Mothers learn it from their mothers, who in turn learned it from religion, who quite possibly made it up. No one knows where it originated from, or how.
Guilt. Not remorse or accountability, but the obligation and self-reproach side of the noun.
Guilt's not an emotion whose function directly corresponds to it's sensation in the body. Joy is the feeling you get when you are happy; sadness comes about when you are sad; anger is the rush one feels from thinking that you have been done wrong. Guilt can come about whether you have done something to be guilty of, or not. You can feel guilty for NOT doing something! Ecologically speaking, guilt may have been, at one time, a way of tightening emotional bonds between a human and his tribe, but today our beast-eat-beast society is promoting more and more isolation from one another. And if our tribe is all but gone, what greater good does guilt serve us? From my own finite experience, I've only ever felt guilt limiting my experiences and causing me to feel contracted and generally terrible. The other day I noticed that I was even making decisions based on feeling guilty and obligated, instead of from a place of joy. And if I'm not making decisions for my life from a place of joy, then I'll most likely end up miserable. Most likely so will you.
