Feelings of guilt after the death of a loved one. Feelings of guilt towards the deceased

Almost everyone who experiences death experiences guilt. loved one. It is like a heavy load that makes you look back at the past and skip past the events of the present. How can we understand what our guilt is towards the deceased? Is there a cure for guilt? This section contains articles that will help you understand these issues.

People experiencing the death of a loved one have one important problem - a feeling of guilt. After the death of a person, they often have a lot of “would haves”: if I had not done this, then the person would not have died... They remember distant events that, it seems, also influenced the outcome. People think that if they had behaved differently in the past, then everything would have been different: the person would not have died. Many, experiencing death, regret that they did not give enough love, were unfairly offended, reproached, quarreled, did not do something good for a person who now can no longer do it...

Often people who experience grief have questions about the cause of death. In search of answers to these questions, they try to explain (or confirm) their feelings of guilt in the death of a loved one. The practice of a forensic expert is a doctor who, in particular, studies the causes of health disorders and death of a person from various external influences– helps to understand the incorrectness of such conclusions.

After the death of a loved one, people often feel guilty. What is it: the voice of conscience or the machinations of demons that drag a person into the abyss?

The death of a relative or friend is always an emotional shock, the deepest mental shock for any of us. You can often encounter a situation where a person replays the circumstances of the death of a loved one over and over again in his head and reproaches himself for not being able to or not noticing the opportunity to save him. Is this a natural state for a grieving person and what causes it?

System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan will tell you where the feeling of guilt and resentment comes from, how to overcome destructive states and completely get rid of the feeling of guilt.

Unexpected news

- What? With whom? With mom?

— Mom was taken away by ambulance with a heart attack.

- She is alive? - I asked quietly.

- Just don’t worry!

- She is alive? - I asked firmly.

- It was not possible to save...

Bright future or dark guilt

Memories, regrets

Pictures from the depths of memory constantly emerge - things that have long been forgotten. And you immediately think how much has been lived. Why didn’t I remember about this before? I just thought that my mother would be there forever, but now they call her dead...

Ridiculous thoughts... I haven’t yet learned how to cook soup according to her recipe. I always thought that there was no need, because you could come and eat two plates of her ideal pickle soup, borscht or noodles at once. And in general, I won’t succeed like my mother. I will never eat her soup again...

Previously, there were grievances, complaints, even quarrels. And now constant feeling guilt and understatement - all in one tangled ball where I am stuck and cannot get out. Why did I leave? Why didn't you call so much? Why weren't you there? Why didn’t she force you to go to the doctor and check your health? And it’s clear that if I started my life over, I would have done everything differently, but you can’t return anything. And this thought gnaws inside and gives no peace.

Psychology of guilt

It's another matter when this feeling is like sulfuric acid Corrodes a person from the inside. This often happens when nothing can be changed. For example, when you are tormented by a feeling of guilt before the deceased. You understand: there is a lot left unfinished, incomplete, unsaid, but it is no longer possible to finish, complete and say.

This is a big trauma for the psyche of owners of the anal vector. After all, people with this vector are perfectionists. They are created to bring any matter to a fair decision and ideal conclusion. It is important for them to return in return the good that was done to them, so that it is equal. How will you bring the matter to an end if you are dealing with a dead person? How can you thank for all the good things if you didn’t have time to do it during your lifetime?

Such a psyche in itself is thorough, straightforward and somewhat clumsy. This is why people with an anal vector are able to for a long time sit on one subject, concentrate on it, achieving best results. But at the same time, the psyche of a person with an anal vector does not bend, but immediately breaks. When the pressure is too great, the feeling of resentment towards the deceased or guilt towards him weighs heavily and it is quite difficult to deal with them.

Resentment and guilt are two sides of “injustice”

It is also easy for a person with the anal vector to get stuck in the past, because this vector has a particularly reverent attitude towards the past. And such people, more than others, are nostalgic for the past, for what cannot be returned. And this is also a huge permanent tension. We would like to live in the past and change it at will.

How to get rid of guilt

System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan shows that a person with an anal vector is endowed with special properties, which ideally should result in positive activity. No one can be more grateful for all the good that people have done. However, a number of psychotraumas and anchors cause the owner of the anal vector to get stuck in the past without changing anything, and this ultimately leads to psychosomatics like high pressure, excess weight and poor health.

We can't just undo these properties. We can only recognize them in ourselves and conduct psychoanalysis to get rid of the corrosive feeling of guilt. This is also necessary so that your memory of the deceased is not filled with what is unsaid and unfinished. Allow yourself to have fond memories with deep gratitude for the past.

“...I stopped feeling like a victim thanks to the training. I always felt always and forever guilty about everything, depressed, a delayed victim, and in this state I attracted frustrated subjects to me. But at some point during a discussion with my husband, a “click” occurred, and I suddenly opened and released almost from my ancient brain an ancient hostile thought: “I want to devour you,” which is certainly not the thought of a victim, but rather the opposite. Everything fell into place in my head. I stopped blaming myself because I felt the reason well. Be a victim? It's in the past, but now it's not...

...I had a feeling of constant grief, sorrow, resentment, eternal guilt, suicidal thoughts, condemnation, self-criticism, emotional swings, which is what I lived in before the training, and it got to the point that I no longer noticed it, but others noticed. In the process of completing the training, having figured out the reasons why, I realized that a habit and a norm are not the same thing. The norm is positive attitude, lightness and a feeling of joy. The training helped me feel this positivity, and I already want to constantly stay in this bright wave and develop new positive habits...”
Miroslava L., chamber choir artist, choirmaster-tutor, Sochi

“...I had a strong resentment towards my parents, and no matter how hard I tried to improve the relationship, nothing worked. After their death, this hope disappeared completely and I was torn by a feeling of resentment and guilt that I could not forgive them. After the training, these states went away completely, and I finally found peace of mind..."
Iryna S.

