Life Cycle and Development
Affects at Midlife

Guilt is not bad; it is a healthy component that enables empathy--sociopaths and narcissists are incapable of feeling guilt or remorse prevents them from feeling empathy. Guilt acts as our conscience and makes us accountable for our actions.

This is the stage of purpose where an autonomous child finds his purpose through play, practicing a variety of life roles. Autonomy is a fundamental building block for initiative, first a person recognizes his Self as a separate being from others which leads to assertion of independence which in turn leads to premeditation of tasks. There is developing an understanding of process, order and sequential time. Initiation builds on autonomy by adding active plans to start tasks. In the absence of developed guilt, shame seeks punishment--such a person may self-mutilate. Healthy guilt seeks to resolve mistakes through change, making amends rather than through punishment. In the case of shame without guilt the person believes they are bad, thus change is futile since it is their internal character that is flawed and they believe such a thing is unchangeable. The development of guilt involves action. Stage 2 balanced the development of autonomy and shame. Autonomy is the first awareness of a separate Self; it is not active. Initiative takes autonomy to the next level by adding action. As the counterpart of initiative, guilt yields action.

Shame is self-focused, enabling self-absorption as a person focuses on personal pain and consequences rather than the damage to others. Guilt can act as a preventative force when it precedes possible inappropriate actions, but when it follows the inappropriate actions it can instead act as a facilitator for self-pity and the misbehaviour may act as an addictive high which enables distraction and temporary relief from guilt. There is an altruistic benefit to healthy guilt which as a response to harm or inaction is preventative to repeating the harmful behavior--active or passive. Healthy guilt is unpleasant and thus a person seeks to avoid the unpleasant feeling; it may also elicit empathy for its victim yielding an additional benefit. Guilt demonstrates regret making others more likely to forgive, preserving the social structure.

Toxic Guilt

The mantras mine and no common in stage 2 give way to the new mantra of why. Curiosity facilitates initiation and vice versa as each new discovery reveals more that is unknown. Encouraging a child’s natural inquisitiveness enables healthy intellectual development; discouragement enables dependence by stifling interest in learning behaviours necessary for physical, mental and emotional development as well as fostering guilt when labeling questions and exploratory actions as wasteful, wrong or disruptive.

Children are naturally direct regarding their wants and needs, but a caregiver who fails or refuses to be attentive, scolds or discourages a child’s expression of needs enables guilt in an interruptive child in need since children should be seen and not heard. To give a child proper attention, a caregiver needs to have her own needs met; needy caregivers raise shame or guilt-based and dysfunctional children since the child’s needs are competitive.

As the mind and body develops, children are in awe of the functioning of their bodies since much of the functioning is voluntary and thus beyond control of conscious thought. This facilitates a belief in omnipotence and yet this is frightening because the body seeks no permission for so many of its actions. Though understanding separateness of Self from others, children still connect everything to themselves, interpreting events as causal to their own feelings and behaviours. Daddy went away because I… There is a sense of omnipotence and fear within what they fear are their powers.

Role playing is not only a way to test and practice roles, but also a way to shield them from their powers. They are like Midas with the curse of the golden touch, but putting on a mask and a glove allows them to assume another role and protect what they touch from the golden curse. Even if the glove turns to gold, anything they touch using it as a barrier remains intact.

As children practice with new roles, they also develop fear enabled by their imaginative roles. They live in a world populated with not only fairies, kings, queens, cops and cowboys, but also with monsters, purple mumple-grumps, strangers, witches, wild things and child-eating animals. For everything a child embraces with honour there is an opposition which instills fear. The establishment of mild fears is normal and healthy, teaching caution, but to taken too far, unhealthy fears can lead to anxiety disorders and paranoia.

Acceptance and encouragement of the roles is important and needs to include role-appropriate responsibilities to build confidence and feelings of skill and accomplishment. To deny a child appropriate role-associated responsibilities is to patronize their pretend game as unworthy of becoming real and foster a belief that their role-associated actions are wrong, thereby creating guilt.

Boundaries are important, but they need to be clear and realistic for guilt-free acceptance. Stifling a child’s imaginative play can enable guilt as they learn that whatever they do is wrong.

Limitations that are too strict may encourage low standards. A 6 feet tall person raised in a world with a five foot sky will learn not only to stoop, but that no other form of posture is possible. An expansion of the sky may not result in a change in posture because the person will have no concept of a sky that is higher than five feet. Sometimes we have no concept of things before our eyes if they were not within our cultural realm of possibility. We can only fit experiences into our concept of reality. A person raised with constant criticism may understand only that he is bad with no other possibility occurring in his mind.

Children test reality to learn where boundaries are located. Parents set boundaries, but overprotection or critical parents may shrink boundaries to an artificial level, possibly after a child has learned the location of a real boundary. In such a situation the child then knows he can reach beyond the limit but feels guilt for any imagined consequences or those set by his parents.

Return to Home Page
Return to Midlife Crisis Articles Main Page