Releasing the Burden

A frequent corollary of guilt is regret. Frankly, regret can be a natural and healthy response to guilt. Regret involves accepting responsibility for some perceived offense or wrongdoing and being remorseful about it. It is often related to thoughts of contrition or ...

• Regret and shame often result from feelings of guilt.
• Guilt is a sense of culpability that can be helpful or devastating in one's life.
• When you make a mistake, own it. Correct it if you can, then let it go. Here's how.

If you read the self-help literature, you will find potentially confusing discussions of guilt, regret, and shame. It seems we have fallen prey to accepting Humpty Dumpty’s assertion “When I use a word…it means just what I choose ...

We learned that worry (repetitive concern) was a significantly toxic psychological process that was the essence of what we called stress, and was a major determinant of burnout (personal exhaustion). Worry predicted psychological disorders and physical illness. If shame can take regret and turn i...

Shame is the angst and distress often associated with guilt. It involves humiliation , a loss of honor or respect. Shame can take stressfu...

In the early 1990s, Kenneth Smith and I, as well as others, began a research project that has now spanned 30 years. Our initial goal was to discover what factors in the workplace contributed most to psychological burnout and stress-r...

It has been said that we are living in an epidemic of social alienation and depression . Cognitive psychologists tell us that depression is often a result of how we interpret the world around us and t...