“...Not long before this, I buried my husband, with whom I had lived for 24 years. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one understands well this pain, this nagging feeling of guilt, resentment towards life, the impossibility of returning... After the training it became easier, a deep understanding came that no one is to blame for the departure of people...”
Elena S., hairdresser-stylist, Naberezhnye Chelny

The article was written using materials from online training on system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan

Depression, suicide attempts, causeless anxiety and fears - often people turn to a psychologist with these serious problems. To help a patient, a specialist must understand the cause of his suffering. And often this reason turns out to be a feeling of guilt that remains unrepentant, often deeply hidden. Sin without repentance, committed in the past, grows into spiritual tragedy in the present. And people often don’t understand: why? And the cure, it turns out, is very close.

Man has centuries of experience with guilt. Back in paradise, Adam accused Eve of temptation, Eve accused the serpent of temptation. From the first sin, sinners try to shift their guilt onto someone else. Each of us, one way or another, knows this painful feeling: we did something that should not have been done, we crossed a certain law that our conscience knows. Over the years clinical practice I observed a strange phenomenon: the obvious confusion of psychologists in the face of guilt as an ineradicable symptom of serious pathologies and disorders.

Whatever theories and methods have been developed, whatever scientific works no matter what is written, the feeling of guilt still continues to disturb the human mind and psyche. Classical Freudian psychoanalysis, in my opinion, hardly coped with the task, offering a dubious “cure for guilt” - justifying it by the actions of other people, and especially parents. In modern pop psychology, especially Western psychology, there are widespread theories and practices designed to increase human self-esteem by any means.

It is believed that people should stop judging themselves and feel important regardless of their actions or circumstances. It is assumed that a person is destined to satisfy his needs (“I deserve it because I exist”), and therefore there can be no guilt. Some go even further, declaring guilt a wrong emotion, and propose simply destroying the “guilt zone” forever, as a useless experience, as something shameful and negative. The result of attempts to “heal” or “cancel” guilt has been an increase in the number of people with chronic depression, states of pathological anxiety, neuroses, psychoses, and suicides.

The number of those who try to drown “guilt in wine” or escape from it in a drug frenzy does not stop increasing. Often people themselves come to a psychotherapist in order to immediately get rid of a painful feeling, and, often revealing their moral failings, they expect to hear that there is always something or someone - a husband, wife, parents, children, a difficult childhood, society , lack of money, etc., which forced them to commit a bad act, to violate the moral law. In a word, the blame for what they did does not lie with them at all, which means there is no responsibility. But a formal justification for sin in a psychotherapist's office has only a temporary effect, and then in rare cases. Unconscious and unacknowledged guilt, like a hidden abscess, continues to carry out its destructive work in a person.

Get the skeleton out of the closet

Here are some examples from my practice. Patient Mikhail K. (real names of people have been changed), 45 years old, two attempts at suicide, changed several psychotherapists, suffered from depression, uncontrollable anxiety, insomnia for many years, is aggressive with people, hates women. I was married for a short time, had no friends, and never stayed at any job for more than six months. After several weeks of psychotherapy, the root of his problems was revealed - a deeply hidden feeling of guilt towards his mother.

IN adolescence, in a quarrel, Mikhail pushed her against the wall. After an unsuccessful fall, the mother fell ill for a long time, and the son, unable to bear the situation, left home. He returned three years later, when his mother was no longer there.

Another patient, Boris A., 64 years old, formerly a successful businessman and leader large company, divorced, suffers from depression, irritability and sudden changes moods. At the first session he admitted uncontrollable fear of death. The only son lives in another city, we haven’t seen each other or communicated for more than twenty years. After several months of therapy, I recognized my main problem - a hidden feeling of guilt in front of my son, whom I had bullied and humiliated all my life because he did not live up to his father’s hopes, did not learn and did not become big man and disgraced his name by choosing the ordinary profession of tiler.

One more example. Dina S., 40 years old, suffers from severe depression, chronic anxiety, fears, auditory hallucinations- constantly hears children's voices. She lives alone, finds it difficult to get along with people (according to her, she runs away from them, as if afraid of some kind of exposure (a sign of paranoia). A terrible self-destructive force and total internal terror possessed her most life. It took six months intensive care, before the mental abscess broke through and she said that at the age of 18 she left one year old child the person she was living with at the time and ran away with someone else. Telling your tragic story, splashing out of her like stagnant water from a dam, she admitted: “I tried to justify myself for a long time, I thought, because I was still a child. But now I realized that the child was my daughter, and I was the mother.” All these destinies and many others similar to them are united by one thing - a feeling of guilt hidden in the very depths of the being. Often, caring for the well-being of the external facade, we do not even suspect what terrible destructive work the worm of suppressed guilt is doing in our soul.

There is also something else in these destinies, obvious to me as an Orthodox psychologist - complete absence love. Furthermore, inexplicable fear of any of its manifestations. Each of them reacted almost inadequately to my simple question: are there people in their lives whom they could truly love?

Are there people who are guilty without guilt?

What does the band-aid of self-justification hide?

Our moral ideal is nothing more than our conscience, which contains God’s Law of good and evil, what is good and what is bad. We always have a choice - to cover it with a band-aid of self-justification or to open our spiritual wounds, believing in their healing. The first one is undoubtedly easier to do. Even if at first our conscience, tormented by sin and confusion, resists and demands cleansing from dirt, the second, third and subsequent attempts to muffle these impulses are easier for us. The heart grows colder, the mind becomes more cynical, and the soul gives everything fewer signs life.

