True Guilt and False Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176
The Denial of Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Guilt as a Concern-based Construal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178
Guilt, Anger, and Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Guilt: Positive and Negative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180
Guilt and Remorse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Defective Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183
Feeling Guilty When We Are Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184
Accidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Survivor, Collective, and Existential Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186
Not Living Up to Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187
Guilt Induced by Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188
Feeling Guiltier Than We Are . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Feeling Guilty of the Wrong Things and/or Toward the Wrong Object . . . . . . . . . . 189
Seeking Wrong Relief from Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Unavoidable Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191
Taking Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Direct Inventory of Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193
Emotional Sobriety: Freedom from Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Do No Harm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Be Just . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197
Forgive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197
“The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the life of others,” says the Big Book (p. 82). We caused untold damage when we drank. It is only natural therefore that we should feel guilt and remorse when we first come into the rooms. Our conscience no longer anesthetized by alcohol, these emotions gnaw at us with a vengeance, especially if we have had a low bottom. With everything falling apart around us, we feel we have made a mess of our lives and that we are to blame for everything that has gone wrong.
Our guilt and remorse may be so strong in some cases that we feel we have to start our inventory with them. Depending on the gravity of these emotions, the circumstances surrounding them, and the risk they may pose to our new sobriety, our sponsor may agree that this is the best course of action. Some of us may have followed that path. We may have felt that guilt and remorse, rather than anger, fear, and resentment, were in fact our most immediate problems. And we may very well have been right. The Big Book suggests starting with anger, fear, and resentment, not because they are necessarily the most urgent, but because, as we have noted, they are the most common and the most destructive. In any event, these three are said to be some of “the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure” (Big Book, p. 64). They are not the only ones. What “defeated us” was “self, manifested in various ways,” and in considering “its common manifestations” we are going to take stock of a variety of defective emotions and the defects of character associated with them.
Defects of character and emotion are always the underlying subject of our inventory. That is why in most cases we don’t start our inventory with guilt. In most cases, our guilt is not defective. We are guilty. Only where the emotion has become defective do we need to zero in directly on it. Regardless of where we start, however, if we follow the intent of the Big Book, we will always be dealing with guilt (and by extension remorse in many cases). Its sample inventory is intended as an examination of guilt as much as of anger, resentment, and fear. The reason this may not be readily apparent is that in it the emotion of guilt is not examined directly. That is, the sample doesn’t suggest we focus on why we feel guilty. But it does suggest we examine where we actually are. We are to go beyond what others did to us and examine our own actions. We are to look at all the harm we did when we drank, at all the ways in which in reality we were guilty of wrongdoing, and we are to identify the defects in us which caused us to do such harm. The whole inventory is about the wrong we did and what was wrong with us, about the fact of our guilt. “Where were we at fault?” asks the Big Book (p. 69), “Where were we to blame?” (p. 67), “Whom had we hurt?” (p. 69).
. . .
Guilt as a Concern-based Construal
The Big Book and the 12&12 do not deny our guilt. But neither do they dwell on it. Instead, they provide us with a program of action which, if rigorously followed, is certain to free us from guilt—the fact and the feeling. In telling us to focus on where we are at fault, where we are to blame, and whom we have hurt, they are pointing us toward a proper understanding of the problem of guilt. The solution follows naturally from that understanding.
Construing ourselves to be at fault is the first defining characteristic of the emotion. By “construing” we mean, not that we necessarily think or believe we are to blame, but that we see ourselves as such. The perception is based on a second defining characteristic of guilt. This is a concern with being good in some morally relevant respect. When we feel guilty, we view ourselves as being morally blamable or culpable in some way that is important for us not to be. The feeling is accompanied by another, consequent concern, which is the emotion’s third defining characteristic. This is the desire to be relieved of the guilt.
. . .
Emotional Sobriety: Freedom from Guilt
“We could wish to be moral” with “all our might,” says the Big Book of our drinking days, “but the needed power wasn’t there” (p. 45). Admitting that powerlessness is our first step toward freedom from guilt, just as admitting our powerlessness over alcohol is our first step toward freedom from the obsession to drink. For when we make that admission, we no longer have to deny our guilt. Nor do we have to beat ourselves up about it. We accept it as a fact of the human condition. We are inclined to do ill, just as we are inclined to do good. The two tendencies live in tension within us. Acknowledging and accepting that humbles us and we become willing to ask for help.
Do not Harm
What kind of help do we need to achieve freedom from guilt? The kind of help we seek in Step 11: knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. From our program’s perspective, guilt comes from doing our will rather than his. When we do that, we are following the evil impulse in us, making wrongdoing inevitable and guilt unavoidable. At the broadest and most fundamental level, therefore, we need the grace to seek and to do God’s will for us.
. . .
The woman who abandoned her infant son couldn’t forgive herself. She couldn’t let go of her guilt because she saw the God of her religion as a punishing God. Many of us were saddled with that kind of a deity when we drank. Guilt and punishment—that is all religion seemed to be about. In AA we come to know a different God. His will is not for us to wallow in guilt, but to acknowledge our wrongs, take responsibility for them, and make amends. He will not only forgive us, but if we ask, also help us to forgive ourselves.
Thus, freedom from guilt is a product of our spiritual awakening in this overarching but very specific sense: that we come to know a God of grace. Being good and doing good is certainly God’s will for us. It is the ultimate goal of recovery. It is the purpose of the virtues and of the spiritual disciplines through which we practice them. But we can’t practice them on our own. Grace gives us the power.”
– From Part II: Emotions, Chapter 10: Guilt and Remorse, pp. 175–176, 178–179, 196, 198
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