Solid Guilt

Posted by fxckfeelings on October 1, 2009

Guilt is an unvoidable part of life—as well as a central motivator of at least a couple of religions—and often the sources of guilt (see: family) never go away. What most people don’t realize is that there’s false guilt and real guilt, the former far more easy to ignore, the latter worth confronting in a meaningful way. Still, while you can’t get rid of guilt overall, there are ways of managing it so that, at the very least, it doesn’t become a holy pain in the ass.
–Dr. Lastname

My mother is a drama queen– she thrives on family conflict and gossip and needs to control every step of my life. She has her nose in everyone’s business, talks badly about most people, and also has a violent temper (at 79 years old, she still throws things and flips people [like me] the bird out of anger). Several events happened that finally made me so angry with her that I literally told her off and have cut ties with her for over a year, but during this year I have suffered from terrible guilt and shame for turning my back on my elderly mother. Believe me, I feel better and more relaxed without her constant turmoil, but there are nights that I wake up from a dream where I am shunned at her funeral as “the daughter who abandoned her mother”. I have tried, in the past, to talk sense into her and explain my feelings but she creeps back to her same troubling ways. My goal is to get over the guilt that I feel about cutting my mother out of my life.

Anger is never a good reason for doing anything, and particularly not for cutting off ties with your mother; after all, anger’s a feeling, and you know that’s a dirty word. It’s not that you don’t have good reasons for being angry, just not for letting anger make your decisions.

As you’ve now realized, once you let anger take over, it’s very hard to protect yourself against guilt, which is where your major problem lies now. The only good, healthy defense against guilt, other than drowning your neurotransmitters in alcohol, is to know you’ve done the right thing, regardless of how unhappy you’ve made someone feel or how badly they’re suffering while you’re the one standing watch.

In this instance, unfortunately, you haven’t done the right thing, so guilt has become your master.

It’s not so bad to tell your mother off, but you’ve kept the bad feelings alive by cutting her off and letting her know that she’s at fault. That’s where you’ve assumed a share of responsibility for the conflict between you, and that’s not just a guilty feeling, that’s real guilt.

You have good reason to want to punish your mother and avoid the pain of her abuse, but that goal has two major flaws. First of all, your mother doesn’t deserve to be punished, because she can’t help being who she is, and there’s no point in punishing an asshole for being an asshole any more than punishing a snake for being a snake. You’ll wind up feeling guilty and responsible for the pain you’ve caused because the snake had no choice, but you did.

Second, that goal creates more conflict and commits more of your attention and energy to the worst part of your mother and your relationship with her, and that’s simply not what you want, because that will make both of you more miserable and part of your misery will be, you guessed it, guilt.

And you won’t just be tortured by the guilty feeling aroused by your mother’s accusing look and defiant digit—a guilty feeling you can tell yourself you don’t deserve—but by the real guilt of causing pain you could have prevented.

A better goal is to protect yourself from your mother’s anger, and your own guilt, while making the most of whatever good you can find in her. If there’s no good there, and she really lacks any redeeming features that you may someday recollect with fondness, admiration, or even bitter laughter, she may well be someone with that rarest of psychiatric DSMIV diagnoses, a “perfect asshole.”

Well, come to think of it, she already meets criteria for being a perfect asshole, because she always sees her nastiness as merely a reaction to other people’s faults, and that’s why there’s no point in reasoning with or trying to get through to her. On the other hand, she may also be an irredeemable asshole who is perfect all the time, which would be remarkable because few human beings are perfect, even in that way. But perfection rarely flashes the middle finger.

Yes, it may seem disrespectful or disloyal to say “my mother is an asshole” but, really, it’s the only way to make it not personal. It’s a scientific fact that being an asshole is not an obstacle to getting married and having children, and may even help in those pursuits. So, without any offense intended, you’re the child of an asshole and it’s your job to deal with it getting shit on (so to speak).

So don’t try to “talk sense into her” or “explain your feelings.” You’re not going to change her and trying is a waste of time, an invitation to more trouble, and an aggravation to your mother. It will also lead to your assuming more responsibility for the bad feelings that happen next.

