Guilt from not doing enough.

In my previous post I talked about the five different types of guilt. Today, I would like to talk more about one of the types. This type is guilt that you get when you feel like you hadn’t done enough. There are a lot of examples in this type of guilt that I didn’t really go over in the previous post. Also, I didn’t explain how this guilt affect you, or the person that you are trying to help.

As stated in the other post, I talked about how this guilt comes up. That is when you are helping someone who is really sick, or helping someone who may had lost something, such as a house. You feel as if you need to help that person out. But, while you are helping this person, you may run into a period of time where you can no longer help this person out.

If you let this guilt catch up to you, it can affect both you, and the person that you are helping. This guilt can give affect you emotionally. You start to feel sad, and worthless because you are not doing enough. Not only does it affect you, but it can also affect the person you are trying to help. By helping with guilt, you are not as much of an efficient helper than you would be when you are not helping with guilt. When you are not an efficient helper, the person you are trying to help can get worst, if they are sick, or it would take longer for them to “get back on their feet” if they lost a house, or a important thing to them.

Whitbourne, Susan K., Ph.D. “The Definitive Guide to Guilt.” Web log post. Psychology Today: Here to Help. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., 11 Aug. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

The 5 types of guilt, and effects of guilt

Guilt can make us feel stressful, witch can leave to negative effects on our health. It is important not to remorse over guilt for a long time. The faster you can acknowledge your mistakes, and apologize when necessary, you can get over guilt, and not run the risk of being stressful.

There are five different types of guilt. The first being the most common, and that is guilt for something that you did. This could be for emotionally, or physically hurting someone, lying, or going against your morals. The next type is guilt for something you didn’t do, but want to. This is just like to first one, except you hadn’t done the act yet, but you are thinking of doing so. The third type is guilt for something you though you did. This one can be as bad, or worst than the first type because you are unsure if you had done the act, or not. The way to overcome this is to make sure that the act had happened, if it did, you can fix it. The fourth type is guilt caused by thinking that you hadn’t done enough. If someone is ill or something bad had happened to someone, you would give a lot of time towards helping someone. But suddenly something pops up and you can’t help that person as much, or maybe not at all, you would start to feel guilty about that fact that you are doing nothing towards helping that person. The final type of guilt is guilt that you are doing better than someone else. This is also know as survival guilt. It is from when someone loses a friend, family or someone they love in a event that they survive in. The key to overcome this guilt is to remember how glad you should be for the people who care for you.

“The Effects of Guilt.” The Leadership Advisor. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2013

Whitbourne, Susan K., Ph.D. “The Definitive Guide to Guilt.” Web log post. Psychology Today: Here to Help. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., 11 Aug. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.  

Guilt in the play “All My Sons”

As stated in other blogs, there are many parts of guilt. There is trying to blame someone else, saying that is was not your fault, that you did not do anything bad. Saying that there was no other choice. Those are all the negative parts of guilt. There is also a positive part in guilt. That comes when one realizes what they had done, and they try to make up for it. Now, this part of guilt can come at anytime, really, any of these parts can come at anytime. But the weird thing is, the one positive part of guilt can come before any of the negative parts guilt.

    In the play All My Sons by Arthur Miller, the positive part of guilt comes before the negative parts of it. One of the characters in the play Joe Keller made 120 cracked engine-heads for P-40 jets, this resulted in 21 dead pilots. Instead of Keller going to jail, it was another character, named Steve who went to jail. Keller feels guilty about this, and mid way though the play he had the positive side of guilt. While talking to Steve’s daughter Ann, Keller said: “I like you and George to go to him in prison and tell him…. ‘Dad, Joe wants to bring you into the business when you get out'”(Miller 41). In this quote it is clearly seen that Keller feels guilty for Steve being in jail, and he wants to make up for it. He does this by offering Steve a job for when he gets out of jail. 

But like said before, the positive part of guilt can come before the negative part of guilt. Towards the end of the second act, Keller’s son Chris found out about what Keller did, and Chris wasn’t happy about it. Keller’s other son was one of the pilots that died from the bad engines, but Keller claims that he was not responsible for Larry’s death by saying “He never flew a P-40″(Miller 58). Also, he goes on by saying “I never thought they’d install them. I swear to God. I thought they’d stop ’em before anybody took off”(Miller 59). These two quotes show that he thinks that it wasn’t his fault, instead the people who install the engines should be the ones to be blame. Lastly, Keller claims that he had no choice and what he did was for the best. He said “You wanted money, so I made money”(Miller 63). This quote says that his actions were the best because the family needed money so he made money.

The play All My Sons has a lot to tell on guilt, just from one character. All parts of guilt were shown in this play, really helping people understand guilt.  

Guilt and shame can go together, as they both are feelings from knowing that you had done something wrong.

What is guilt?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of guilt is a bad feeling cause by knowing, or thinking that you done something bad or wrong. One of the hardest kinds of guilt to overcome is unconscious guilt. This is when you do not know that you do something wrong. In this case, many people will blame someone else for there actions. As long as you can recognize that you done something guilty, the easier for you to overcome it. A lot of times, a person may believe that they need to own up to their mistakes when they feel guilty. By helping out a person you may had help, of fixing/replacing something you broke it makes you feel better, doing this would help you overcome a guilty feeling.

“Guilt.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

“Psychotherapist: Birgit Wolz, MFT, PhD, Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, Grief Counseling, and Cinema Therapy in Loch Lomond, Lake           County.”Psychotherapist: Birgit Wolz, MFT, PhD, Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, Grief Counseling, and Cinema Therapy in Loch Lomond, Lake County. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.