From all this it is not far to the most disastrous outcome - the spiritual decay of the individual and spiritual death. Many of my patients have paid a high price for guilt - this unresolved emotional wound - through years of despair and illness. In my practice, working with unhappy and restless people, I constantly observe this fine line, beyond which human life can plunge into impenetrable darkness if there is no light of faith in it. Guilt and forgiveness are constant topics in my conversations with people during psychotherapy sessions. And for those of them who do not reject faith, but try to find their way to it, it is always easier to realize the important truth that when we violate the laws written in our conscience, we are guilty, regardless of whether we feel guilty or not. When we sincerely repent, we are forgiven, even if we do not feel forgiven.

Guilt, guilt and the conflict generated by this feeling is a spiritual loss. And therefore, one must seek its resolution in a person’s spiritual life, in faith. As an Orthodox psychologist, I try to rely primarily on faith in the therapy process itself. When people realize their responsibility for what they have done, they themselves seek purification through repentance and deep regret. And only then - through pain and joy - in human soul peace begins to come, only then does healing come.

One of my former patients, who once had seven abortions in her youth and was left without children and without a family, came to repentance through terrible mental anguish. Continuous prayer for the souls of her unborn children, for the sending of God's light and mercy to them, gave birth to hope for a new life. As Saint Demetrius of Rostov said, repentance restores the fallen soul, makes it from alienated to friendly to God; repentance encourages a tormented soul, strengthens a wavering soul, heals a broken soul, and makes a wounded one healthy.

Free Gift

In “Crime and Punishment” by F. Dostoevsky, Sonya Marmeladova asks Raskolnikov to repent of the murder: “Get up!.. Come now, this minute. Stand at the crossroads, bow down, kiss the ground that you have desecrated, and then bow down to the whole world and say out loud: I killed. And then God will send you life again... What a torment to bear! But a whole life, a whole life!.. “I’ll get used to it,” he said gloomily...” Raskolnikov was not used to it. And after many years of ordeal and mental suffering, already in prison, he came to faith. No matter what theories and mechanisms a person comes up with in the fight against guilt, sooner or later they stop working. And the moment will come when the external noise and vanity with which we are trying to drown out the voice of conscience will finally fall silent, and then in deep silence we will hear the bitter truth: “I overstepped... I disobeyed God.” Repentance is impossible without humility and meekness. The realization that I personally, as a person, am weak and unable to resolve my guilt myself, to modern man It’s not easy: our pride, inflated to gigantic proportions, gets in the way. To pacify her is a great victory. The ancients said: of two people, the first of whom defeated the army, and the second - himself, the second emerged victorious. God knows our guilt, but believes in our ability to be cleansed.

Purification does not occur at the level of the intellect, but occurs in the heart. Often we hide mental trauma deep, like a terrible secret that we cannot tell even to our loved ones, for fear of losing their love or respect (“if they find out “this” about me, they will stop loving me”).

Faith - and I, as an Orthodox psychologist, am convinced of this every day - breaks this dangerous concept that gives rise to alienation. True love unconditional and unconditional. It is impossible to lose her. Repentant guilt only restores our unity with God. Repentance is God's gift, given to us, to each of us, irrevocably and free of charge. How we use this gift: whether we consign it to oblivion due to inconvenience and uselessness, or carefully carry it through life, is up to us to decide. Psychotherapy can be useful at the first stage of personality awakening, when a person learns to distinguish between his true and false feelings, the motivation of actions, the causes of conflicts, to overcome mistrust and fear, to recognize and pronounce guilt.

Real cleansing occurs in higher spiritual realms, and I always advise my patients to seek it in communion with the Church. The doors of God's temple are open. It is our choice to pass by, comforting our conscience, or to go inside and face our guilt before God, the only one who can truly console our pain. One warrior asked the elder: “Does God accept repentance?” The elder replied: “If your cloak breaks, will you throw it away?” The warrior says: “No! I'll sew it up." - “If you spare your clothes this way, won’t God spare his creation?”

Natalia Volkova
Orthodox psychotherapist

— People experiencing grief have one important problem - a feeling of guilt. How to solve it correctly and is it necessary?

- Of course, it needs to be solved. After the death of a person, his loved ones often have a lot of “woulds”: if I had not done this, then he would not have died... Distant events are remembered, which, it seems, also influenced the outcome. People think that if they had behaved differently in the past, things would have been different. Many people regret that they did not give enough love, were unfairly offended, reproached, quarreled, did not do something good for a person who now can no longer do it...

Let me give you an example. I recently counseled a woman who was very worried and blamed herself for the death of her husband. In the fall, she asked her husband to go to her mother in another region to buy potatoes. Before that, for many years, every autumn he went to his mother-in-law to buy potatoes, and no problems arose. But this year tragedy struck. A traffic accident occurred not far from the regional center, as a result of which a man died.

The poor woman began to blame herself for what happened. She was sure: the tragedy occurred because she asked her husband to go to his mother. “And if I had not insisted on these potatoes, my husband would not have died,” she reasoned.

And there are many such examples. Almost any death of a person is accompanied by a feeling of guilt among those who remained alive. If a person died, for example, from a disease, the feeling of guilt is presented as follows: “It’s my fault that I didn’t see the symptoms of this disease earlier,” “It’s my fault that I didn’t insist that my wife go to the doctor. But if we had turned to a doctor for help in time, then perhaps she would be alive now.”

And it seems, at first glance, these conclusions seem logical. One action, it would seem, follows from another: she asked to go to the village - the husband died, he did not insist on hospitalization - the wife died. But this is only logical at first glance. In fact, the question of a cause-and-effect relationship cannot be posed so directly. A specific action of a person - for example, the same request to go buy potatoes - is just one of factors in the formation of the situation, which turned out to be fatal. And nothing more. This is not the determining factor, and not the only one, but just one of many.

