The Caregiver's Guilt, A Definition of Guilt: Part 2

I looked up the definition of "guilt", and here is the language from on an online dictionary:

"Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes, accurately or not, that he has compromised his own standards of conduct or has violated a universal moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation. Guilt is closely related to the concept of remorse."

That's a mouthful, eh? But some of this definition speaks about things that I intend to write about concerning "caregiver's guilt." Guilt is a real phenomenon. It involves your mind and your feelings. It may be a result of actual or imagined wrong-doing, but your mind and emotions respond the same regardless. The feelings of compromise can be triggered by awareness that you have violated God's standard, or your personal standard of conduct, or the standards of people you value most, or your culture/societal norms. Only one of those standards is immutable (never changes) and infallible (never wrong). The others vary over time, with experience and the acquisition of knowledge, with personal growth, and with societal change. You can be deceived into adopting arbitrary standards of conduct, and then surrendering your peace of mind when you miss that mark, which was already way off the mark.

Believing that you have failed the standard you most value, you then feel that the responsibility lies entirely upon you, triggering remorse, regret, a strained conscience, the desire to "do-over" some act, word, or decision, but further pained by the knowledge that "what's done is done".

These are some of the issues that I intend to write about in future articles, highlighting the personal emotions/thoughts/pains and the Scriptural truths that can heal us and set us free.