Guilty as charged: Women compulsively feel regret

For 25-year-old Richa*, a casual night out of drinking with friends invariably leads to waking up the next morning racked by guilt. “It’s not like I’ve done something that I’m not ‘supposed to’,” she says. “Once the euphoria has passed, I spend a good 30 minutes replaying the night as if having a good time was a crime.” Richa is not alone. Aarti*, a 37-year-old consultant, struggles with confronting her flat mate. “When I talk to her about not doing her part of the house chores, it plays on my mind all day and by the evening I find myself doing things just to make up for the confrontation.”

A side of guilt, please

Most women function against a landscape of crippling, mostly irrational manifestations of guilt. Dr Shefali Batra, a psychiatrist and cognitive therapist, elaborates, “To an ordinary person it may seem unreasonable but to the person that sense of guilt is immense.”

In 2010, researchers at the University of the Basque Country in Spain discovered that women feel guilt more intensely than men, with middle-aged women feeling it the most. The results led academics to conclude that women were socially conditioned to feel ‘habitual guilt’, rather than it being a physiological difference.

Putting it in the Indian context, Dr Sonali Gupta, a clinical psychologist, says, “While women are perceived to be care-takers, men are conditioned around being providers. A man’s self-worth is in context of his job and although women have joined the work force, her identity continues to be defined by the roles she plays in the family.”

Women often ask Gupta whether they would be ‘selfish’ if they did something. “The narrative of self-care is not taught to women,” she explains. “There are women who feel guilty about going to the parlour for a basic hygiene routine because their child or someone else needs them.”

Inside out

Several studies have recognised standard gender differences in emotions. “Women tend to internalise their emotions while men externalise,” explains Dr Batra. “We see anger, aggression, frustration and irritability a little more in men than women. Women they think about the same thing repeatedly and have a better memory for negative events,”

In 2000, UCLA researchers identified the ‘tend and befriend’ response to stress in women. Batra explains, “Women usually think along the lines of ‘I want to be nice to everybody or I will feel awful about it.’ That feeling is guilt.”

While the intensity and cause of guilt overlaps or varies depending on age groups and social backgrounds, the pattern of conditioning emerges when enough women are asked about their guilt. A lot of women feeling guilty for having an extra piece of cake is an immediate reflection of the body-image messaging they are exposed to. “The way you internalise society’s expectations of a woman, becomes your expectation of yourself,” explains Dr Batra.

Most times guilt arises out of balancing work and family. “Women who are not working feel guilty about not working. Women who are working, feel guilty about not having enough time for family,” says Dr Batra. She continues, “Women and men work pretty much the same amount but when both come home, the woman has reasons to feel guilty. She may feel guilty about having to order food from outside when she feels she should be cooking it. Even when the husband is co-operative, she will still feel that ‘I am not good enough’.”

Unlearn, unlearn, unlearn

The remedy to this embedded conditioning is a conscious effort to unlearn the faulty things one has learnt. “Women need to revisit these expectations of themselves. A lot of them are irrational because they are not realistically possible. You cannot do everything. There are only 24 hours in a day, set realistic expectations from yourself,” concludes Dr Batra.

*Names changed