Christopher Moore

So you feel angry at yourself for what you did, right?

So you have this self-directed anger, you have compassion for the other person, and then you have some fear as well.

Fear that either the relationship that you had with that person is now damaged or

are harmed or fear for yourself for other reasons.

Yeah, and I think that's true.

But I think the important thing about relationships is that, firstly, a number of important things.

Firstly, there's two sides to a relationship.

It's typically not the case that one person is doing the harm.

But quite often in relationships, guilt goes both ways.

And the important thing about relationships is if they're going to survive, then both have to be willing to bend towards the other.

right to to recognize when they've done harm to the other apologize for it but also be willing to forgive the other when uh when they do something to harm you okay so it's important to think of relationships as a two-way street so what do we do with this i mean knowing what you know how do we do we do anything different or is this just something to observe and notice and say that's interesting

My message I think is to recognize that guilt is actually a positive emotion.

It may feel horrible, it may feel bad, but it actually is good for us, right?

And what it does is it helps to strengthen our relationships, as I've said.

So that's the message, right?

So when we feel guilty, we shouldn't think, oh, we're a bad person.

We don't deserve anything.

I think what it means is that we're actually a sympathetic or an empathetic person, that when we feel guilt, it means that we care about other people.

And then we should act on that guilt.

We should do whatever is needed in order to restore the relationship that we have.