One afternoon, we were on the veranda of the house with my brothers and sisters. An argument broke out between my two brothers and I got angry; I stood up, gave my little brother a violent blow, resulting in a small cut on his lip. As the eldest, this correction seemed normal and even just to me. However, seeing the blood on my brother’s mouth scared me, and I began to reproach myself for hitting him. Every time I looked at him and saw the mark I had made, I felt guilty.

I stole money that was left on the table and used it without anyone knowing. I never confessed and blamed myself for it. I felt like a wound or a virus eating away at me from the inside. Guilt is the feeling of being responsible or sorry after a fault. Have you ever felt guilty after doing something? I have lied repeatedly to have the right to go out, and I also felt guilty after every academic failure… For me, that might have been it, but for you, it might have been: a family quarrel or with an elder, a school failure, a dispute with a colleague at work, etc…

We have all experienced this feeling at some point. What makes guilt a human, universal feeling experienced by everyone. If you have ever withdrawn into yourself and thought you were alone, know that this is not the case. Someone else has had the same experience as you, but perhaps in different circumstances and contexts. I often pushed others away when I felt guilty because I believed they wouldn’t understand me.

And sometimes I still found the courage to talk to certain people about it, but since I had predisposed myself beforehand, no matter what they could have said, deep down I knew they wouldn’t understand. Is this your case? Then know that you are conditioning yourself.

Guilt is a very troublesome feeling, isn’t it? It gnaws at us from within. It’s really annoying to always feel guilty. It’s not about being ashamed or doubting. After committing a fault, the feeling we have, the emotion that bites us like remorse, that’s guilt.

This text is an excerpt from the book “THE WEIGHT OF GUILT” written by Joseph KUDIANANA.

We invite you to read the following article “SUBJECTIVE GUILT OR FALSE GUILT“.