Governed by guilt

[pinkytoe]

confession and absolution of sins

I still can recall as a child the weight I felt lifted after going to confession. Ironically, I had to think hard to come up with a list of "sins" beforehand.

[catherine]

I still can recall as a child the weight I felt lifted after going to confession. Ironically, I had to think hard to come up with a list of "sins" beforehand.

I had a traumatic experience in the confessional once. I was probably about 10-12 and had a couple of friends and I had done some exploration of our anatomy as it were in the neighbor's garage. Of course after that I knew I had to confess it. I went into the dark confessional, the window slid open and I struggled with how to actually say what I had done, so I chalked is up to "13 impure acts."

The priest asked, "Are you married?" I was a bit aghast, since I had hardly even hit puberty, so I simply said, "No, Father."

So he said, "For your penance, I want you to say a rosary and never see this person again."

I sat I the back of the church, my head spinning. A ROSARY!! The most I had ever gotten was 1 Our Father and 3 Hail Mary's. That was humiliating enough but my biggest concern was, how was I going to explain to my mother why I wasn't playing with my best friend Joannie anymore?

So, yeah, I felt guilty for a short time. But I didn't regret my noncompliance with the priest's penance. Joannie and I remained good friends. And no regrets, since I know it was just a misunderstanding on the priest's end.

[iris lilies]

Guilt. I have lots of it, always. That is what keeps me from thinking I’m a sociopath. I may not have much empathy with other people since I nearly always get annoyed when they lead with their feeeeeelings in any discussion, but I have shit tons of guilt. I’m always feeling guilt about something, but the severity varies.

At the moment I feel very light guilt about a rescue dog situation. We will see how that plays out.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't consider myself particularly empathetic. I can have guilt. I try to be a decent person by my own lights. I often care as much about plants as people.

It may be as legitimate to lead a discussion with feelings as facts if you are dealing with 1) dishonest debaters who will throw every trick in the book at you and don't really care about getting at the truth of the matter anyway. it's pointless (not to mention pointlessly exhausting) to debate honestly at that point. one should not try 2) questions of values which can never entirely be resolved by pure facts anyway.

[Teacher Terry]

I grew up Lutheran which is really Catholic light version. I have plenty of guilt and probably too much empathy.

[jp1]

Guilt and regret are both forms of remorse, but guilt is your conscience telling you you shouldn't have done something, and regret is "guilt-lite". I think it's more driven by melancholy and thwarted desire.

Off the top of my head guilt is ‘I did this and harmed someone else and wish I hadn’t’. Regret is ‘I did this and harmed myself’.

Ldahl and Rosa seem to have expanded on similar thoughts on the topic.