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Ann surely needs help in dealing with severe guilt. A few years back, she swung out on to the outer lane to overtake a slow moving van and collided head on with an oncoming truck. Her husband was killed on the spot and her son was paralyzed waist down. Years later, her sense of guilt continues to blame her cruelly over her fatal error of judgment. A feeble and pained voice within her keeps rejoining with the truth - that it was just a momentary mistake, which could have happened to anyone.
It was just one thoughtless, but awful mistake. Each time Ann opens her front door and feels the emptiness, each time she glimpses her child on the wheelchair, the painful voice returns, hurting her with its relentless logic. Her stern guilt and despair poison her career and the upbringing of her son, transforming her life into a living nightmare. In dealing with severe guilt, Ann needs to get her shattered life back to even keel. She needs to realize that she can learn to control the evolutionary neural mechanisms, which torture her. She can calmly come to terms with her guilt, which is merely a social emotion, triggered by her nervous system, to control her behavior.
Dealing With Severe Guilt
Do Emotions Control Behavior?
As Ann's nervous system evolved over millions of years, nature developed increasingly complex control patterns to enable survival. The early reptilian brains responded to smells, or to fear and anger. Smells decided whether an object could be approached or avoided. Fear and anger decided whether the animal should retreat, or attack. Those control decisions supported individual survival. Further evolution led to the mammalian brain, where social emotions controlled herd behavior. Guilt and shame punished any selfish behavior, which broke the moral code of the group. The emotions triggered drives, which opposed unsocial actions and compelled members to act for group benefit. Pain, at the prospect of social rejection, became wired into the system.
Dealing With Severe Guilt
What Happens When You Feel Guilty?
Eisenberger's research at UCLA confirms activity in the neural pain circuits, when a person suffers social rejection. A person suffers pain, when damaged skin cells cause nociceptors (pain nerve cells) to fire. Such pain processing is reported to have two parallel channels. The first causes the sensation of pain and the second, a feeling of being “hurt.” The “hurt” experience is more disagreeable than the pain sensation. Fear compels an animal to escape from, or to avoid a source of pain.
To enable animals to remember and avoid pain, “speed dial circuits,” persist over the years in the amygdala, the organ associated with fear. Those circuits trigger distress, when they recognize any pattern remotely linked to original source of pain. Eisenberger suggests that the same circuits are activated in the case of guilt. Ann cannot run away from her misjudgment. So, the drive triggers internal voice circuits, accusing her of her guilt, on recognition of any associated pattern. When dealing with severe guilt, Ann needs to understand the reality that pattern recognition and speed dial circuits are also the reasons for her punishment.
Dealing With Severe Guilt
Can You Soften The Pain of Guilt?
Evolutionary development led to the common sense regions of the prefrontal human brain. Scientists are surprised that a bunch of nerve cells can have a conscience. But, they acknowledge the vast extent of knowledge in the DNA molecule in each living cell in the human body. If inscribed into 500 page books, the programmed DNA codes in the human body will fill the Grand Canyon 50 times over with those books! Nerve cells contain similar masses of code in their combinatorial codes.
The prefrontal brain contains the accumulated wisdom of millions of years and the memories of a lifetime of sensory and emotional experiences. That brain has the wisdom to know what is right and wrong in the vast turmoil of human relations and social responsibilities. When her common sense tells her that she made a wrong decision, which caused grievous harm, Her common sense is right. That judgment of her common sense triggers her overactive guilt and pain circuits. But, her common sense will also tell her that that mistake could have been made by anyone. That she should accept her error and move on. In dealing with deep grief, Ann should understand that the speed dial circuits always enhance her pain and still the small inner voice of her common sense.
Dealing
With Severe Guilt
How Does Self Awareness Help?
Ann
can never hope to argue with her feeling of guilt and win. In
reality, her actions were wrong. But, she can switch off her guilt
circuit. She can use a foible of the nervous system - when the
attention of the mind is directed to the onset of an emotion, the
emotion is instantly stilled. The attention of the mind is the
attention of her prefrontal regions.
Normally, when an emotion takes over, her prefrontal region is
only an observer, who feels the pain. But if you consciously begin to
observe your mind, Your common sense will take over. It will be able to see the
onset of thoughts triggered by lower level animal emotions from the
mammalian part of the triune
human brain. Your common sense will become able to identify the sharp accusing voices of guilt
and still them through mere observation. It is similar to the age old
advice to count upto ten, before you speak harshly. Shift
the attention of
your mind and anger will disappear. Ann should know that self
awareness will
not come overnight. In dealing with severe grief, it will require
observation over a period of time for her to become familiar with her
troubling thoughts, just the way she knows her annoying
acquaintances.
Dealing
With Severe Guilt
How Do You Put Common Sense In Charge?
