Quotes About Guilt

It is almost impossible to have fun when we are bottled up with repressed emotions, worried sick about someone, saturated with guilt and despair, rigidly controlling ourselves or someone else, or worried about what other people are thinking about us. However, most people aren't thinking about us; they're worried about themselves and what we think of them.

Forgiveness comes in time—in its own time—if we are striving to take care of ourselves. Don't let other people use this principle against us. Don't let other people help us feel guilty because they think we should forgive someone, and we are either not ready or believe forgiveness is not the appropriate solution.

Guilt and shame are not useful as a way of life. Stop the "shoulds." Become aware of when we're punishing and torturing ourselves and make a concerted effort to tell ourselves positive messages. If we should be doing something, do it. If we're torturing ourselves, stop it. It gets easier.

We don't have to punish ourselves by feeling guilty to prove to God or anyone else how much we care.7 We need to forgive ourselves. Take the Fourth and Fifth Steps (see the chapter on working a Twelve Step program); talk to a clergy person; talk to God; make amends; and then be done with it.

Forgiveness is wonderful. It wipes the slate clean. It clears up guilt. It brings peace and harmony

Codependents were a necessary nuisance. They were hostile, controlling, manipulative, indirect, guilt producing, difficult to communicate with, generally disagreeable, sometimes downright hateful, and a hindrance to my compulsion to get high.

Most codependents are reactionaries. We react with anger, guilt, shame, self-hate, worry, hurt, controlling gestures, caretaking acts, depression, desperation, and fury. We react with fear and anxiety. Some of us react so much it is painful to be around people, and torturous to be in large groups of people.

Feelings are not wrong. They're not inappropriate. We don't need to feel guilty about feelings. Feelings are not acts. Feelings shouldn't be judged as either good or bad. Feelings are emotional energy; they are not personality traits.

Perdido por perdido, bien jodido, el polvo más costoso de mi vida, se dijo. Se espantó de su propio chiste. Soy un monstruo, súbitamente un monstruo. La culpa había sido de la luna. Demasiado caliente, la luna del Chaco. Sobre todo, después de ocho años de ausencia. Perdido por perdido. Estaba jugado.

I have a very hard time getting to rage. I always assume that maybe I've done something wrong and then forgotten about it.

We soon reached a dam and had to make a decision. We knew it was forbidden to cross a dam, in the same way that it was forbidden ever to use a footpath or forestry track. (Unless it was part of the dreaded morning battle PT.) This was a simple rule on Selection to make sure that you got used to navigating properly and that the going underfoot was always hard, which it inevitably always was. (In fact I, still to this day, feel a bit guilty if I go hiking on a footpath--old habits die hard.)

Ironically, many people assume that any female-headed household is automatically matriarchal. In actuality women who head households in patriarchal society often feel guilty about the absence of a male figure and are hypervigilant about imparting sexist values to children, especially males.

One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.

If they are afraid or refuse to stand up to the radicals among them, they will share in the guilt for the worldwide holocaust that will ensue.

The priests are like Offa," I said. "They want us to be their dogs, well schooled, grateful and obedient, and why? So they can get rich. They tell you pride is a sin? You're a man! It's like telling you breathing is a sin, and once they've made you feel guilty for daring to breathe, they'll give you absolution in return for a handful of silver.

With Stiorra too," I said, and felt a pang of guilt. I have been a careless father. My eldest son was an outlaw to me because of his damned religion, Uhtred had turned out well, but none of that was my doing, while Stiorra was a mystery to me.

Did my moral upbrining somehow turn against itself? If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing- then why not the satisfaction and the act itself? As the days went on, I discovered that I couldn't stop thinking sinful thoughts. In which case I also wanted the sin itself.

But what gave rise to the swaggering self-righteousness I so often encountered among these students? How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one's self-righteousness?

We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?

The word conscience covers as a matter of fact several different feelings; the simplest of these is the fear of being found out. You, reader, have, I am sure, lived a completely blameless life, but if you will ask some one who has at some time acted in a manner for which he would be punished if it became known, you will find that when discovery seemed imminent, the person in question repented of his crime.

The whole conception of 'sin' is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature.

How quickly a person in pain whom you can't help becomes a reproach. And then, no doubt, a thorn.

When you need to set boundaries . . . They are the kind [of people] who work their way into people's homes and win the confidence of vulnerable women who are burdened with the guilt of sin and controlled by various desires. 2 TIMOTHY 3:6

I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and You took away the guilt of my sin. Psalm 32:5