To really assess your guilt, you need to understand that not a single person can foresee, calculate, evaluate all the factors, provide for all the nuances that can save or, conversely, lead to the death of another person. People cannot be responsible for everything. Why? The answer is simple - because, as I said, every person is just a person, he is imperfect and does not have the ability to make calculations of this level.

Let's be honest: in life we ​​do bad things to many people, we don’t ask for forgiveness for it and quickly forget about what happened. And we usually don’t blame ourselves for all the hundreds of thousands of insults (conscious and unconscious) that we inflict on people throughout our lives...

But if a person dies, then here we are All we remember and we are “covered” with a feeling of guilt. Moreover, it is inadequate to reality, exaggerated. We blame ourselves for not being able to foresee something, not being able to say good things, not being able to forgive earlier, etc. In such cases, we often believe that our actions could have saved the person from death. This happens largely because we are sincerely convinced, although we do not admit it to ourselves - we Can control matters of life and death of another person. This is what our pride speaks to us...

We do not understand, or do not want to understand, that the issue of death is not in our, but in God’s competence. We can only be responsible for our choices., which is done based on the information we have at that moment, as well as existing capabilities.

Let's illustrate this with a metaphor. Let's imagine this situation: you and I play football on the same team. One of the players on our team received the ball, made a mistake and passed the wrong pass. The ball hit the enemy, and... he scored a goal against us.

Will we blame the player on our team who received the pass? If he had not trained before and deliberately passed the ball to the other team, then yes, he could be blamed... But this is not so, and his inaccurate pass was an unintentional mistake, because we all make mistakes sometimes. And it would never occur to anyone to quarrel with him, to find out “how could he do this.”

Or, for example, our goalkeeper. He also missed the ball into our goal! Maybe he should be blamed? No, we understand that he did what he could at that moment. We understand that he cannot catch all the balls flying towards our goal! This is impossible because he is not football perfection, but a human being just like us. He does not have the supernatural ability to influence the outcome of the entire match... And if we look for the culprit, then he is not the only one to blame for this goal. He catches it as best he can. If the goalkeeper missed a goal, then we can say that the team played poorly and defended the goal poorly. This goal depended on a huge number of factors: the strength and preparedness of the opposing team, the degree of preparedness of our team as a whole, our will to win, team spirit, the condition of the field, etc., and not just on the performance of a particular football player.

Now imagine that you were that goalkeeper. Would you blame yourself in this situation, believing that you are carrying personal responsibility for this goal? Of course not. And the striker who scored a goal against someone else, in turn, cannot fully attribute this goal only to his good play. It's a credit his entire team.

But this is football. And life?... Life is much more complicated. Moreover, no one can foresee all the nuances that may arise. Any case is a problem with too many unknowns. And if a wife asked her husband to go pick up potatoes, and an accident occurred on the way, this does not mean at all that it was her direct fault. Because he might not have gone to pick up potatoes, but gone out into the yard, and the same thing would have happened, but only in a different form... We are all strong in hindsight in searching for our own guilt. And this prevents us from looking at things soberly.

— Often people begin to blame the death of loved ones and other people, and not just themselves...

- Yes, this happens even more often than self-accusation. We can blame the death on people who also did not want what happened, but their actions, in our opinion, led to the death, directly or indirectly. Usually, close relatives, friends of the deceased, doctors, and colleagues fall into the category of such culprits.

One must also be extremely careful with such accusations. And it’s even better to leave them altogether (of course, this does not apply to the case deliberate murders).

Don't judge. Indeed, in this case, compared to the situation of self-accusation, we know even less of those details that simply need to be known reliably in order to bring any charges against these people. Or even just suspect their involvement. Returning to our football metaphor, we can draw an analogy: blaming others is the same as blaming the same goalkeeper for missing a goal (the fact is obvious), but not taking into account the variety of factors that made it possible. Even when the connection between the actions of another person and the death of a loved one seems quite direct and obvious to us, we should not blame anyone. We cannot know exactly how much this other person wanted what happened, how much he could calculate the consequences of his steps, which, in our opinion, led to a sad outcome.

— What can you say about a situation where relatives saw that their loved one was in bad moral condition, but out of their own ignorance did not take any action, did not take them to a doctor, or did not bring a psychologist to church? And then, after what happened, people begin to blame themselves for allowing a loved one to commit suicide...

“They allowed this to happen because they did not know how to behave in this situation, they did not fully understand what this situation could lead to. If they knew for sure and didn’t help, that’s a different question. But when a person does not know what to do, does not know what can happen, does not know for what reasons this will happen, then it is wrong to accuse him of inaction. Of course, when everything is later revealed and the reason becomes clear, they begin to think: “Oh, how come I didn’t think of that before. It’s so elementary!” That’s why I didn’t realize that you were imperfect. Perhaps God did not let you think of this in this case, because it was His providence...

A person cannot be held responsible for a tragic incident that turns out to be the last in a certain chain of events, just because some of his actions in this chain preceded the tragedy. The fact that it preceded does not mean that it was the determining factor.

- What should we be responsible for then?

- God gave each of us right to choose. Before we commit any action, we make a choice: to go or not to go, to decide or to postpone, etc. And the choice, naturally, is determined by our life principles and the information that is available at the time the decision is made. If we know that a person has a heart condition, we have a choice: call an ambulance or not. If we reliably know about the disease and can accurately make a prognosis, then most likely we will call. And if we don’t know what’s wrong with him, then we may get confused, we may not give it the necessary importance and not call. Of course, everything will become clear later. After which, if a person remains alive, and we called a doctor for him, then we will attribute the merit of saving his life to ourselves; If a person dies, and we didn’t call a doctor because we didn’t know what to do, then we’ll take the blame. Both are wrong. We must understand that we are responsible only for our conscious choice, taking into account the information available at the time of making the decision.

