Not infrequently, coaches, facilitators and conflict
resolvers must deal with people stuck in guilt. We feel guilty for a
variety of reasons, some internal and some external. The source of guilt
is not important. What is important is that while guilt can keep us
stuck, it can also heal. When guilt spurs us to action or to response,
it is healthy guilt - or primary emotion. Even anger can be
healthy, when it spurs us to action that is not destructive.
Guilt that keeps us stuck is unhealthy. Inside, we're
doing a little rat-in-a-race, incessantly spinning our wheels, going
nowhere. There is a push-pull quality to this stuckness. The reason
for it is that we actually know what to do to make things better or
to make them right, but we don't want to do what we know to do.
Such stuckness signals a secondary emotion is at play.
What we're exploring here is the texture and character
of guilt as a primary emotion that heals, and guilt as a secondary emotion
that keeps us stuck. First, we'll look at how guilt most often appears
in conflict situations. Then, we'll look at how a shift that can occur
in a mediation or coaching framework - can move a person to abandon
the stuckness for fresh ground.
In conflict situations, what we most often see is unhealthy
guilt - guilt that keeps us stuck. By checking inside, we can often
pick up from our own felt sense, when such guilt is present.
When a person is in this feeling of guilt, they feel less than
the other person. There is a contraction inside of them, a feeling of
unworthiness, and often some unbearable pain. In med mal cases, I have
seen doctors so imploded by guilt, that they have aged terribly and
may even have had their hair turn white. In auto accident cases, a driver
at fault who has killed or seriously injured another, may want to withdraw
from life - as if hurting themselves could somehow help the one whom
they hurt or killed.
Such guilt prevents us from acting constructively on
our own behalf. It blocks perception of what larger good might be possible.Often,
it invites ill-luck into our lives and at times, even serious illness.
It makes us contentious - we become difficult people - because
when we have such guilt, we do not act coherently.
Most of us have some of this guilt, somewhere in our
lives.Once you identify the physical indicators of this stuckness within,
you'll pick it up more easily, in others. Here's a way to check it out
within yourself. . Notice your body's response as you do this.
1. Recall a situation about which you feel guilty.
2. Notice inside of you whether there is both a push
and a pull - and a feeling of weight, or tension.
3. If there is this stalling out going on within you
- this is secndary guilt that may be ready to change.
Many situations induce the guilt that keeps us stuck.
It can arise in adulthood not only from what we have done, but from
the way we experience certain events. For example, when we survive a
disaster in which others die; when, in combat, we watch comrades die
under fire or when our children take self-destructive lifestyles. And
it can occur when our action or inaction - or that of an organization
for which we have responsibility - has hurt others.
In children, such guilt often arises when the child
is faced with more suffering than she can bear. For example, when a
parent dies (or wants to die) while the child is young, such guilt can
arise and darken the whole life, until more mature understanding occurs.
In a small child, it may be expressed internally as a desire to die
in the parent's place or to suffer, instead of the parent, or to follow
the parent. In an older child, it might be some sense of having caused
the death or disease, coupled with a drive toward atonement through
suffering - suffering that could not possibly benefit the one that may
have been hurt.
There is a destructive self-focused to the secondary
emotion of guilt - often spawning an incessant chorus of self-criticism
and blame. The person is going round and round inside, in a destructive,
downward spiral. It is love gone wrong - based on a primitive world-view
that does not take into account the love and feelings of others. Organizations,
too, can be trapped in this manner, by denying responsibility for what
everyone knows they did. For organizations, such stuckness in the exculpatory
story undermines any commitment to the value of honesty.
Why would people hold onto such destructive feelings
of guilt? Because it serves. Such guilt shields us from feelings of
pain and loss. It seems easier to feel guilty than to feel that pain.
Yet only by feeling that pain, can freedom be regained. Until then,
we often separate ourselves from those closest to us. There is actually
a pridefulness in being the greatest wrong-doer. What we did
or failed to do was so bad! That is part of the trap.
In Bert Hellinger's family and systems constellation
work, we actually can see how that destructive self-focus can be released.
We see how one caught in such guilt, when they are confronted, through
representatives, with the feelings of those lost comrades, the lost
or suffering parents, or the suffering children, or those they hurt
or killed or those whom they survived inexplicably, there is often a
sudden release - back into the flow of life. When they see the love
of others that must be taken into account, blind love must yield to
a more knowing or enlightened love. This can also be seen in constellations
that look at organizations.
The secret is to acknowledge what is. To acknowledge
and honor those who were hurt and to undertake to live a better life,
in honor of their sacrifice. In working with people and organizations
held by secondary guilt, a mediator, facilitator or coach can sometimes
evoke, in caucus, the ones whose difficult fate has been a factor in
creating the guilt.
