Guilt: Types, what it feels like, and how to cope

Reviewed by Brooks Baer, LCPC, CMHP

Written by

therapist.com team

Last updated: 03/12/2025

Share this article

Share article

Share this article on Facebook Share this article on Twitter Share this article on LinkedIn Share this article on Messenger Share this article in email Copy the link to this article Print this article

Guilt is an emotion people usually feel when they believe they’ve caused harm or failed to meet expectations. It’s often accompanied by closely related feelings of regret and remorse. These emotions all have the potential to feed into shame, a feeling that you are the problem, not that you’ve simply caused one.

Guilt is a natural human response, and when it’s appropriate to a situation it can lead to positive behaviors. But it can be destructive when it isn’t aligned with reality or isn’t addressed in a healthy way.

Types of guilt

Guilt is a self-conscious feeling that involves considering your own actions. Understanding what sort of guilt you’re feeling and why can help you start coping and moving forward.

Common types of guilt include the following:

• Reactive or consequential guilt is something a person feels in response to a specific action, event, or failure to act.
• Anticipatory guilt happens before a person does something wrong. It can sometimes help stop people from acting in harmful ways.
• Existential guilt is a broad, complicated feeling that isn’t linked to a specific act or event. For example, you may feel guilty that you somehow aren’t living up to your potential.
• Collective guilt is the feeling that you share some responsibility for harm done by members of a group you belong to. This group may be your society, culture of origin, family, or gender.
• Religious guilt can happen when your actions or identity don’t conform to the expectations of your spiritual tradition.
• Inappropriate or excessive guilt is felt even though you haven’t done anything wrong, or is out of proportion to the actual mistake made. It’s often linked to mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.¹

Guilt-proneness

Guilt-proneness is a personality trait that makes people more likely to worry about doing something wrong. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing: Highly guilt-prone people tend to take responsibility for their actions and be concerned about doing the right thing. Others tend to put trust in them.²

However, if you have extreme guilt about things that aren’t your fault, it could create mental health or relationship challenges. If you feel weighed down by feelings of guilt, consider working with a mental health professional to learn why.

Impacts of guilt

Guilty thoughts and feelings are often a source of stress and anxiety. They can affect your peace of mind and cause physical symptoms such as digestive problems, restlessness, insomnia, or muscle tension.

Depending on how you’re able to cope with it, guilt can have positive or negative outcomes.

The positives: If you respond to guilt by making amends and correcting problem behaviors, it can repair and strengthen your relationships. Making a mistake can also be an opportunity to reflect on your own actions, practice self-compassion, and figure out how to align your future behavior with your values.

The negatives: Guilty feelings can sometimes lead to shame, anger, self-punishment, self-sacrifice, or self-deprecation. This can strain your relationships, contribute to mental health struggles, and make it tougher to enjoy your life.

Guilt in relationships

In families, friendships, and romantic relationships, guilt can motivate positive change. It may push people to live up to their own standards or fix damage. But if it isn’t addressed in healthy ways, it can cause relationship stress.

Guilty feelings can make people feel less comfortable communicating, which hurts connections and allows conflicts to go unresolved. A loved one may even use a person’s guilt to manipulate them.

Guilt in the workplace

At work, guilt can influence both individual behavior and team dynamics. Employees may experience productivity guilt for not meeting deadlines or performance standards. This may drive people to perform better, but could also cause stress and burnout. Managers may feel guilty about having to enforce rules or make decisions that negatively affect employees.

When is guilt unhealthy?

Guilt doesn’t always cause problems. It can actually be helpful when addressed and relieved with appropriate changes. But when guilty feelings are extreme, free-floating, or constant, they can affect your mental health and daily well-being.

Excessive or chronic guilt can present as:

• Being unable to forgive yourself for minor mistakes
• Blaming yourself for things that are out of your control
• Believing you’ve caused much more harm than you actually have
• Criticizing or punishing yourself
• Believing you don’t deserve to have good things happen to you
• Feeling worthless
• Over-apologizing
• Putting other people’s needs above your own
• Avoiding people or situations
• Feeling bad about your own thoughts or feelings
• Dwelling on “should haves” or “could haves”

Guilt and mental health disorders

Guilt that’s chronic or excessive can erode your self-esteem. It could also be a sign of an underlying mental health condition, such as anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Guilty feelings can also intensify symptoms of those existing conditions.

If you’re struggling with guilt or other overwhelming feelings, you may want to speak with a licensed mental health professional. They can help you navigate these feelings, look for patterns, and give you more tools for coping.

Guilt and anxiety

The worries and fears that accompany an anxiety disorder can add to feelings of guilt. And guilt, in turn, can worsen a person’s overall anxiety. One study pinpointed two kinds of guilt as especially anxiety-related: generalized, free-floating guilt that isn’t connected to specific situations, and guilt that involves an exaggerated feeling of responsibility.³ 

Guilt and depression

Feelings of worthlessness and excessive guilt are included in the DSM-5’s diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder.⁴ These symptoms may also worsen the severity of depressive episodes. With depression, guilt can present as a sense of responsibility for negative events, even if they’re beyond your control.

Guilt and OCD

OCD is a mental health disorder involving compulsive behaviors and obsessive thoughts. Research suggests guilt plays a significant role in the disorder.⁵ The need to ease guilty feelings can drive the repetitive actions characteristic of OCD. This creates a cycle where guilt intensifies the need for compulsive behavior, and the compulsive behavior in turn leads to more guilt.

Guilt that’s coupled with strong religious or moral beliefs may contribute to scrupulosity.^6,7 This is a subtype of OCD in which a person is particularly focused on religious or moral concerns.

Guilt and PTSD

After going through a trauma, people may feel profound guilt about how they thought, felt, or acted during the experience.⁸ Those feelings may contribute to the development of PTSD and worsen the disorder over time.⁹

People who live through trauma could also suffer from what’s known as “survivor’s guilt.”¹⁰ This happens when a person feels guilty for making it through a traumatic experience when others didn’t.

How to cope with guilt

To cope with guilt in a healthy, productive way, consider the following methods:

Reflect on why you feel guilty and whether it lines up with the actual impact of your actions. Start by asking yourself if your guilt runs deeper than what the situation calls for. Is there a logical reason for you to feel guilt? Are you blaming yourself for things outside your control or for events that aren’t your fault? Acknowledge your feelings, then explore whether the thoughts and beliefs behind them are accurate.

Think about what you can do to take responsible action if you’ve made a mistake or caused harm. Determine the steps you can take to make things right and seek forgiveness from the people who were affected. This might involve having difficult conversations, repaying a debt, or changing behaviors that added to the problem.

Practice self-forgiveness. Understand that everyone makes mistakes, and they can be opportunities for growth. Forgiving yourself isn’t saying you don’t care about the consequences of your actions. Instead, it’s about having self-compassion and letting yourself move forward.

Seek support from friends, family, or a mental health professional. Talking about feelings of guilt can be a relief. Other people can offer a new perspective on the situation and help you figure out if your feelings are proportional.

Therapy for guilt

To help people cope with excessive or chronic guilt, therapists might use techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), an approach that helps people identify and challenge unhelpful or negative thoughts. Mindfulness-based treatments such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can also help.

If guilty feelings are deeply tied to a mental health disorder, medication such as antidepressants may be prescribed alongside therapy. A mental health professional can assess your symptoms, offer coping strategies, and help you decide on a treatment plan. Visit our directory to connect with a licensed therapist in your area.