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Definition Essay: The Role Of Guilt In My Family

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Guilt is inevitable. My sister and I have both struggled with guilt throughout our lives but in different manners. My sister had a lot of anxiety over small irrelevant things. This built up so much that she got guilty and felt the need to tell my parents everything. Myself on the other hand, I tend to forget about something or someone, and when a tragic event happens to that person or thing, I feel guilty. Another feeling of this guilt is prevalent when something occurs that I did not see coming and effects individuals close to me. Ever since a kid, my dads older brother, Chuck, was not interested in being a part of the family. He was very disconnected from people in general and hated school so much that he dropped out in tenth grade. When my sister and I were younger we got very excited to visit our uncle, but as we grew up we realized that he did not share this excitement with us. As time passed, we started detaching from him. It got to the points of him not even answering my dads phone calls or participating in family holiday events. I felt as if I had done something to make him not want to see us which made me very …show more content…
Depending on the situation some may see guilt as an effective motivator to get someone to do something, but it is more accurately depicted as a negative internal feeling. As much as we try to avoid it, guilt occurs. The reason as to why this happens can either be because a person believes that they have betrayed their own moral standard or because a person has convinced themselves that they have done something to cause harm. These thoughts, in some cases are accurate, and in others are not. In other words, a person can feel guilty about something they may or may not have done. When people feel guilty, it causes them distress and leads them to misinterpret situations in a somewhat irrational way. Furthermore, for some people unfortunately, these feelings happen at more extreme levels than

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