If it is guilt around a parent, probing gently around
how the parent might feel toward the child, even though the parent
may be dead, might be evocative. A parent, no matter how terribly
they behaved, is for each of us the source of life. When we look beyond
the behaviors to this reality, we can feel the grace of what we have
actually received from our parents. This reality then becomes part
of our understanding and allows the bad behavior or loss to be put
into perspective. Deep down, even the most disabled parent wants what
is good for the child. The child instinctively knows this and it is
this love that pulls it out of the downward spiral.
If it is a professional - say in a medical or legal
malpractice matter - such guilt may arise from the event itself or
from a connection into something difficult in the person's earlier
life. Again, gently probing for some place where perspective can be
widened, may prove helpful. When the perpetrator looks outside himself
or herself, and is willing to really see the victim, love and
life flow again. In constellation, someone can represent the patient,
or client, or accident victim, and it can be plainly seen that most
of the time, there is no vindictiveness. Someone can also represent
the perpetrator, facing the victim, letting themselves be seen, and
actually seeing the one they have hurt. Seeing and letting yourself
be seen are profoundly healing.
The perpetrator's acceptance of the full responsibility
for what they did - not as a matter of law, but as an inner state
of awareness - dignifies and settles the perpetrator. It also brings
peace to the system composed of the perpetrator and the victim. When
this is done in constellation, the victim can lay aside the burden
once and for all. No longer is self-destructive, pointless suffering
seen as appropriate. There is now a choice of how the person expresses
this in their life: either in a way that serves life, or in a way
that denies life - for both victim and perpetrator.
Apology can upset the delicate balance. However,
when words of apology are actually an acknowledgement of responsibility
that leaves none for the victim, there is strength to each one. Ordinary
apology serves the apologizer, and often transfers some of the weight
of what was done to the victim. Asking forgiveness is even
worse. The apologizer often feels better after an apology, but the
victim, rarely. The victim may rail at the lack of an apology,
but still find little comfort in the apology. Never once, in many
years of mediation training, did anyone say they would feel better
because of a big, public apology. But words expressing heart-felt
contrition and acceptance of responsibility serve everyone: the underlying
acknowledgement is felt, and is more powerful than words.
If the victim is part of the mediation, facilitation
or other work, then what brings peace is for the victim to acknowledge
that what is, is, and to agree with that. It is the classic
acceptance of what we cannot change. Only through acceptance, can
freedom come.
Healthy guilt spurs us to make amends. It is what victim/offender
mediations work with. When we see how another has suffered at our hand,
we may be moved to take steps that will in some way ameliorate or make
up for what was done. Our focus has turned from ourselves to the other
and by facing the pain of that, we become energized to act in a way
that serves life.
When healthy guilt is present, we are fully able to
act wisely in our own behalf. The act of accepting the consequences
of what was done and opening to the pain it has caused, can be the catalyst
that moves us past the stuckness we experienced in secondary guilt.
Companies and organizations, as well as individuals,
are often counseled by their lawyers never to admit guilt. But coaching
and mediations and some facilitations are conducted under confidentiality
agreements precisely so that no one can say later "he said"
or "she said." Therefore honesty can be given a chance. A
company - or government - laboring under false innocence is much burdened
by the defensive posture. There are times when parsing just exactly
how wrong we were, ends up making things far worse. When a leader or
leaders in the organization can acknowledge guilt cleanly and clearly,
a door opens. If the organization - or the leaders - can accept the
consequences of what was done - not in the legal sense, but in the larger
sense, then, there is energy and motivation to make amends constructively.
Then, the organization can step out of the denial into a new dignity,
just as individuals can do.
How not to do this can be seen in the Bhopal
incident of some 20 years ago. The well was poisoned by a narrow, legal
response (throttling a brief, initial compassionate response) - which
may have been justified in the legal arena, but fell far short of what
was appropriate in a situation where a larger perspective was called
for. So despite great efforts to make amends, little has come of it.
Suffering and loss have been exacerbated and compounded for the company
as well as the victims ever since. Although litigation is finally ended
with the company "vindicated," the real loss to it, and to
its industry, continues.
Disaster response needs to be guided by a much larger
perspective, and then, even when it is truly terrible what happened,
real good can come of it. The desire to confess is universal, for it
signals an acceptance of what is. This is bedrock, firm enough
to move forward on. It is not to our credit that our legal system makes
this so difficult.
In Tony Hillerman's tale, Ashie Pinto, the old
medicine man who liked his drink, goes in at the end to the judge
to confess his guilt in the killing of a man who was stealing from
his people. His lawyer, being aboriginal, accepts this. Whatever his
fate, it cannot be worse than his painful and destructive conscience.
Sometimes, confession is the means by which secondary guilt is transmuted
into healthy guilt.
By listening through your heart, you can begin to hear
these subtle realities and see their influence on the situation or negotiation
at hand. You can then take steps that will build people's capacity to
choose to acknowledge the real pain and the real loss and to begin to
act more constructively. To be present here is to participate in something
dignified and meaningful.
In one of the next issues, Of Seeds and Sowers
will look at Lies. Barbara Ashley Phillips
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