William Shakespeare, whom some have called “the most brilliant psychotherapist who ever treated a patient,” described the sense of guilt in Macbeth as “the convulsive fever of life.”
In fact, anyone who has ever felt guilty knows from experience that guilt is a constant sting. Although at times it seems gone, the pain returns with greater intensity when least expected.
It’s certainly a difficult situation to cope with, but it’s even worse to feel guilty without consciously acknowledging it and to live with these chronic interruptions that can appear in a thousand ways, causing unease and suffering. In these cases, the anguish is doubled because we feel bad without even knowing why.
The problem is that, in some cases, when we begin to feel guilty, our defense mechanisms are activated to deny or repress that feeling, which, in a certain way, reflects poorly on us and causes cognitive dissonance. Oscar Wilde summed it up beautifully in one sentence: “Man can endure accidental misfortunes that come from outside, but to suffer through his own fault—that is the nightmare of life.”
However, it should be clear that hiding psychological content does not mean eliminating it. This feeling of guilt, which remains trapped in the subconscious, comes to light in small, everyday details. In fact, for Freud, many erroneous acts were signs of repressed guilt that was released through seemingly ambiguous and innocuous words or actions.
Signs that you feel guilty and are suppressing guilt
1. You often lose your patience
Repressing feelings of guilt requires a great deal of psychic energy. Since this energy isn’t inexhaustible, we divert it from other psychological processes, such as self-control. Therefore, one of the signs that we’re repressing guilt is frequently losing our temper and overreacting to stimuli, following our first impulses without considering the consequences of our actions and words.
2. You make inappropriate jokes
A sense of humor is a complex ability, particularly susceptible when we feel guilty. Plato, for example, believed that humor is a manifestation of superiority we experience over those we consider less fortunate than ourselves. When we feel guilty, we often attack others with humor, using it as a weapon to displace our feelings, trying to make the other person feel guilty. Therefore, in many cases, the tendency to blame others hides an unacknowledged inner guilt.
3. You don’t accept any criticism
When we get angry at criticism, even when it’s meant to be constructive, it’s usually because we feel it’s attacking our ego. Since that ego is already sensitive and hurt by guilt, it becomes hypersensitive to criticism. Therefore, becoming defensive in the face of criticism and overreacting to everything we hear is often an indicator that there’s a problem we need to resolve or something we don’t want to accept.
4. You develop a paranoid attitude
Shakespeare also said about guilt: “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief fears that every bush is a policeman.” When we feel guilty, we are more likely to fear that other people might harm us, so we end up developing a paranoid attitude. It’s a defense mechanism where we think others are untrustworthy, when in reality it’s a projected sense of how we feel about ourselves.
5. You apologize for everything
In some cases, feeling guilty is expressed through self-incriminating behaviors. This leads us to apologize for everything, even for things that aren’t our responsibility. The problem is that even if we “eliminate” the event that generated the feeling of guilt from our consciousness, it remains latent, and when we feel guilty, we try to atone for that feeling through other events. It’s as if we’re unconsciously punishing ourselves for something we did, taking responsibility for things we didn’t do.
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