GUILT DERIVED FROM FAILURE TO MEET SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS
Your parents and caretakers aren’t the only source of the demands to meet certain standards. Society places pressures on people also. Regardless of how independent anyone thinks he or she might be, almost anyone can be made to feel guilty for not living up to cultural expectations their culture places upon them.
For example, many women in Western culture feel guilty about not being slender enough, even if they grew up in homes that paid no particular attention to female body size. Because the culture tends to measure the worth of a man by the size of his bankaccount, men who are unemployed or who are burdened with financial hardships tend to experience guilt for not being financially successful. Even men who grew up in homes which valued spiritual matters over the acquisition of material goods can experience some level of guilt for not living up to the cultural expectation that, as men, they should have a job, a home, a car, and plenty of money in the bank.
Parents or caretakers can make people feel guilty for not living up to societal expectations, but their friends and associates can also play a role. "In everyday life ...we are continually soaked in this unhealthy atmosphere of ... criticism" (Tournier 1977, 15). Sometimes the criticism is "keen and outspoken, sometimes silent" but it is "not less painful for being so. We are all sensitive to it, even if we conceal the fact" (Tournier 1977, 13).
Guilt derived from failing to meet societal expectations complicates survivor guilt. For example, Maureen is overweight and feels guilty about not meeting societal expectations that she be slender. When her daughter was sexually abused by her husband’s brother, Maureen experienced survivor guilt in that she wished she could have been abused in her daughter’s place. "She was a young girl who had everything to look forward too. I’m an overweight middle aged woman. If someone had to be raped, it should have been me," she sobbed in session.
Maureen’s survivor guilt was exacerbated by her guilt about her weight. Even though her eating habits and body size had nothing to do with her daughter’s molestation, in her mind, they did. Maureen confused the two guilts-- her guilt over her appearance and her survival guilt. She illogically concluded that her overeating and overweight somehow caused the rape of her daughter. She felt that if she had been thinner she might have married a different man, one who didn’t have a brother who was a child molester.
Maureen’s therapist pointed out that while it was true Maureen might have married a different man if she had been thinner, this would not have prevented her daughter from getting hurt. For example, Maureen might have married a man who was a child abuser himself or who had a nephew or father or friend who was a pedophile. Only if Maureen had witnessed her daughter being abused or in some other way had been aware that her daughter was being hurt and, instead of helping her daughter, chose to go to go food shopping or on a eating binge, then and only then could her eating problems be related to her daughter’s rape. Furthermore, Maureen needed to remember that it was not she or her overeating, but a pedophile, who had violated her daughter.