The
Buddhists discovered the path of self awareness and mindfulness
meditation, which grants control of your mind to your common
sense. It is a powerful investigative intelligence, which “sees the
flower as being neither beautiful nor ugly.” To an unemotional common sense,
it is just a flower. The mind
control tips in
this website suggest a few mental and physical exercises to put your common sense in
charge. Those exercises can still your animal instincts, with their
speed dial circuits, which respond to every hint and shake you around
like a puppet on a string.
In time, the practice of those
routines will transport your mind to a calm neutral territory. In
successfully dealing with severe guilt, these practices can enable
Ann to live sensibly with her disastrous mistake. With its immense
inherent wisdom, her common sense knows it was a mistake. It also knows of the
fallibility of humans and of the need to move on beyond disaster. Ann
will view of the problems ahead and the mistakes of the past to be
“like birds in the sky.” They are there, but do not
matter.
Dealing With Severe Guilt -
What Is Self Compassion?
The
love emotion activates the affiliation network, which can still the
pain of guilt. Self compassion training grants sufficient control of
the mind to enable a practitioner to consciously switch on the
network. The initiation creates a powerfully positive attitude. A
loving acceptance of the pain of the self takes place. The guilty
person will feel compassion for the poor suffering self, which will
act to reduce the pain of guilt.
Dealing
With Severe Guilt
How Does Guilt Help?
A
stable social life requires ways to deal with conflicts and events in
which people inadvertently (or even purposefully) harm others. If a
person harms someone, guilt causes him to express regret and sorrow
and is likely to be forgiven. In this way the chances of retaliation
are reduced and the community fares better. A person, who feels no
guilt is likely to harm others and be destroyed, in the end, by
society. At one time or another everyone makes a mistake, commits an
error of judgment, or says or does something wrong.
Self
awareness can make each person listen to the voice of conscience.
Remember that it is an immensely wise intelligence, which triggers
your feeling of guilt. Act to remedy the situation. Apologize to the
person and express your sorrow at your error. Avoid repeating the
behavior. Each such incident will improve your sensitiveness to
people and prevent serious deterioration of your personal
relationships. You may not be dealing with severe guilt. But you can
use guilt as your wise guide and counselor to grow, learn and
mature.
Dealing
With Severe Guilt
Why Is Empathy A Problem For Guilt?
Our
minds contain a neural subsystem, which senses the feelings of others
and makes us feel the same emotions. These neurons are called mirror
neurons. This system makes us feel the sufferings of others and
triggers the compassion emotion. The emotion triggers a drive to make
us act to mitigate the suffering. When we are unable to help,
feelings of guilt are triggered.
People, who are sensitive to
these feelings are likely to be cooperative and to be altruistic.
But, they also are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression.
Such suffering is intensified by the conviction of their common
sense, that it is their duty to help. Peace of mind can come only
when RI systematically evaluates all options and makes a competent
value judgment for the circumstances around each such periodic pang
of guilt, which overtakes them. Each person has to make a choice
about the extent of altruistic behavior that can be afforded in the
turmoil of every day life.
Dealing
With Severe Guilt
What Are The More Subtle Forms Of Guilt?
The self
improvement plan in
this website offers a method ofhandling the subtle emotions, which
may trouble you. Once you practice self awareness, you will slowly
become aware of discomfort over some event during the day. To follow
this plan, you can write down all your thoughts about this issue the
way you would write a shopping list. Your mind has the capacity to
search through its vast memories to bring you all the thoughts around
this concern. The plan offers a way to organize these thoughts and
enable your common sense to understand your concern.
Writing
it down will bring out the many conflicting views within your mind.
The plan enables you to make your choices. Knowing the rationale of
your choice will prevent this sense of guilt from coming up again.
You will not feel trapped. Your common sense will have understood and made its
choices. Your behavior will slowly be modified to meet your decision.
When dealing with severe guilt, it is also important to tone down
such feelings, which may run in your subconscious.
Dealing
With Severe Guilt
Is There A Way To Stop Your Bad Habits?
Your
common sense knows whether you smoke, or eat too much. It knows
that regular exercise is good for you. You feel guilt, when you act
against the judgment of your common sense. You may have always
intended to break your bad habit, or to begin good ones. Yet, when
you get down to it, you lack the will power. Actually, you fail in
this conflict between your common sense and your animal instincts, because emotions
control your life. Your nervous system always switches
control to
your most powerful emotion. When hunger pangs, a need for a smoke, or
sheer tiredness overcomes you, you will give in to one of these
habitual weaknesses.
But,
self awareness can still an emotion. If you become conscious of the
emotion, it will be stilled. Do not argue with an emotion. When you
are about to indulge yourself, think “what do I feel?” instead of
thinking “I should not do this.” Recognition of the physical
symptoms of the emotion, which misdirects you, will kill the emotion.
Your guilt is continually warning you. Use self awareness to take
control of
your life. These practices will always assist you, even as you work
on dealing with severe guilt.