- What is this choice? Could you give an example of such a choice?

“For example, we know that we are sending a person to certain death. We have choice: send or not. Moreover, we have information sufficient to draw a conclusion about the almost inevitable fatal outcome. It is precisely for this choice that we must be held accountable.

If at the time of choice we did not have information that our action could lead to such an ending, then we cannot bear full responsibility for this ending. This should not weigh heavily on us...

We ourselves will forgive a three-year-old child who, after playing in the garden with a dog, accidentally ran into the garden bed and trampled strawberries. We understand that he is small, could not foresee the consequences, and even played too much. But we will definitely punish a three-year-old child if, after a warning that he is not allowed to walk in the garden beds, he makes a conscious choice and tramples the strawberries. The result seems to be the same: the strawberries are trampled by the child. But the situations are completely different. One situation is an example of a conscious choice, a conscious disobedience. The other is an example of unintended consequences of completely acceptable actions.

Returning to the aforementioned potato incident. It is clear what the wife wanted - for her husband to go get potatoes. And in this There is nothing bad. My husband has already gone for these potatoes many times. The wife’s choice - to ask her husband to go buy potatoes - is quite understandable, and we cannot give him a negative assessment.

Everything that happened next was God’s providence. A person cannot predict that far. Of course, if she knew that she was sending her husband to get potatoes, and on the way a KAMAZ would drive into his car, but did not cancel her request, then yes, she would be to blame... But she could not know this. This is much beyond human strength.

I will say again that we are all strong in hindsight. And we all blame ourselves for not being able to foresee something. In this case, we need to think about the fact that a person is not a supercomputer that can calculate everything so far. Yes, you must draw conclusions for the future. And I should know that this could happen again in the future. And perhaps you will already know what to do. Or perhaps not - as in the situation with potatoes. A car accident can happen again, and again we will be powerless to change anything.

No one can say clearly what will happen, since the future is unknown to us, and the entire universe, the most complex interactions of human destinies, chains of events that we are unable to predict are impossible to understand. All is in God's hands. There is such a principle: “Do what you must, and come what may.” The first part of this statement (“Do what you must”) says that in our the ability to make the right decisions, taking into account available information, and bear responsibility for them and their direct consequences. The second part (“Come what may”) reminds us: what will happen next, how other people will react to our actions, and what situation will develop in the end is the result of a complex interaction of many factors, and this is not in our control. Therefore, we cannot take full responsibility for this result. We just have to accept it with humility as the will of God.

— You often hear about the will of God, but how do you understand how it manifests itself and how it works?

- There are answers to these questions detailed explanations from the Holy Fathers of the Church. They are not difficult to find.

I really liked the reasoning on this topic by one wise abbot (Doctor of Physics and Mathematics). He gave the following metaphor: We push one ball along the floor. At the same time, knowing friction, push force, and inertia, we can very accurately calculate where it will stop. This is described by a fairly simple formula. Another person next to us can take another ball and, having the same data, also push it. And he, too, will know exactly where his ball will stop... And so we push each of our balls, and wait for them to stop in the place we calculated... But they collided! It turns out that we did not take into account the angle at which a collision could occur. Before this, we could accurately predict the outcome. But the collision shattered all our calculations. Because the angles at which the balls collide or do not collide with each other are not in our control, but in the power of chance.

Although it is not entirely legitimate to talk about the power of chance. After all, all so-called accidents are not random; they reveal something incomprehensible to us. Providence of God. All “accidents” depend on God. We cannot calculate the collision angles of the balls; We also cannot know who, when and where will make adjustments to our plans in the future. And we cannot be held responsible for this.

— It turns out that everything depends on God?

- Yes, sure. Everything depends on Him except our choice. As St. Theophan the Recluse wrote, instructing his spiritual daughter: “Place yourself completely in the hands of God, not worrying about anything, but accepting every opportunity calmly, as God has deliberately arranged for you, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. Your only concern should be to act in every case according to God’s commandment.” That is, we accept those circumstances of life that do not depend on us - with wisdom, without despondency; and we must devote all our strength to making the right choice under these circumstances and taking into account the available information.

We can say that God, as a caring and teaching Father, constantly puts us before a choice, constantly gives us to solve this problem. But how correctly we solve it depends on us. And He respects our conscious decision. But also responsibility for our conscious decisions He completely transfers to us.

- But sometimes it’s done deliberately wrong choice…

- Yes, this often happens. From anger, for example. Instead of forgiving, a person takes out his anger on a loved one... For example, a husband came home very drunk. As a human being, we should forgive him, not sort things out while he’s in this state, and talk calmly the next morning. No, my wife says: “Go to your mother, I don’t want to see you!” And on the way they kill him...

Of course, it was impossible to foresee that everything would turn out this way. But the wife’s action - not letting her husband home - on my own not good towards my husband. But it is no longer possible to ask for forgiveness or to make amends for your actions in any way, since the person died. Yes, in this case self-criticism begins. It is not uncommon for people to blame themselves for the rest of their lives.

But then it arises fundamental question: Do we believe in the existence of the soul and its immortality?

Let's assume we don't believe it. And if there is no soul, then there is nothing to blame yourself for. Well, there is no person and no. He doesn’t care at all anymore, since he’s simply no longer there. It doesn’t matter to us, since in the person of this person we have lost, perhaps, a friend, an assistant, some kind of support in life. We are lonely, but he can’t bear it anymore. Therefore, feelings of guilt in front of him We shouldn't have it.

