In my last column I touched briefly on the idea of “guilt” (that sense of moral regret or conviction we feel when we’ve done wrong) and the role it plays in our efforts to form and follow our conscience.

But not all feelings of guilt are created equal. While it can and should serve a useful purpose in God’s economy (to help bring us to repentance), it can also become a serious obstacle for us. If it’s misplaced or excessive, it can hold us back spiritually because we may believe that we are not really forgiven, or that there’s more I need to be forgiven for, or that I’m not loved by God because of what I’ve done, or other problems along these lines.

Feelings of guilt signal to us that something is wrong and therefore needs correction. But sometimes our “feeling” guilty, and our actual guilt are two separate things. When we feel guilt but objectively should not, we can call it unhealthy guilt.

And this needs to be contrasted with healthy guilt, or the sense of moral regret and conviction that comes with an objectively wrong moral choice. Distinguishing these can be challenging sometimes. As a result, it’s relatively common for people to struggle with a sense of unhealthy guilt.

And so I think it is good to look at some of its frequent sources so as to hopefully begin to gain a more realistic and objective view, and perhaps even begin to relieve ourselves of burdens that we may not need to carry. The goal is to simply feel that sense of conviction and regret when, and only when, I’ve actually done something wrong — and only to the degree that I’ve done something wrong.

Unhealthy guilt, typically manifests itself when:

â–º we experience it for something that really wasn’t morally wrong, or

â–º its degree doesn’t correspond to the seriousness of the wrong, or

â–º we feel guilty for something someone else has chosen to do.

All of these can present problems. For now, we’ll simply look at the first example and save the other two (which can be a little more complicated) for later.

Sometimes we can have a sense of guilt which comes, not because we’ve actually done something wrong, but because of the unpleasant consequences of doing something good.

For example, I may feel a sense of guilt because my honesty was painful for someone else. I don’t like the fact that the other person is now struggling, even if I know that I did the right thing by being honest (assuming of course that my honesty was accompanied with prudence and charity). In such a case the “guilt” is not caused by a wrong choice, but only by an undesirable consequence.

We can be tempted to look only at an unpleasant consequence and use it to judge the rectitude of our choice, perhaps falsely concluding: unpleasant consequence = bad choice = guilt.

But this is not how we’re to judge our choices. We need to be careful that we don’t confuse feeling bad at a particular outcome with a sense that I’ve done something morally wrong. We must examine the choice itself as being either good or evil instead of simply looking to the pleasantness of the results as the deciding factor.

It is fair to ask myself if I was being prudent and charitable in my choice to act, but the unpleasant consequence alone doesn’t mean that a choice to be honest was a wrong choice. If we made a difficult choice to do the right thing, despite the unpleasant consequences, then we should be pleased that we had the virtue to do so.

If we begin to attach a sense of guilt to otherwise morally good choices, we may end up hesitant to make similar good choices in the future, and our ability to do the good we can do is hindered.