Is Guilt & Fear Are Two-Face Of One Coin

Fear and guilt are not new things in my point of view. They have been a part of our lives since we created the rules and started to understand our surroundings. 

However, fear and guilt are not always a bad thing, sometimes it motivates us or helps us to change the way we think and act toward other people. To some extent, Guilt & Fear are the Two-Face Of One Coin.

We started feeling guilty about doing different things, whereas fear is something we feel when we realize that someone is more powerful than us. We are also afraid of natural phenomena because we have no control over them. 

As time passed, this feeling of guilt and fear also increase as we modernized feeling of guilt also increase which pave the way for fear to enter into our life. Sometimes these emotions even force people to take wrong decisions in their lives, and some even commit suicide.

This problem arises when we gave control of our lives to these emotions, and our emotions control our every step of life. Emotions are not bad, but excess of everything is harmful. 

Now the question is how these emotions of guilt and fear became so powerful, Is guilt and fear are the same, why we made them in charge of our lives, and why we are not able to think effectively in that situation. So let’s dive in and try to find the answer:- 

1. What is guilt? It is basically a self-conscious emotion that involves negative evaluations of the self, feelings of distress, and feelings of failure. Sometimes it includes anxiety, crying, and insomnia. However, the symptoms vary from person to person. 

The most common causes of guilt include: surviving trauma or disaster. The conflict between personal values and choices you’ve made and your mental or physical health concerns.

2. What is fear? Fear is an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.

However, both definitions provide the only meaning as per the dictionary. But the real question is why we feel guilty.

Now, you may think that this is a ludicrous question. We all know why we feel guilt or fear in our life.

But my real question is, why do we feel guilty even if the thing we have done is not even against the law?

The truth is that we are overly self-conscious about other people’s behavior toward us or about what other people think about us.

Sometimes guilt and fear are interrelated like two faces of one coin, or water and milk. As water has no color, it easily gets mixed with anything. Similar fear has no distinct identity; it is easily mingled with other emotions.

What we need to learn in our life is to understand that there is a very fine line between what is right and what is wrong. 

We must recognize that neither guilt nor fear is permanent. This is just the emotion we need to learn to control our emotions. Because when emotion takes the driver’s seat, life becomes a difficult road that is full of bumps.

Sometimes we blame other people for these bumps, but subconsciously we know that 60–70% of the time we are responsible for this blockage.

Now, you asked how I could say that.

Is it because we are afraid of asking questions?

We’re afraid to ask ourselves questions? Or feel scared to ask questions to another person?

Till now, I have only asked questions but have not given any answer. Now I tried to give answers to these questions.

Reason – There are millions of reasons in this world why we feel guilty and fearful, and very few are serious, other is just our imagination.

Sometimes, when we start feeling guilty even for the small things in our life, and continuous feeling of being guilty can also turn into a disease that is very dangerous.

What guilty disease is? It is the continuous firm belief that you have done something wrong, or that you will do something wrong. You will constantly feel guilty, worried, fearful, or anxious. There are various reasons for this:-

1. Social Pressure-Actually, we live in a society where social pressure has become so common that those who take that social pressure seriously even if the matter is small as a pin find it difficult to even breathe. The reason is that we forget that we are not going to leave forever, and that social pressure only kills our joy and our present.

It is true that a matter which is small in one eye is a serious matter in the other eye but feeling social pressure is not able to solve any of our problems it only increases the feeling of guilt and fear and in end, it takes us nowhere and only causes the trauma which is not good for our physical and mental health. 

2. Religion – In this world, there are numerous sects and various religions. Sometimes we fail to understand what religion wants to teach us. What is the real meaning of life?

Sometimes our misunderstandings make things complicated in our lives. We cannot blame anyone for this. Most of the time, we are responsible for this. And that pressure we create in our minds takes us on a guilt trip, which many times become harmful for us and other peoples.

3. Culture-We lives in a world where different cultures are starting to connect with each other and trying to understand their point of view. 

But sometimes when we deny accepting the change and when some cultural aspect doesn’t seem to match rhythm with the present time, and when we do something that is against our present cultural aspect we feel guilty that we did something wrong, and this thing is a worse thing for our existence in this world.

4. Childhood Experience-Children who are raised in an environment where they feel that they are not able to convey their message and share their feelings with the other people in the family. They started hiding things. All these things sometimes lead to creating the problem of guilt, which can, with the passage of time, become a dangerous problem.

5. Abusive Relationship- When a person is in an abusive or narcissistic relationship, they begin to feel guilty or blame themselves for whatever wrong things happened in their life. They failed to understand that they’re not wrong and that they have no need to feel guilty about that thing. The truth is that they are actually in an abusive relationship, which forced them to think in this way.

Types of guilt- As per the article published on various health sites, there are four types of guilt. Mostly, there are three types of guilt:-

1. Reactive Guilt – When you have done something that is contrary to your beliefs or that is acceptable by social standards.

2. Anticipatory Guilt – When you are aware that a particular activity you are about to engage in is contrary to your principles or social standards.

3. Existential Guilt – When one is not able to live as per the other’s will.

These different types of guilt make way for different types of fears, like:-

1.  Primal Fear-The fear that is common and varies from person to person, like fear of spiders, snakes, dogs, heights, etc.

2. Irrational Fear – The things or situations that a person tries to avoid, even if there is no reason to be afraid of them.

3. Rational Fear – This fear arises when there is a real and imminent danger.

If we see it thoroughly, fear is a simple emotion, but sometimes guilt makes that feeling of fear more complicated and dangerous.

Why We are Not Able To React Effectively– Because Guilt is associated with the prefrontal cortex of the brain (the logical thinking part of the brain).

So-called guilt has a very bad effect on physical and mental health:-

1. Insomnia

2. Anxiety

3. Nervous Breakdown

4. Panic Attack

5. Depression

6. Fatigue

7. Concentration Difficulties

8. Social Exclusion

9. Loss of Interest

Now comes the question of what is the solution to this problem:

1. Medication- If you are continuously feeling guilty and if that emotion becomes the disease, it is best to consult the doctor.

2. Understanding- We need to understand that we can not always control what is happening around us. What we can control is only ourselves. Along with this, the other most important thing is that we are humans, not machines, and sometimes we can do things that we cannot control, even if we want to. So, it is better to try to be calm and understanding towards ourselves.

3. Talking with loved ones- If we fail to understand that we are human, it’s normal to make mistakes and go on a guilt trip. It’s always better to talk with our loved ones, they will surely help us to cope with the situation.

I am not a doctor or psychologist, but a human being who understands how it feels when we go on a guilt trip without any reason. Perhaps the reason is strong enough to make us feel this way, but we must remember that we do not have a time machine, or we are not a machine that runs with an algorithm, so it is better to find a way to overcome this than to feel frightened and guilty about the situation or thing.