And if we understand that there is a soul (and, of course, it exists), then instead of these self-accusations, soul-searching and endless regrets (now what to say, what should have been done?) - it’s worth going and confess, ask God for forgiveness for your wrongdoing! Yes, you can throw yourself on the lid of the coffin, sprinkle ashes on your head, and tell everyone, “What a mean thing I did.” But this path will not bring comfort. But there is a path that really brings comfort: repentance . Through repentance we will become closer to God. The prayer for the deceased will become stronger, and with this we will help him real help, we can at least somehow correct the evil that we caused him. Both the soul of the deceased and our soul will become calmer.

Here adaptive mechanism for experiencing a situation. Do not endlessly regret that the situation has changed, and the old cannot be returned (a person cannot be resurrected), but accept the new situation and adapt to it, find the best option for behavior both for yourself and for the soul of the deceased.

- What if a person wished good for his loved one, but everything turned out to be evil? And so he involuntarily begins to think: it’s not for nothing that people say: “Don’t do good - you won’t receive evil”...

– For example, I gave a friend a valuable thing, he really asked me about it. Good deed? Kind. I sacrificed my wealth and gave it to a friend. And he was killed for this thing. And I begin to blame myself: if I had not given this thing to my friend, he would be alive. And in this case, maybe it would be so...

But let's take another example: a man asked me for this thing, but I did not give it to him. And in theory they should have killed him, but they didn’t kill him, because he didn’t have this thing. But it wasn’t, because I DID NOT give it to him.

Should I receive a reward in this case? I'm human saved, I didn’t give him the thing for which he could have been killed!

And in the first case, I blame myself for the fact that the person killed, because he gave him the thing, although he could not have given it, he could have been greedy, and saved him.

This is a completely wild approach. Everything is turned upside down. We blame ourselves for doing a good deed out of love for a friend, and we praise ourselves for doing something bad and not showing love.

Why did we seem to be reasoning logically, but the conclusion we received was absolutely incorrect, and even the opposite of the correct one? But because in our reasoning we focused not on our conscious choice, but on the final situation that was the result huge amount factors and did not really depend on us.

And for our soul, in the prism of eternity, what matters is not the final result as a whole, but precisely our conscious choice towards good or evil. This and only this reflects the ability of our soul be in love. But God is Love, and only a person who knows how to love can be involved in Him. And at God’s judgment, our very actions will testify either for us or against us; it is our choice that God will look at...

Yes, it seems that some of our choices ultimately led to the death of a person. But we again forget that everything is in God’s hands. Did we want to do good? Certainly! And we made every effort to deal with the person according to love. And what happened next depended completely not on us.

And if we could have done good, but didn’t, then this is, of course, a purely negative act, because it was we who did not help this person. We are responsible only for our choice. Moreover, as we have already said, for choice in conditions of limited information (we cannot know all the circumstances). Here zone that responsibility that we carry.

It is a great sin to take responsibility for something over which we have no control - in this way we try to take on the functions of God. That is, we think that we could change something globally and foresee the result! But how could we foresee? So many factors influence the final result!

It's like I'm sitting down with the world chess champion to play chess. He checked me once and almost immediately checkmated me. And at the end of a lost game, I will blame myself: but I could have foreseen that he would do this! I could have foreseen how the game would go further, how he would move. Maybe you can win the game against the world champion if you go back and put the chess in its place again. And now, knowing how he would go, I could change everything... But the fact is that I am not a world champion. And I cannot predict how he will move, because he plays chess much better than me. That's why he is the world champion.

And we must understand this limitation of ours, our imperfection, so as not to live in the past, not to blame yourself for what you have no control over, and not to engage in self-criticism.

- What should the woman do who kicked out her drunken husband, and then he died? What to do in such a situation?

- She needs to repent. But she must clearly understand: she is responsible not for the fact that her husband was killed (she didn’t kill him!), but for the fact that she treated him mercilessly, cruelly, not out of love. It is precisely because she acted this way, not in a Christian way, that she must repent before God.

It is necessary to understand that, first of all, the soul of this woman, and not the soul of the deceased, needs repentance. After all, the offense is obvious, and the heaviness in the soul is from this act. And it is important for her to receive forgiveness for this cruel step. And although her husband can no longer forgive her, because he has gone to another world, receiving forgiveness from God in this situation is quite enough. Therefore, there is no need to shed tears for months and fall into depression, we need to go to God and bring repentance for those actions in which we made the wrong choice (we talked about this above) in relation to the deceased.

And what is now important to the husband’s soul is not whether the wife cries or not, but whether the wife will pray for him, whether she will do deeds of mercy for the salvation of his soul. This the most important, how we can and should help our deceased loved ones.

- What prevents people from forgiving themselves? After all, it is very difficult for many to forgive themselves for this or that action...

– Forgive yourself... it would be too easy. Human by myself forgive me by myself cannot justify it. Of course, we often try to do this, but it does not bring relief. We can tell ourselves a hundred times a day that we forgive ourselves, but we will not achieve results. And everyone knows this from their own experience. Why? Because conscience, which is the voice of our soul, continues to convict us. We ourselves cannot forgive ourselves because our soul will not accept this forgiveness, it will still torment and remind. We can, of course, drown out the voice of conscience for a while - with wine, binge drinking, business. We can push this voice of conscience into the depths of the subconscious, but then this voice will still break through. Only God can truly forgive and calm our soul... This is precisely what repentance is for!

- What is conscience? Why can she make us suffer so much?

— The Holy Fathers said: conscience is the voice of God. As Saint Theophan writes, “We have a vigilant guard - conscience. She will never let anything go wrong; and no matter how you explain to her that something is nothing, but this will do, she will not stop repeating her opinion: what is bad is bad... Conscience is always our moral lever.”

