Dr. Brent Peery on helping others with guilt

Not All Guilt Is the Same

Guilt is ubiquitous among the parents with whom I work in a children’s hospital. We parents often adopt for ourselves an admirable but unrealistic job description. We aim to care for our children in such a way that they are kept safe from all harm. When our child requires hospitalization for illness or injury, failure is implied. Disturbingly, parents often feel a deep sense of guilt even when no reasonable cause and effect can be established between them and their child’s ailment.

Frederick Buechner observes, “It is about as hard to absolve yourself of your own guilt as it is to sit in your own lap.”[1] Most people who struggle with guilt are going to need the assistance of another to resolve the struggle and experience absolution.

For centuries persons have turned to clergy for help with their guilt. To be sure there has been and continues to be great variation in the effectiveness of clergy in providing that help; from healthy guidance to ignorance to outright abuse. Be that as it may, very often chaplains are the members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team to whom patients and families turn for help in managing their guilt.

It is important to recognize guilt can be both a healthy and an unhealthy emotion. Healthy guilt helps a person realign his or her behavior and/or thoughts to be congruent with his or her beliefs and values. When changes have been made, the person experiences some relief. This leads to more satisfying ways of living. Unhealthy guilt is more existential. It points to no particular reform of action or thought through which relief from guilt might be experienced. Instead, it is a general feeling of shame for being. The latter is what I encounter most among parents.

So how does a chaplain respond to guilt in a patient or family member? First, he or she needs to assess whether the guilt is healthy or not. The key question to answer is, “Is this feeling rooted in some sort of violation of this person’s values or beliefs?” If so, the chaplain’s interventions are most helpfully aimed at helping them acknowledge the violation, engage in rituals of absolution appropriate to their beliefs, and develop strategies for avoiding violations in the future.

If the chaplain determines the person’s guilt is of the unhealthy or existential variety, he or she may need to focus intervention toward education and reassurance. Help the other to understand not all guilt is the same. Not all guilt is healthy. Not all expectations placed on us by ourselves or others are reasonable. Laudable and worthwhile are our efforts to keep our children from all harm. Our world is too dangerous for us to always be successful.

[1] Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. New York: HarperCollins, 1973. 35.

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