CHILDHOOD OMNIPOTENT GUILT and SUPERMAN/SUPERWOMAN GUILT
Another form of guilt is childhood omnipotent guilt -- a well-documented tendency of young children to think that the world revolves around them and that they control everything that happens. Young children think that if they wish something it might come true. For example, when children become frustrated with a parent or sibling, they often think or say, I hate you -- I wish you were dead, which is a perfectly normal expression of aggression. But, if for some reason that parent or sibling subsequently becomes ill, dies or leaves the family, the child thinks that he or she caused this person to become ill, die, or leave.
This is called magical thinking, because hating one’s parent, sibling, spouse or friend, or even wishing another person dead, does not cause these people harm unless the aggressive wish is acted upon.
No matter how old or how mature we may be, a part of us -- consciously or unconsciously -- may still be engaging in magical thinking or seeing ourselves as omnipotent. When someone we know commits suicide, the child in us may feel that our hostility killed that person because we sometimes harbored hostile feelings toward him or her.
But hating people doesn’t kill them or make them sick. Our angry, hateful feelings and wishes in themselves cannot cause the physical death, suicide, illness or injury of another, with one important exception: if you severely or continually maltreated someone, and then that person committed suicide or acquired an illness or injury directly related to your treatment, some of your guilt may be appropriate. If not, some of the guilt you are experiencing may fall into the category of childhood omnipotent guilt.
In adolescence and adulthood, childhood omnipotent guilt can be transformed into a type of guilt called "superman or superwoman" guilt. In order to cope with a traumatic or extremely stressful situation, people can come to believe that have superhuman qualities. The more helpless and powerless people feel in a life or death situation, the greater the need for superhuman powers. One theory (Krystal 1971) is that during traumatic conditions, people tend to revert to childlike thinking, including the tendency towards childhood omnipotent guilt.
Kubany (1994) , Opp and Samon (1989), Parson (1986) and others have found that survivors of traumatic circumstances often experience guilt and feelings of failure for not knowing what no human being could have known and for not having abilities that are beyond human capability. Examples are medical staff who feel guity for not being able to save everyone, parents who feel guilty for not being able to protect their children from all illnesses and harm, soldiers who feel guilty for not having forseen all enemy assaults, and relatives of seriously ill persons who feel guilty for not knowing the outcome of certain medical procedures.
If you suffer from superman/superwoman guilt, then you are telling yourself, "‘I’m in charge of all the variables for lie and death’ and "I knew things would happen before they did.’" (Opp and Samson 1989 p. 162).