That’s why she constantly wakes us up, constantly gives us some signals. Only we most often perceive it as something that interferes with us. “There’s something gnawing at my soul, tormenting me, and it just won’t stop... As much as possible!”, we think. And at critical moments, the conscience directly says: “Go and repent, you have committed a sin.” And the sin is not that, as in our example, the wife asked her husband to go buy potatoes. No, there are specific sins against this person: we once treated him with consumerism, treated him mercilessly, said a rude word, humiliated him, did not support him in a difficult moment. This happens to everyone, unfortunately, to a greater or lesser extent, and we need to fight it. How? Repentance, correction of your life.

Moreover, if a person has died, this does not mean that it is too late to improve, become kinder, more tolerant. After all, we have other close people. We can learn a lesson from our misdeeds, learn to show more love to people, and if we are guilty of them, ask for forgiveness while the person is still with us, before he leaves...

And as for our guilt before the deceased: if we repent of our wrong steps, we will be forgiven by God, we will receive unspeakable spiritual relief, and we will be able to live on with a cleared conscience. (But repentance must be sincere...) Simply put, after sincere repentance, conscience (the voice of God) calms down.

And if we do not repent, then this burden will always be with us, the burden of our mistakes, our guilt. And unfortunately, despite the fact that there are quite time-tested and people-tested algorithms for how to act in these situations, how to ease the soul - in spite of everything, people for the most part do not use them. They don’t go to God and don’t repent.

Most people, not knowing how to drown out this voice of God, try to find their way out: they begin to blame themselves, engage in self-criticism, some even fall into complete despair and try to commit suicide. Others, on the contrary, “go on a spree”, begin to lead such a lifestyle so that there is no time to think, so that there is no time to look at themselves soberly... They drown out the voice of conscience with anything: vodka, drugs, unbridled entertainment. When, in rare moments, conscience makes itself felt, it prompts: “I was unfair to this person, I must at least somehow correct it. Even if he is no longer there, there is probably some way to make amends to him, to do something for him.” And there is this method - this is repentance and prayer for the soul of the deceased, as we said above. But going to church, to God, is hard, you have to break yourself, overcome it. It’s easier to “get drunk and forget”...

“I myself lost a loved one, so I understand well what it is. Yes, often people do not have a basic understanding of how to behave in a given situation, or where to go for help. But what to do if you simply don’t have the strength, you don’t even have the strength to get out of bed because of the pain? And this pain is not only mental, but also physical level…

– Yes, it seems like you have no strength for anything, and you feel nothing but pain. But in fact, this is not a lack of strength... This situation can be compared to exercising on an exercise bike. We pedal, it’s hard for us, but we’re not going anywhere. Movement – ​​zero. But the strength is leaving. That’s all emotional experiences, when they are directed in the wrong direction, can be likened to idle work. And the pain does not go away, and there is no movement forward, and there is no more strength left. The wheels just spin.

And so year after year can pass until a person understands that the bicycle does not move, and if nothing is changed, then he will never ride. That is, if we do not understand something important, then we will never be able to truly come to terms with the death of a loved one, we will not be able to live (and not exist).

Most often, we are worried about what we did not manage to do in relation to a loved one who is no longer around. They didn’t give enough love, they didn’t ask for forgiveness for their offensive actions. We all, as a rule, feel that we owe something to the deceased. But – who should we give it to now?? It is this question that shocks us and plunges us into depression. We don't understand what we should do now. We do not understand the situation, and therefore we begin to panic and fall into despair. Previously, when a person was alive, we understood how to behave with him; now everything has changed, and we feel helpless, like blind kittens... A lot of feelings appear (aggression, despair, an all-consuming feeling of guilt) that exhaust a person physically, psychologically, and spiritually. This is exactly what you were talking about.

—What do we need to understand so that our spiritual work does not go in vain? What should you focus your energy on?

But we must understand that the person who is not with us is now with God. And any connection with the departed can only be carried out through God. Give to God and thus this person will receive; ask God for forgiveness and thus you will be forgiven to your loved ones.

Pray for this person - and you will give him what he needs most now. Do you owe him money? But he doesn't need your money now! Your prayer is much more important to him! Give his soul what it needs, what it needs so much.

It’s the same in the situation of death: why does the soul of the deceased need all our lamentations, tears, luxurious wreaths in the cemetery, marble monuments, expensive wakes, touching speeches and the like? We, the living, need all this. And what is most important to his soul is our prayers, alms and works of mercy.

We didn’t give back the money we borrowed from the deceased? Let's give it to the poor or spend it on some charitable cause. By doing this, we will truly usefully return them to the soul of the deceased. No money? Please, have mercy. If a person has done a lot for us, invested time and effort, we can give everything to him. This usually happens, by the way, when parents die. They have done a lot for us, and we understand it very well. They invested a lot in us, but now we can’t give back. Please - you can give it to children, the poor, the sick, the elderly. Help them with your attention, give them part of your personal time. Can be shown more love and to your children, pay more attention to their spiritual education.

In this way, we will repay the debt to the soul of the deceased - in the very currency that the soul of the deceased can accept. And then there will be no such state of physical and mental exhaustion and devastation. Because there will be real movement forward, and not just spinning the wheels on an exercise bike.

“I’m almost sure that many who lose loved ones simply lack the knowledge of where to turn and what to do.

- Well, it all comes from our culture. For centuries there was such knowledge, and it was successfully used, but now we throw it all away, like dirty laundry. We prefer to go with the flow... and drown our sorrows in alcohol.

But here again we need to decide. If there is a soul, this is one question, but if there is no soul, it is a completely different question. If there is no soul, then there is no need to worry, as we have already said. There is no point in worrying about someone who is no longer there...

It's another matter if there is a soul. Since she exists, it is clear that you need to do everything for her... And not for yourself. Mental pain, like physical pain, is generally necessary for a person. The pain of the soul in psychology is called psychalgia. This is a signal that something is wrong with our soul.

