Episode #244 - That Guilty Feeling

Guilt is a primary emotion of the body that allows it to maintain habit formation but it can also be a terrible obstacle to mental and emotional illness.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #243 – That Guilty Feeling.  I am your host Damon Socha.  So a quick detour first thing today.  Yes I was disappointed that General Conference did not include another discussion of mental health.  I suppose that is because they have so few brethren who have dealt directly with a mental or emotional health challenge that is longer term.  We talk about what we know and that is generally how the Lord works and why he needs such diversity in our membership.  Disappointed yes but also very understanding of the brethren and their heavy responsibilities.

The church did add some additional resources for mental health to their website.  I reviewed them this last week.  I like that some of the information was more specific.  However, I found it lacking in content in the sense of practical help.  We generally know that the Lord will help us and is involved in the details of our lives but where we need help is how to live the gospel with a long term mental and or emotional health challenge.  That is certainly the intent of this podcast but I am by no means one of the general authorities of the church and can only speak to my experiences.  It would be wonderful if a more practical approach could be taken to understanding and working with members of the church who suffer.  Maybe someone listening knows one of those brethren and can suggest some additional, practical answers to those questions that so deeply affect our lives.

Onto today’s subject.  I am going to warn you that you need to listen to the entire message today.  If you listen to only the first half you may miss the most important part.

During his commentary to his son Helaman, Alma recounted his experience during a visit by an angelic messenger.  He noted the experience this way in Alma 36.

12 But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.

13 Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments.

14 Yea, and I had murdered many of his children, or rather led them away unto destruction; yea, and in fine so great had been my iniquities, that the very thought of coming into the presence of my God did rack my soul with inexpressible horror.

15 Oh, thought I, that I could be banished and become extinct both soul and body, that I might not be brought to stand in the presence of my God, to be judged of my deeds.

Alma was experiencing an intense form of guilt.  Note his extreme feelings during the experience.  He talks of being racked with eternal torment, and tormented by the pains of hell.  Remember, the angel did nothing to Alma physically, this is all his own emotional experience.  Alma teaches a valuable lesson in these scriptures.  Emotion, especially the emotion of guilt has a profound effect upon the mortal body and can cause extreme pain and suffering.  Such suffering that it may bring the individual to suicidal thoughts as Alma noted by saying that he could be banished or become extinct.  Although that is not new to anyone who has experienced it. What we see in Alma, we have all experienced in the sense of sin.  Perhaps not to the same degree of suffering and pain but we will experience similar emotions when we walk away from the Lord’s covenants.

But what is guilt.  Why do we have it?  Why do we need it?  And ultimately how does this emotion of guilt interact with our emotional and mental illness?

While most of us think that we could do without guilt in our lives, the truth is that guilt as a motivational source is vital to a healthy functioning brain.  We need guilt in our lives, minds and emotions.  Yes that seems strange to say but think what your world would be without feeling guilty.  We would tend to wander all over the place in the sense of morality and agency.  While the Spirit would provide blessings and joy based to our obedience, our disobedience would run amuck without anything to stop it.  We would be without an anchoring influence to keep us within those patterns and habits we have learned.  Our mind and physical functioning would also suffer.  Remember our mind needs habits and routines to function properly.  It does not have enough computing capacity to constantly think about all of the various functions of the body and accomplish all of the tasks we need to survive.

If you have listened to this podcast for any length of time, you will know that I talk regularly about the nature of our mind and how it creates and uses habits.  Habits or common routines are incredibly important to the mind as it frees up the processor in the brain for more important learning.  If we did not have habits or known routines, our brain would be forced to think through even the smallest of tasks taking up far too much processing time.  So our brain is wired to create these simple routines that we can do without thinking.  Such as eating driving a car, walking, knitting, and really any type of activity where a consistent routine can be applied.  Our brain is so intent on creating these habit routines that it creates all types of them from complex to simple.  The reality of pro sports such as gymnastics is that the athlete is creating habitual routines that do not require the use of the processing part of the brain.  This is where the saying “Stop thinking so much about it and just rely upon instinct.  This instinct are those routines our brain has run so many times it simply does not need the processor to accomplish the task.  The same is true for musicians, artists, and really any type of profession.  When we create routines and habits, we become far more effective and efficient.  We can leave the routine tasks to the unconscious brain and use the conscious brain to interpret the present circumstances, apply historical lessons, decide upon how to act and to stitch together the routines and habits.  The brain needs these routines to function properly and so it uses a sharp, penetrating and lasting emotion we call guilt to keep us in our patterns.  Now guilt isn’t experienced the same for all individuals.  Some people have a very developed sense of guilt and have trouble deviating in the slightest from their routines and habits others appear to feel it much less.  And some have learned that at times we need to evaluate our habits and routines to make sure that they are consistent with what we know to be true.

