Ep. 48: Mona Fishbane

Can I build on what you just said? Cause you threw in the word guilt.

Yeah.

That's one of my favorite topics, actually.

Guilt is a dirty word in our culture and in the dominant culture.

And when I teach therapists, I will often ask the room, usually it's on Zoom, you know, to raise their hand if they like guilt.

He's a therapist.

Nobody raises their

hand.

And then I teach that Martin Buber, who's one of my heroes, who wrote I Am Thou, he also wrote an article called Guilt and Guilt Feelings.

And he said, there is neurotic guilt, which is what no therapist likes.

Nobody likes it.

But there's healthy guilt.

Healthy guilt is our conscience.

When we've wronged someone.

I know when I've wronged someone, I feel this wave going over my chest.

And that's my physiological cue to look at who have I harmed, right? Mm-hmm.

And Buber says that therapists often mix up healthy guilt and neurotic guilt and try to make people not feel guilty.

But let's say a woman comes to me and says, I feel so guilty I yelled at my kids all day yesterday.

I don't say to her, oh, I'm sure you didn't do so bad and you shouldn't feel guilty.

I say to her, wow, that's really interesting that your inner moral compass is speaking to you.

Mm-hmm.

How would you wish you had handled it differently? How would you like to handle it tomorrow? So I honor her guilt as part of her moral compass.

I love that.

So

I feel very deeply, and again, Buber was my teacher on this, about that.