Tagged: “false guilt”

What is the difference between genuine guilt and false guilt?

False guilt occurs when you have not broken your own moral standards.  For example, suppose you have to meet someone soon and you forget your car keys, necessitating that you go back into your home, find your keys, get the keys, and now you are late for the meeting.  You did not intentionally try to be late for that meeting.  You made an error and did not willingly break a standard of honoring the other person.  Your acceptance of imperfection may be in order, but to deeply blame the self would be excessive and therefore in all likelihood is false guilt.  Genuine guilt occurs when you have broken your moral standards and now you are feeling guilty until you make amends.  As a final point here, sometimes unintentional errors can be serious enough to warrant guilt.  For example, if you are driving in your car and texting on your phone at the same time, resulting in an accident, you should have been paying more attention to the driving.  In that case, even without an intention to do wrong, the guilt would be genuine.

Please follow and like us: