Self-Assessment for Infantile Guilt and Guilt Stemming from Failure to Meet Parental Expectations
The purpose of this writing exercise is to help you bring out into the open the kinds of moral and other messages you were given during your formative years from the people who were responsible for your well-being and held your emotional and physical health in their hands. These persons may have been parents or other caretakers, and they could have included grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other significant persons who were directly involved in taking care of you and trying to teach you "right from wrong."
Often people are not aware of why they are feeling guilty about a certain matter because they have not had the opportunity to examine early messages about how they "should" be or act or how "good" people "should be or act. This exercise will help you put into words the kind of values and actions you were expected to embody as a child. Later on, when you will be asked to describe the situation which caused you to experience survivor guilt, you will refer back to your responses to this exercise in order to see how your early leanings about guilt interact with your survivor guilt.
On a fresh piece of paper in your journal, write the heading, "Early Shoulds Messages." Think of all the "shoulds" you learned about how you ought to be during the first twelve years of your life. On your paper, draw three columns. In the first column, list as many shoulds as you can remember. Include those shoulds you heard from your parents, neighbors, friends, family members, teachers, religious instructors, and the media.
In the second column, list the source of the should -- where you learned it or who taught it to you. In the third column, describe what happened to you when you did not live up to this particular should. For example, were you verbally chastised, rejected, hit or made to feel ashamed? Were you threatened with abandonment or some other punishment?
Look over your list of "shoulds" and notice if any of the "shoulds" contradict one another. For example, suppose your mother told you should stand up for yourself and fight with bullies in school, but your grandfather told you that fighting was a sin. Or perhaps one of your caretakers gave you a double message. For instance, suppose your grandfather told you that fighting was a sin but that letting oneself get beat up was a sign of being a "sissy" and a disgrace to the family.
On a fresh piece of paper, entitled, "Shoulds Contradictions," once again draw three columns. In the first column, list as many discrepancies you found between what the various people who were important in your early life taught you about how to behave, think, or feel. In the second column, describe how you coped with the contradictory "shoulds" you heard growing up. In the third column, describe what happened to you as the result of how you coped with the contradictory shoulds.
For example, if your mother taught you to fight bullies and your grandfather taught you to turn the other cheek, perhaps you lied to your grandfather when you fought back or perhaps you lied to your mother when you walked away from fights. Another possibility is that you didn’t tell either of them how you responded to bullies and tried to carry the burden of being threatened at school all by yourself. Did you need to lie, steal, pretend, run-away, hurt yourself, or hurt animals or others as a result of the contradictory messages? If so, please describe in detail.
It is important to identify the early ways you responded to such pressures in order to see if you are still using these coping methods to deal with guilt you are experiencing today, for example, survivor guilt.