Guilt
Guilt as an emotion seems to be able to cause a lot of trouble. I tend to divide it into two kinds - "neurotic" and "real". Neurotic guilt doesn't come from doing anything seriously wrong, it is more like having a bad conscience over something, or perhaps not doing something (such as going to church) which you might feel you "ought" to do but don't really want to.
The bigger problem is "real" guilt, which springs from actually having done real harm (usually to a living being). This is the guilt that eats away at you, drives away sleep, makes you turn to drink. One simple test I use to distinguish the two is to ask "would you willingly be punished for this?". If the guilt is genuine, the answer is unequivocally "yes" - in other words, punishment is seen as an antidote to genuine guilt.
I'm not saying that going to a Dominant and getting a thrashing will magically dissolve all guilt - it's just not that easy. The old saying about the punishment fitting the crime applies here. Sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper to discover the real nature of the guilt, and construct the punishment accordingly, or it doesn't hit the mark.
To illustrate the point let me describe a typical client. This woman was excessively guilty about some minor neglect of an animal. The guilt seemed out of proportion to the offence, which caused me to wonder if some old guilt was surfacing. Sure enough, we uncovered an episode from her past in which she had seriously mistreated an animal, and her behaviour had gone undiscovered and unpunished. Remembering this was extremely painful for her. The "punishment" we arrived at through discussion was for her to take in a rescued animal and look after it. It wasn't an instant solution - as far as I know she is still looking after that animal, but the last time I saw her the guilt had gone.
The bigger problem is "real" guilt, which springs from actually having done real harm (usually to a living being). This is the guilt that eats away at you, drives away sleep, makes you turn to drink. One simple test I use to distinguish the two is to ask "would you willingly be punished for this?". If the guilt is genuine, the answer is unequivocally "yes" - in other words, punishment is seen as an antidote to genuine guilt.
I'm not saying that going to a Dominant and getting a thrashing will magically dissolve all guilt - it's just not that easy. The old saying about the punishment fitting the crime applies here. Sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper to discover the real nature of the guilt, and construct the punishment accordingly, or it doesn't hit the mark.
To illustrate the point let me describe a typical client. This woman was excessively guilty about some minor neglect of an animal. The guilt seemed out of proportion to the offence, which caused me to wonder if some old guilt was surfacing. Sure enough, we uncovered an episode from her past in which she had seriously mistreated an animal, and her behaviour had gone undiscovered and unpunished. Remembering this was extremely painful for her. The "punishment" we arrived at through discussion was for her to take in a rescued animal and look after it. It wasn't an instant solution - as far as I know she is still looking after that animal, but the last time I saw her the guilt had gone.
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