Now our physical mind has a sharp developed sense of guilt and we feel it all the time.  However, we learn from Alma’s experience that our spiritual mind also uses the same emotion.  He noted something called eternal torment.  He does not seem to indicate that this eternal torment is a permanent suffering but rather a torment of the spiritual mind, the eternal mind.  Our spiritual mind in the premortal experience appears to have created patterns, habits and routines similar to our mortal brain.  And it produces intense guilt when we have violated our own moral compass.  We tend to call this feeling our conscience.  A cricket on the shoulder telling us wrong and right as in the story of Pinocchio.  What I believe is our spiritual mind created deeply seated routines, habits and patterned feelings during our sojourn in the premortal life.  These patterns, routines and feelings are part of the unconscious spirit brain.  When we violate our premortal beliefs and standards that created our eternal habits and deep seating feelings, we feel guilty.  Our level or intensity of guilt is likely to depend upon what we did that was wrong, how deep our patterns were established in the premortal life, how responsive we are to the emotion of guilt and ultimately our spiritual nature just before we came to earth.  When we feel this spiritual guilt, we are actually feeling our eternal identity.  We already had a spiritual identity long before this earth.  Our feelings of joy and guilt when we choose between obedience and sin allows us to access our spiritual identity and become the person we were before this life.  While we have no conscious memory, we have an unconscious spiritual memory that can be used almost identically to the one we have created in our mortal mind.  Subconsciously the spiritual brain is using the habits and routines we created to send messages of joy or guilt.  It can even do this when we are simply thinking through an action we might take.  Both the physical and spiritual brains are all about protection and so being able to project possible guilt is as important as the guilty feeling itself.  The Savior allowed for these indelible spiritual emotions to guide our lives to him and his gospel.  And so through the spirit of the Lord and our subconscious we have access to our spiritual nature that we might use our training, skills and knowledge obtained before this life.  We truly tend to become the person we once were in the premortal earth life.  Because it is our subconscious spiritual habits and routines that are informing our decisions.

Now most individuals in the church equate guilt to sin.  And while it is true that guilt does come from sin.  Not all guilt is created by sin.  Guilt can be created to keep us within our habits.  And some habits have nothing to do with right and wrong.  Guilt can come from external sources such as peer, group or cultural pressures and expectations that have nothing to do with right or wrong.  It can also come from the sources of mental and emotional illness without any other outside influence.  And we can experience these different types of guilt separately or all together.  Guilt can be a complex thing and sometimes we are faced with strange scenarios.  For instance, I can feel guilty staying home from church because I have a terrible illness and I don’t want to spread it to others.  Should I feel guilty about staying home because I am sick, no.  But do I?  Yes.  And why is that?  I have done nothing wrong in the sight of the Lord and yet I feel guilty.  That is where you need to be able to honestly review your habits and fully understand when that habit doesn’t fit the situation.  Good habits can turn into terrible idols when our focus is solely upon completing the habit without understanding the why.  Think of the Jewish leaders at the time of Christ.  How did they look beyond the mark?  Habits and rules had become their gods.  They had completely missed the mark that the habits they were establishing during those 1200 years were linked to Christ and they had a divine purpose.  If you don’t see the why behind the habits you create, you can feel guilty breaking a routine even when that is the right course of action.