Surely you’ve done business with people who had their nasty side but could be pleasant if you caught them on a good day and treated them carefully; as long as you didn’t try to hold them accountable, correct their behavior, or offer them lip. So do the same with your mother and treat her like an asshole who has, at times, taken good care of you and probably done some other good things (like given you life).

You know the drill. Talk about nothing personal, go with a friend when you see her, meet in public, keep it short, and leave quickly and politely if her inner demon appears.

And yes, you’ll feel better in the short run if you tell her that she’s an asshole and refuse to talk to her until she apologizes and attends assholes anonymous. As if an asshole would ever settle for anonymity.

In the long run, however, you will come closer to living by your values and protecting yourself from guilt if you suck up your pain and humiliation and maintain some kind of polite (on your side) relationship. She’ll never do right by you on your terms, but if you do right by her on your terms, you can tame your guilt and reclaim your life.

STATEMENT:
Since you’re not going to confront your mother, prepare a statement to answer someone who says “how can you take that abusive shit lying down without seeing yourself as a total victim and wuss?” “My mother has never had much control over her inner ass-hole which makes her a giant pain in my ass. But fighting her is pointless and makes me act nasty, which is the opposite of what I want to do and is worse than the humiliation she occasionally throws my way. I don’t need to prove I can stand up to her. What’s more important to me is to try to act decently regardless of the shit she throws at me.”

After 10 years of marriage, 8 of them fairly miserable, I finally got a divorce from my husband. We have a daughter together, which is why we tried to stick it out so long, but he was a really terrible partner; rarely worked, often angry, and not even that available to our kid. Now that we’re over, however, things aren’t much better in that he’s become this cloying, pathetic presence who’s always lurking around, fishing for pity and reconciliation. When we were married, I was pretty good at keeping my anger to myself, but now that we’re divorced, I have no patience for his bullshit and find myself really digging into him all the time. I try not to do it around our child, but his behavior brings out a really mean side of me to the point where I almost feel guilty for the way I treat him, even though he’s a pain in the ass who’s never done one nice thing for me aside from give me my little girl. My goal is to stop feeling bad about treating this asshole so badly.

Sadly, when you make your goal to feel better about treating an asshole badly, you’re actually hoping to become an asshole yourself. Only assholes can torment without guilt, just ask your ex-asshole. I mean, -husband.

So if you back up and think about it, your goal is actually to stop acting like an asshole and stop treating your ex- badly, so your guilty feeling doesn’t become the real thing. And the best way to do that is to have less of a chance to act around/react to your ex, period.

If your pathetic-acting ex- succeeds in making you feel guilty, you’re more likely to act mean, which will allow your guilty feeling to cause you to act badly, which will leave you with real guilt, which will confirm your ex-partner’s reality.

So another major reason for your loss of control may be your inability, because of your guilty feelings, to create a boundary and shut off your contact with your ex- when he starts to drive you crazy. If you’re feeling guilty, you may bend over backwards and spend too much time listening to him. Which will then get you irritated and mean. Rinse, repeat.

So your goal isn’t to stop feeling guilty, but to tolerate guilty feelings while acting reasonably, and the first reasonable thing you can do to protect yourself from your ex-husband’s neediness is to create a boundary that defines what you talk about, and excludes everything else.

It’s OK to talk about anything child-related, but not to express feelings other than admiration for the children, the weather and/or your favorite baseball team. If your ex- tends to ramble, sigh, or otherwise emote, politely leave the conversation and give him your email for dealing with any left-over child-care issues.

Cut it off before anyone gets a chance to be an asshole, and you’ll have nothing to feel bad about.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to respond to any protest he might lodge against your lack of empathy or respect. “We both deserve respect and it’s important that we treat one another with respect. I believe the best way to do that is to avoid expressing negative feelings about our marriage or lives or discussing issues that used to cause us conflict. Instead, let’s focus on informing one another about our kid and making arrangements to care for her. If I stop a conversation or appear abrupt, it will be to keep the conversation away from bad topics and focused on good topics. It will not be intended to express disrespect.”