Guilt-Driven Behavior: How Excessive Or Inappropriate Guilt Can Influence Actions

While guilt is a natural emotion experienced by most people, sometimes a person fixates on negative feelings about past mistakes, whether real or perceived, and develops unhealthy thought or behavior patterns. Excessive, persistent guilt can influence your mood and actions, which may precipitate mental health conditions like depression or anxiety when left unresolved. Read on to learn more about guilt, how it can affect the way you act, and the tools you can learn in online therapy to manage your emotions and guilt-driven behaviors.

What is guilt?

Mental health experts at the American Psychological Association define guilt as an uncomfortable, self-conscious emotion related to doing or believing you have done something wrong. Many people also experience guilt when failing to act in a situation, regardless of whether their efforts would have made a difference. Guilt is often associated with feelings of shame, hopelessness, remorse, fear of repercussions, sadness, and worthlessness. When guilt is accompanied by shame, a person may have the additional fear that their actions will be publicly judged or criticized.

Defining guilt-driven behavior

Guilt-driven behavior is choosing to act based on your feelings of guilt, whether appropriate or irrational. For example, someone who feels guilty for cheating on their spouse may try to mitigate the emotional reaction by being overly sensitive to the needs of the partner they’ve wronged. 

According to a recent study on how guilt influences actions, guilt prompts participants to divide resources more generously with others, but they often only do so when those others are persons whom the participant had wronged and when those wronged individuals could notice the gesture.

Recognizing how persistent guilt may affect you

Guilt can affect a person in many ways. Some symptoms of persistent guilt may include:

• Social isolation or believing you don’t deserve the comfort of social contact
• Strong convictions that you cannot recover from violating your moral code
• Feeling worthless, hopeless, or like you are a terrible person without knowing why
• Trouble concentrating or making decisions
• Changes to your eating or sleep patterns
• Physical symptoms like headache, stomachache, unidentified muscle pain, muscle tension, or other stress-related symptoms
• Mental health conditions like depression or anxiety
• Excessive sensitivity to criticism
• Persistent worry over how others perceive your morality
• Difficulty setting and maintaining healthy boundaries

Exploring when and how people experience guilty feelings

Each person may experience guilt in their own way. Discover the different types of guilt identified by psychologists:

Natural guilt

A standard reaction to something you did—or did not—do that you view as wrong according to your personal value system or societal expectations. Natural guilt typically occurs immediately after you did something you perceive to be wrong, for example lying to your friend. You may feel guilty immediately after and tell your friend the truth to make amends.   

Adaptive or healthy guilt

Coinciding with natural guilt, this type is rational and involves adaptive, healthy emotional reactions to uncomfortable feelings of guilt. Healthy guilt inspires positive prosocial behavioral changes, helping to prevent repeated mistakes.

Existential guilt

You may feel existential guilt when you excessively worry about not achieving or being “enough,” failing to find your life’s purpose, or not progressing far enough in your life. 

Toxic guilt

The overwhelming, invasive thought that you are not a good person, fail at everything you do, or always disappoint others is toxic guilt. Unlike adaptive or natural guilt, toxic guilt doesn't inspire positive behavioral changes and can lead to adverse emotional reactions. 

Misplaced, inappropriate, or survivor’s guilt

Misplaced or irrational guilt occurs when you take responsibility if you are not at fault or for things beyond your control. A specific subtype of irrational guilt is survivor’s guilt, where a person feels guilty for living through a traumatic event where someone else was seriously injured or died. 

Maladaptive or unhealthy guilt

Psychologists define maladaptive guilt as situations where amends are not possible, you feel guilty for circumstances beyond your influence, or your guilty feelings are unjustifiable, exaggerated, or distorted. Like toxic guilt, unhealthy guilt rarely leads to positive changes. 

Mental health conditions may cause or worsen guilt

Various categories of mental illness are associated with guilt, either by contributing to constant feelings of responsibility, convincing you that you are at fault, or driving you toward actions that will lead to intense feelings of guilt.

• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or survivor’s guilt
• Anxiety disorders
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Mood disorders, such as depression
• Eating disorders
• Dysphoria (lingering feelings of dissatisfaction)
• Alcohol and substance use disorders
• Sexual disorders or addictions

If you are struggling with substance use, contact the SAMHSA National Helpline at (800) 662-4357 to receive support and resources. Support is available 24/7.

How do feelings of guilt influence mental health?

