Depression pictures are in many cases, overlapped or enhanced by guilt. And in this article we will look at the possible relationships between the two.
You can go into a depressive state because of guilt. The feeling of guilt is associated with self-punishment, and depression is a state that can be linked to this. Sometimes depression is related to the suffering itself, and to the suffering position. Not enjoying yourself, not laughing, can become an imperative, a punishment that the person imposes in the face of guilt.
Obviously this is not always the case, we are placing special emphasis on cases of depression that may be related to guilt.
Another frequent scenario is that the guilt arises from the depressive position itself. We are in a society that judges sadness and vulnerability. That you need people to be happy, active and productive. Sadness is seen as something negative and rejectable. Therefore, the person who is in that state, and cannot get out of it, may feel guilty about it. Thus increasing the feeling of anguish.
Guilt can certainly produce a state of withdrawal, estrangement or avoidance of contact with other people, and can lead to a position of confinement or isolation, which can simultaneously lead to depression.
Depression can also manifestsuch as irritability and aggressiveness, which is associated with punishment. Aggressiveness oriented towards the outside or towards the person himself may originally have a link to guilt.
Guilt can lead to reflection and allow the person to modify some aspects or it can remain fixed, as a form of self-punishment, preventing him from moving forward. It is in these cases that a depressive state can potentially occur. Guilt turns on itself, and does not resolve, leaving the person detained. In general, these episodes are framed in the idea that that which motivated the feeling of guilt is something monstrous and terrible that cannot be accepted as one's own. Because it is so difficult to accept, the person feels "bad", and may even come to fully identify with the dark aspects of himself, thus being plunged into darkness.
Individuals in a depressed state can assume aggressive positions, pushing away and rejecting the people they love, as a way of self-punishment and to persist in that place of isolation and identification with dark aspects.
Unlike popular belief, many individuals who are experiencing depression are more aggressive than sad. This characteristic can be associated with guilt if we think of it as a way of pushing others away and convincing themselves that they do not deserve that company or that love. The question of deservingness is also interesting in this point. Guilt can put us in the worst places. The placeof being abandoned, mistreated, ignored recurrently, is related to that self-punishment and can undoubtedly be at the origin or in parallel with a depressive state.
Depression and guilt have many connections that, as we have seen in this article, feed back on each other repeatedly. When analyzing the suffering of a subject, it is very important to have present all the confluences that may be collaborating in it.
