Guilt and Kindness: The Twin Flames That Can Burn Us
When taken to the extreme, the combined forces of guilt and kindness can compromise our mental well-being.
Do you have guilty feelings and can’t seem to shake them? Why is guilt such a lousy bedfellow that’s so hard to lose? In this newsletter, I’ll be offering my own experience from the perspecive of my Confucian and Catholic upbringings. I’d love to hear yours.
Guilt is one of those strong feelings that motivate us to make certain decisions and take certain actions out of an innate sense of responsibility and empathy for another living being. We feel guilty when our actions have gone against the values we hold dear. A sense of regret often accompanies guilt.
The feeling of guilt may arise when someone in the kin or tribe falls ill, is injured or is treated unfairly, but we aren’t able to step in to help. That’s because we have a sense of duty toward the folks we are closely connected with. The guilty feeling in time spurs us to take action and care for the kin or to redress the injustice.
In such contexts, guilt can be a positive force. It can help us live closer to our values and conscience.
Sometimes, even though the people who suffer aren’t our kin or in our immediate environment, we may feel a sense of guilt from deep within. Why’s that? I believe that’s because, subconsciously, we want to know that we’re essentially a good person, that we are still in touch with our conscience. If we don’t feel guilty at all, we might question whether we lack conscience and integrity. “Am I cold, selfish or even a sociopath?”
As uncomfortable as it may feel, guilt can, in a strange way, exonerate us from our non-action or the inability to act and alleviate the sufferer’s pain.
However, guilt may take on an extreme form. It can show up as a dampening, or even crushing, undertone of our existence.
I have heard people say they feel guilty “a lot” or “all the time.” I used to be one of them.
Confucianism and Guilt
Those of us who grew up in a collectivist culture, such as the Chinese culture in which I was raised, know that guilt is a powerful tool to regulate social order.
Millennia ago, guilt was an instinct that helped preserve our species by way of automatic caring for our tribe.
In ancient China, guilt was leveraged and combined with shame to ensure family members took care of one another in a society that did not have any welfare system.
As such, Confucius’ teachings became the principles by which the social and moral fabric of Chinese society was woven. Parents would pass down the sage’s teachings by way of “traditions.” For example, children were taught to uphold the virtue of “filial piety” (孝道) and to fulfill the duties of their basic prescribed roles(本份) .
There is a set of must’s and should’s that we are supposed to follow. One of them is that children must take care of their parents when they are old and no longer able to care for themselves physically and financially. If we stray from these must’s and should’s, we would be considered a disobedient child. A disobedient child, in the Chinese cultural context, is equivalent to a “bad child” deserving of death by a lightning bolt(被雷劈死)!
The feeling of guilt is attached to such teachings and drilled into our head. If it’s only guilt that we feel, we would feel better simply by correcting our mistakes or making amends to our transgressions.
But I believe there’s more to that. In teaching us the virtues of filial piety, while attaching dire consequences and judgments to the inability to exhibit these virtues, our elders superimpose shame on the layer of guilt, making these cultural rules highly effective. No one needs to be whipped to do things. Guilt and shame can do the job perfectly!
This kind of shame is toxic because it is attached to our sense of worth as a person. Instead of “I did something bad,” toxic shame makes us feel “I am bad.” In time, this erodes our sense of self-worth and lovability, and can have destructive effects on our mental health and our relationships.
I’ve experienced this kind of guilt + shame in my relationship with my parents almost my whole life and I will write about it in a future post.
The Chinese word “guilt” (内疚)is made up of two characters — “inner” and “guilt.”
Interestingly, the character guilt itself can be divided into two sub characters — “illness” (疒 )and “lasting”( 久). From the modern psychological perspective, this is akin to a chronic illness of the inner world. In fact, the original meaning of 疚 was long-term sickness.
When guilt is laden with toxic shame and harsh self-criticism, it can crush our spirits and lead us to do things that are detrimental to our own well-being.
Confucianism, Christianity and Kindness
Another interesting Confucian teaching is kindness and compassion (仁)(please check out
‘s essay on this Chinese character on her beautiful Character Project newsletter.) 仁 happens to be the second character in my late father’s “first name.” He himself was an embodiment of the spirit of kindness and compassion. I admired his qualities and modeled after him.Oftentimes, I found myself responding to the feeling of guilt with kindness — but I took it to an extreme. This resulted in a severe compromise of my own well-being and happiness, because I have often acted kindly toward someone who was in a situation that called for compassion, to a degree tht it was detrimental to my own well-being.
I have been wondering why I took guilt+kindness to such an extreme.
I believe this tendency was nurtured thanks to the lack of boundaries in the Chinese family system. What I learned at home was then applied to my personal and intimate relationships when I grew up. I didn’t know how to draw healthy boundaries and say “no.” I kept on giving and giving with unlimited kindness and sacrifice. It didn’t help that self-sacrifice is also considered a virtue in the traditional role a woman plays — no matter the culture. My mental health suffered greatly as a result.
Searching deeper through my memories, I came upon this verse in the Bible: “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5:38-48)
You see, I went to a Catholic secondary school in my teenage years. What I learned there became an overlay of the Confucian education in my elementary school years. The combined indoctrination made me desire to be a “good person” regardless of circumstances, and prepared me for a lifetime of abuse by those who took advantage of my “naive” kindness.
Questions to ponder:
Would you like to share how you have been affected by the feeling of guilt? What has guilt made you do that wasn’t actually beneficial or healthy for yourself?
I resonate so much with many of your essays! Guilt!! Asian daughter!!
I relate to this a lot. I grew up in an East African culture, also Christian, also hardcore collectivist. What strikes me now is not just the guilt in the western sense (i.e. feeling bad when you do something that hurts someone else), but the obsession with self-image. I remember once when I was in college and didn't want to come home for a family event. My dad's response was: "What will people think?" I'm faced with something similar now, where I'm halfway around the world and will miss an important family event, and it would be too much of a personal disruption to fly back. There's this romanticization of being a martyr, of putting your needs dead last for the sake of others, and thankfully I've finally learned that the applause is not worth it.
It's a tough thing to balance, because in many ways I'm also very grateful that I grew up in a collectivist culture. The support my family and friends have for me is astounding, I'm proud of many of the values I have, and it now warms my heart whenever all of us are fighting to pay a check after a meal. I wouldn't want any other community. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance not being a martyr with the beautiful selflessness that keeps our communities impeccable.