Guilt is a healthy emotion when it helps you to recognize and reshape harmful behaviors and keeps you from repeating the same mistakes. However, when guilt becomes pervasive and/or does not subside, guilt can become unhealthy. Studies show that toxic or unproductive guilty feelings are often linked with the mental health conditions mentioned above, often exacerbating symptoms and making a negative impact on mental health. 

Why do people feel excessive guilt?

While the reasons someone develops a guilt complex vary by individual, mental health professionals have identified some common causes among people with excessive guilt. 

Traumatic childhood experiences like abuse or neglect

Many people who live through traumatic childhood experiences, such as neglect or abuse, develop an insecure attachment style, which can affect how they form and maintain relationships and view themselves throughout their lives. Sadly, many survivors of traumatic childhood experiences live with guilt stemming from the belief that they could have stopped or done something to prevent it. This guilt can become generalized as adults and affect their relationships and mental health.

Personal values, moral code, and religious beliefs

If you act against your personal values and morals, you may experience feelings of guilt. Additionally, some religious beliefs consider everyone a sinner, which could lead to pervasive feelings of guilt with no specific cause.

Surviving a traumatic event

Studies show that up to 90% of survivors of a traumatic event that took someone’s life experience guilt, regardless of whether they had any role or responsibility in the incident. People also can experience guilt from any traumatic event if other people were harmed in any way and they were left unscathed.

Family, cultural, or societal values and expectations

You may also feel guilty for breaking away from or embracing certain values your family, culture, or society holds. For example, a person’s culture may emphasize the importance of family values and putting family before work or education. You may experience this type of guilt if you choose to prioritize studying for a university exam over attending an important family event. 

What to expect from online therapy to overcome guilt

Emotional challenges can be easier to face with the support and guidance of a mental health professional helping you navigate the journey.

Examine your experiences to uncover what’s making you feel guilty

During online therapy sessions, your therapist may help you examine your previous experiences and personal history to discover why you feel guilty. Your counselor can also diagnose any mental illness or illnesses contributing to your guilt. 

Acknowledge past mistakes, process guilty feelings, and move forward

A qualified therapist can help you navigate the emotional journey to acknowledge your past mistakes—or your lack of responsibility—in situations that cause guilt to arise. They will help teach you to practice healthy ways to address and process those emotions, let go of your guilt, and move forward without the physical weight of guilt holding you down.

Learn to identify appropriate and irrational guilt

While guilt is uncomfortable, it usually serves a purpose by attaching negative self-directed emotions to actions you perceive as “wrong.” Feeling guilty can inspire positive behavioral changes and help manage social behavior.

Guilt may become irrational, toxic, misplaced, or undeserved when you take responsibility for a situation you did not create or shape, overestimate the impact of your action or lack thereof, instinctively believe yourself at fault, or when it no longer inspires positive changes. If you are unable to identify unhealthy guilt on your own, a therapist could help you identify the source and guide you through strategies for letting go. 

Develop your emotional intelligence, awareness, and literacy

Your therapist will help you to develop your sense of emotional intelligence to recognize your feelings, self-awareness to understand the feelings and how they affect you, and emotional literacy to express your thoughts and feelings adequately. When you feel self-conscious or negative about feeling guilty, celebrate your sensitivity and empathy for those around you. Studies show that guilt-prone people tend to show greater skill at recognizing others’ emotions. 

Establish an array of practical coping skills

Your therapist may also guide you in the formation of practical coping skills. In therapy, you may learn how to create and use these coping skills to help you manage your stressors and guilty feelings to navigate tense situations and process your emotions in healthy ways. 

How online therapy can help you stop feeling guilty all the time

When you are having trouble managing guilty feelings and do not know where they come from, it may feel challenging to meet with a therapist in person. In those instances, working with a licensed counselor online through a virtual teletherapy platform like BetterHelp may be beneficial. Therapy can help you identify the underlying reasons for the guilt while guiding you to find healthy ways to cope with those feelings, and having the ability to meet with your counselor through video, over the phone, or through in-app messaging from the comfort of your own home may feel easier.

Many therapists use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help patients explore the link between their thoughts and feelings. Information from the American Psychological Association indicates comparable outcomes for online and in-person CBT treatments. Additionally, teletherapy platforms offer unique benefits like shorter wait times, cost-effective programs, and unparalleled convenience to a comprehensive network of licensed mental health professionals.