Who decides guilt or innocence?

Asked by Anonymous
Answered
05/03/2021

When it comes down to how an individual deals with guilt and or innocence, several factors can come into play when it comes to the actual verdict of guilt or innocence when it comes to internal processing and decision making. Each individual can decide mental guilt or innocence. The human brain is very sophisticated, and we can encompass the ability to decide our own personal guilt or innocence. Everyone can experience mental stressors and/or emotional distress that can occur daily until a situation can be resolved, which can lead an individual to feel guilty or innocent with their thoughts and feelings. We have to be mindful to take the time to actively process how we can uniquely define the understanding of guilt and innocence when it comes to our thinking.

Our thoughts are very important to our everyday feelings, emotions, behaviors, and or actions. As we go through our everyday lives, we can experience a situation where we have to decide if our thoughts, experiences, and or actions are guilty or innocent. Guilt can be seen as an internal representation of how we judge ourselves self consciously. It can be seen as an internal struggle in the mind where someone is determining how they will be affected by their conscious mind. In terms of feeling like you are mentally guilty or innocent. Individuals’ can usually experience thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and or actions due to feeling guilty after engaging in the following situations or instances that include but are not limited to the following: inappropriate behavior by the individual, negative actions by the individual, failing to speak up about an issue or topic, speaking up about an issue or not, losing interest in something and or someone, finding interest in something or someone, etc. Ultimately, several factors can affect how we perceive our internal thoughts of feeling guilty or innocent due to the circumstances of the situation at hand. Therefore, each individual can decide if they feel guilty or innocent in regards to their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and/or actions.    

(EdS, LPC-S, NCC, BC-TMH)