Guilt Kills Connection

When I was younger, I felt guilty about every little thing: being five minutes late, saying no, disappointing people in ways I couldn’t even name. These days, I notice far less guilt in me. Not because I’ve become either a saint or a narcissist. I still make plenty of mistakes, hurt people I love, and try to repair what I’ve broken. But I keep more distance from guilt, because I’ve seen how it erodes connection. And to be honest, that terrifies me more than anything.

I believe guilt is not an emotion of survival, but one shaped by humanity’s long unexamined allegiance to punishment-consciousness, which has taught us to confuse suffering with repair. Guilt is deeply self-focused: it turns awareness inward, collapses curiosity, and pressures others to center our feelings instead of theirs. And because its psychic weight is unbearable, we often try to discharge guilt by hurting others.

Guilt also severs our connection to ourselves. When the Buddha taught his son Rahula to examine his own mind, he cautioned him not to become “horrified, humiliated, or disgusted” by what he might find there. The moment we fall into these reactions, we actually stop seeing reality and are left only with our judgments. We must guard against that at all costs.

Easier said than done, right? Perhaps, but it helps to see guilt not just as a feeling, but a habit, even a commitment. You don’t have to be committed to saying sorry when you really mean thank you. You don’t have to choose to read other people’s emotions as proof of your badness. And you don’t have to trust guilt, any more than you’d trust a stranger shouting accusations in the street.

We live in a world where people do terrible things. But we become part of the problem when we try to sort out who is good and bad. We need to learn a “language of life,” as Marshall Rosenberg put it, one that can confront harm while preserving connection. The future of our species depends on it.

Edvard Munch, "Ashes" (1895)