It is so important to understand that not all guilt is related to sin but far more related to the way our brain works.  And not only is it important to understand but it is important to recognize when it is occurring in our lives.  Why?  Because this is where mental illness takes a terrible toll upon our spirit and bodies.  Because guilt is an emotion, it can be misused by our emotional and mental illness.  Meaning we can feel guilty, even when nothing is wrong.  We can feel guilty even when we have not broken a routine.  We can simply feel guilty.  For me, this is incredibly important and I wish I had known it much sooner in my life.  When I suffered bipolar and even now when depression and anxiety come calling, my episodes almost always start with guilt.  It is a physically and spiritually painful emotion.  I get a literal pain in the center of my chest along with those deep feelings that something is wrong.  I will wrestle with these feelings for days until I simply give into the feelings, even though I can tell nothing in my present life has caused the feelings.  Analytically I can access that nothing is wrong and my life is in order but my heart and mind tell me an entirely different story.  I feel guilty as though I have done something wrong.  This is where you will find a common experience among members of the church who suffer with mental and emotional illness.  I can it the first spiritual symptom of mental illness.  We tend to dig up old bones and then resurrect the sins that come with them that have long been buried.  We tend to repent of our sins over and over again even when we once felt forgiven.  The answer to this problem is simple as to why.  Our mortal mind demands answers for the emotion.  We shouldn’t be feeling guilty if we are not guilty.  So we must be guilty of something.  Our minds tend to invent the answer to the guilt and that is often old bones.  But problematically the answer doesn’t solve the issue because even when we attend to repent the guilt remains.  This leads to a second spiritual symptom and that is we are not trying hard enough.  We need to improve our obedience and devotion to the Lord.  And certainly that isn’t a bad thing but it is when you are limited emotionally by your illness.  When you might already be running faster than your illness can manage, increasing your speed is not the answer.  And yet the guilt drives us forward.  We then come to a third spiritual symptom, resignation and resignment.  We exhaust our spiritual, emotional and physical strength and we collapse into the abyss.  We resign ourselves that we will never be good enough, never have enough strength to overcome, never be able to measure up to the Lord’s standards.  So often when this spiritual darkness occurs, we feel resigned to our fate in life and this causes something interesting to occur, at least it does for me.  It is at this point that I let go of all the obligations, expectations, cares and concerns.  I resign myself to wallowing in the mire.  This allows for the illness to be relieved of stress and it can often bring a small to medium spiritual and physical lift.  We can feel certain stresses leave the mind and body.  This doesn’t mean we are better, it simply means we reduced the stress.  But it can feel in that moment that maybe membership in the church isn’t for us.  If we feel lighter by letting all those expectations fall from us, then maybe church life isn’t what I need in my life.  The truth is that we are feeling a lightening of the load due to a reduction in stress and expectations not because leaving the church is the right thing to do.  

So is our guilt due to sin, is it due to habit formation or is it due to our mental and emotional illness?  That is the question.  For me, guilt has always been a large part of my mental health difficulties.  And I believe that to be true for most individuals who suffer and are doing their best.  Sustained guilt, in general, is a sign of emotional and mental illness rather than a problem with sin.  This information can be invaluable to a parent, friend or church leader as they work with youth and adults.  Repentance is not going to fix the issue as sin is not the concern.  When you understand the spiritual symptoms and their origins you will come to better understand how to work with youth and adults who struggle.  When they come to you stating that they don’t feel forgiveness and their emotional guilt is lasting far longer than it should, then the leader can be relatively assured that emotional and mental illness may be part of the problem.  This doesn’t mean that they will solve the problem but identification of the issue is the key to success in managing the true illness.  I hope that what I have shared today provides you needed insight into your own illness or that of another.  Guilt is a terrible master when it comes to emotions as the brain tends to respond very quickly to its beaconing call.  It can tear one apart spiritually, physically and mentally and bring one down to the gulf of misery.  However, understanding guilt and how it functions can at least provide for some answers and solace to a troubled soul.  For me it has been a balm of Gilead to be able to identify my guilt as the product of a troubling illness.  It has helped me to better understand the gospel, the value of guilt and its place in our lives.  I hope this week you feel the peace and guiding hand of the Savior.  Until next week.  Do your part so that the Lord can do his.