I experience inappropriate amounts of guilt. How do I get over this?

See a good psychotherapist.

I feel you, friend. ~follows this question~.

Make an appointment with a counselor who has been well trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

The first question I would ask is do you feel guilt or shame? Guilt is feeling bad about something you did. Shame is feeling bad about who you are.

The next thing is, what would be good enough to make you happy? Would a 4.0 be enough? Would doing whatever someone asked you to do make you happy?

Figure out who you really are. Are you really a bad student or are you just not The Best Student To Ever Walk The Earth? Find your own measurement of success and happiness. Write it down in a list. It will change as you go through your life, but it’s always handy to know where you want to go.

You likely have an anxiety disorder. I do. Taking medication with a psycologist’s supervision has made all the difference.

Anything less than perfect grades, not doing something my friends or family ask me to do (even when it’s practically impossible or would put me at great disadvantage),

There’s part of it. I’m not a shrink, so I don’t wanna go on for fear of giving ass advice, however I would certainly consider that which I’ve quoted, its source, (Friends and family, and their apparent demands.) and how you feel about it.

I am following this question too. I am pathetic. I feel so guilty I want to cry for leaving my dog, for not being there 24/7 for friends, and I feel I am never good enough for my family’s love. Your not alone in this.

I am this way as well. It’s easy for me to forgive friends mistakes, but I berate myself for YEARS if I screw up something.
And I’m not even Catholic (as my bf tells me).

Here is a good primer on shame-based behavior and where it comes from-
http://www.psychsight.com/ar-shame.html

If you are having trouble functioning because of your amount of shame, please, seek professional help. The only ‘losers’ are the ones who never seek help.

To clarify: I don’t think I feel shame, exactly. I don’t feel like a loser necessarily, more that I am not being as good as I could be. My inner dialogue tells myself that I am being selfish, hurting people, lazy, etc, but in a “you’re not acting good enough” way, not a “you’re simply not good enough” way.

I suppose I would feel good about myself if I was always perfect and could always do everything anyone asked/needed of me, but that will obviously never happen and I need help accepting that.

I’m not sure if I have trouble functioning or not. I accomplish everything I need to, but am miserable most of the time.

Recent example: my younger brother wanted to hang out tonight, but at a very late hour, and I am sick and was already in bed and have plans early tomorrow. I promised we could hang out tomorrow instead but I am sitting here wanting to cry and feeling nauseous and talking myself in and out of just dragging myself over there and I don’t want to let him down and I don’t want to be a bad sister and I’m thinking, “what if this is important, what if he needs me, what if Something Bad happens because I didn’t go?” and on and on.

The “enmeshed family” from the link above is probably a good description.

@eadinad Then yes, I would suggest talking to a therapist about this. It seems like it’s disrupting your night enough that you’re not sleeping and are instead worried sick about the ‘what ifs’.

And that’ s why wine is such a comfort!

I would suggest some ‘spiritual’ literature. I have been comforted by other philosophies, and their views of how to live a rich and beautiful life everyday.

I am riddled with guilt a lot of the time, but I have an internal battle because I know (and you know) this isn’t what life is, and it isn’t what I want from it! I remind myself that I want a fulfilling life, and I will go through it as I see fit.

If you are sick in bed, and had to cancel on your brother, the event is over with. It is now in the past, but one can sully the present by reliving the past.

@eadinad – I would call your malady “conditioned ego resistance”... you have an internal battle about your identity – are you “there for others” or just looking out for yourself? This is the question your mind is grinding on, churning up guilt. You have a powerful and unchallenged belief that you should be generous and giving and self-sacrificing all the time, but the fact is you’re very much concerned with your own comfort and convenience and so forth. You “resolve” the problem by feeling guilty: the guilt punishes you for having an ego and not living up to your own standard of generosity.

This is all operating on autopilot: the key redemptive ingredient that is missing is choice. You have no choice, because these habitual tapes are playing, telling you to be someone generous, while other tapes are telling you to look out for yourself. No freedom.

It’s always a good idea to develop awareness: to be able to see your own mechanisms as they run. The next step beyond that is to challenge the conditioning: to really question what the thoughts are saying – “is it really true that I should be generous all the time?”, etc.

The other aspect of this is that everybody has an ego. You are not going to be able to eliminate yours, any more than Gandhi or Mother Theresa could. The key to handling ego is learning to (a) tell the truth about it (b) make some room for yourself to be merely human, and c) manage it like you would manage any permanent aspect of yourself… give it some rope, but don’t let it run your entire life.

These kinds of internal conflicts between mechanisms are common sources of suffering. It’s up to you to disrupt their operations and learn to steer the ship consciously.

Oh, honey, I do the same thing. I don’t think that you’ll ever completely defeat this habit, because some of us are just more emotionally sensitive to guilt than others. But I can tell you right now that you’re not a terrible person. How can a stranger know that, you ask? Simple. If you really were an awful person, then you wouldn’t agonize over your decisions or feel guilty. Truly evil people don’t know that they’re evil. I’m going to give a rather silly example. Do you think that Darth Vader or Lord Voldemort ever thinks to himself, “Wow, I’m a bad person. I should really stop torturing people”? You, OTOH, seem to care about how your actions affect others.

It seems to me that your guilt about not being helpful enough is actually a form of insecurity. You may have poorly defined boundaries between yourself and other people, so that you take responsibility for their feelings. You need to define those boundaries more clearly so that you won’t feel guilty just for taking care of yourself.

Last time I talked to Voldemort he was feeling kinda bad, but not bad enough to stop it

^ lolol.

but lonelydragon, that was an interesting post. very nice.

I have the same ptoblem,so extreme,that I numbed myself emotionally over time.I hope that you can find a balance in-between someday kiddo.