Guilt, mortification, black-affrontedness, pure burning shame.

We’ve all done it: had too much to drink, got a bit overexcited made atotal show of ourselves; or said something and later regretted it; or been in a bad mood and taken it out on someone else or done something that is just selfish without thinking about the consequences for other people. Most of us have probably felt bad about it later.

There are days when it just isn’t possible to find a rock big enough to crawl under.

Then there are all the background guilt triggers: not spending enough quality time with your friends, your family, your partner; not doing enough for the environment; eating too much or not doing enough to change to put the world to rights.

Sometimes it is hard not to feel like a bit of an inadequate.

Some of us suffer from guilt more than others or more at certain times than at others. When I am depressed, I often have crushing feelings of guilt and generally being a useless and bad person who didn’t deserve to have any friends. They can go on for weeks at a time and I can turn from a normally sociable person into a recluse.

On occasions, I have felt quite suicidal and wished that I could unpick my life from everyone else’s and just cease to exist.

Sometimes, I really have done something bad. The flip side of being depressed is being manic, socially uninhibited and, in my case, generally running off at the mouth and not giving a stuff. Other times I am just suffering from an extremely unhealthy amount of paranoia, and what seems like an enormously big deal to me has gone virtually unnoticed by most people around me.

When you are sitting there wracked with guilt, planning how you will spend the rest of your life as a hermit or just waiting until the dust settles, it is worth using that time to get a little perspective.

Nobody is perfect. Everyone has bad days. When you have decided that you have gone way too far, think about the times when you have been in a situation where someone else has been the one making a monumental fool of themselves. Did it permanently change the way you thought of them, or did you see it as an uncharacteristic moment? After all, your friends are your friends for a reason. A lot of the time, you forgive them and they forgive you just because you’ve always been friends or because, thinking about it, there wasn’t really much to forgive. It was just one day. It’s not the one-off occasions that make or break a friendship; it’s the long term pattern of rubbing along together understanding what is going on in each others lives.

That’s not to say that there is no place for a conscience and that genuine misdeeds should just be shrugged off.

Distinguish those situations where you really are to blame or you consistently let the side down from those where you have just embarrassed yourself a bit and all you need to do is dust yourself off, whistle a wee tune and act like nothing happened. Work out who really got hurt. Are you in fact paranoid and depressed rather than Satan incarnate? Were others genuinely upset or is it just your own dignity you dented?

If you have been genuinely culpable and you need to say sorry. Say sorry and above all make the effort not to do it again. An apology means little if it is just an excuse to carry on as before with a clear conscience but it can mean a lot if it is both heartfelt and a genuine promise to try harder in future.

And if the guilt is more of the background variety, well maybe you can do something about that too, maybe you can’t, but sitting their sighing probably isn’t contributing. Make a bit more effort, and credit yourself when you do. Do what you can and then take a deep breath and write off the stuff that you really, really can’t change.

Guilt can be a useful emotion as long as you do something about it. There is no point sitting about thinking woe is me. In fact, that is often even more annoying for those around you. You can’t undo the things you’ve done but it might be possible to repair the damage or to make up for some of them. If it isn’t a situation you can alter, then don’t sweat it, get on with life. Enjoy it. Life is too short to be sitting around worrying about what you can’t change.

Guilt is a good thing if it puts a check on outrageous behaviour and makes us a bit more responsible but it is a bad thing if it gets to the level where it paralyses and you cease to function.

Week commencing 29/01/07

Medication: None
Exercise: 4.5
Alcohol: 8
Anxiety: Fine
Anxiety Level (0-10): 0
Number of Panic Attacks:0
Severity of Panic Attack (0-5):NA
Depression: A bit down some of the time, partly due to being knackered.
Depression Level (0-5): 3
Mania: Fine
Mania Level (0-5): 0

Summary

A bit up and down but pretty good for the time of year.