunes often by glorifying murder by gunfire as normal, even acceptable. Yet many of these silver-screen multimillionaires contend Americans who believe in protecting the constitutional gun rights of citizens are those contributing to such violence.

Such flim-flammery is all part of the double standard and deception I see emitted from Tinseltown, one stream of political ideology, and much of the national media.

Just what makes someone who makes an extravagant living pretending on a soundstage or screen to be a person who accomplished something with his life think that can justify his self-anointed expertise as a political pundit?