- And what should we do with it? It's very painful!

- What do we do when we have a toothache? Well, we can endure the pain for a day, we can take painkillers to dull it. But time passes, and we still understand that the tooth needs to be treated, because the pain did not arise without reason!

And we can also say that this pain took all our strength, because like any pain it is exhausting. But it is obvious to us that this pain will continue until we see a doctor. When we finally go to the doctor, then, most likely, our tooth will be cured. AND the pain will go away, since the cause of the pain will be eliminated.

Mental pain is a slightly different kind of pain. And the doctor in this case is not a dentist, but God. (Sometimes some help comes from a psychologist. But this is not the main help. The main one is from God.) For centuries there has been correct algorithm: a person has died - first of all, you need to go to church, help the soul of the deceased, and not pump yourself up with despair. First of all, we need to think not about ourselves, that we feel bad, but about the deceased - that he needs our prayers. And when we begin to pray and do deeds of mercy, then we ourselves gain strength, and our pain really weakens. This has been proven by thousands of years of practice... If we reject this path to recovery, then we will continue to stew in this pain for a year or two or three...

Why do we need this??? In this case, we will not help the soul of the deceased, and even less will we help ourselves, and we will even harm it.

To put it very briefly, we need to realize the loss and begin movement and treatment. And think no more about yourself and your loss, but about the soul of the deceased.

— How can you at least somehow help a person experiencing the loss of a loved one? If this did not happen to us, how can we console and support?

Friends can support in everyday life, take on the burden of some expenses, labor, the organizational part of the funeral, look after the children (while the parents are in a difficult mental state), so that a person can pay more attention to his own soul, and through this at least find some comfort.

You can simply listen to the person and let him speak. You cannot leave a person alone with trouble, especially in the first days. Alone in your grief is a preserved state, when there is no opportunity to talk to anyone, to look at the situation from the outside...

You just have to sit and listen to the person. It's not very pleasant. A person throws out his pain, his grief. And to be close at the same time means to accept this grief and pain, to share them. And, of course, most of us hedonists find this unpleasant. We want to live cheerfully, enjoy ourselves, not think, and if we talk about something, gossip and discuss. And here there is such pain!!... But if we really want to help a person, then out of love for him we must sacrifice something. In this case – the state of one’s own stability, one’s peace of mind. No wonder they say: shared grief is half grief. That is, when they share grief between the one who speaks and the one who listens and empathizes, the pain decreases a little. Thus, the friend takes part of the grief upon himself. It's hard, but if we strong people, if we sincerely want to help, then we must listen patiently.

Sometimes life presents us with difficult obstacles. And few things can confuse and disrupt the usual course of our lives as much asdeath of a loved one. Such heavy losses are always accompanied by acute feelings and emotions, and this is quite normal. But sometimes these feelings , these internal experiences become our constant companions, they wedge themselves so much into our consciousness and into our lives that we are simply not able to live fully. Such experiences include feeling guilt after the death of a loved one.

Often this is quite natural and normal: we regret that we spent less time with loved ones that they rarely told him about their love, did not show enough care and attention... But what if guilt stuck much deeper? It also happens that we begin to think that we could somehow influence events, that it was in our power to make sure that the person did not die. And this guilt eats us up from the inside and destroys our lives. What to do?

Fight.

If you are faced with this severe emotional traffic jam (precisely a traffic jam, because it blocks natural history our life), feel yourguilt for the death of a loved one oh if this feeling does not leave you and does not become easier over time, then you must definitely find the strength within yourself to fight this fight. Look at it as a disease, because depression is the most disease there is. You don’t let things take their course when you’re sick, do you? Especially if the disease is so severe that it does not allow you to live fully... And now I ask you, you must find strength within yourself and try to resist this disease. Take just a few simple steps towards your recovery, to normality, full life. Do it at least for the sake of those who need you, who stay close to you and love you, if you don’t see the point in doing it for yourself...

Step 1: Understand it's not your fault

Very often it turns out that we exaggerate our guilt and your ability to influence the situation. Answer yourself the question: is there really your guilt in what happened? Is it your fault that is your relative sick? Is it your fault? that there was an accident? No, my dears, yours guilt there is no. Moreover, there is no draw in this guilt . And even if it really seems to you that you could somehow influence the outcome - go to the hospital earlier, do not let your child out that day close from home or anything else - believe me, it wouldn't change anything. Well, we don’t have such power and strength to decide who should live or who should die!... Everything happened and we need to leave it in the past, try to accept and come to terms with it.

And most importantly, understand that your guilt No. You didn’t want your loved one to die, admit it to yourself. Even if there was a quarrel the day before, you didn’t want it in your heart for everything to happen exactly like that? Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly (honestly!). Try to look at what happened from the outside and explain to the self that is now sad and reproaches itself so much that your no guilt.

Step 2: Don't isolate yourself

Negative thoughts and emotions have the ability to grow and develop within us. If you try to experience everything within yourself, it will only get worse. Remember him and the happy moments spent together, talk about him with relatives , do it in a positive way, don’t let bad thoughts consume you. You can often feel guilt for having fun or smiling, this is normal, but until a certain time, until the loss is fully accepted by our consciousness. Allow friends and family to “drag” you out on walks and trips. This will help you come to your senses faster and learn to live with your loss.

If you are alone with yourself, also try to distract yourself. You shouldn’t overload yourself with too responsible tasks during this period, but lying in the fetal position all day long is also not the best solution. Try to find activities that will distract you from heavy thoughts and return you to the normal rhythm of life. Simple things like cleaning, walking or, for example, knitting help cope with that stage of grief when the mind slowly accepts the loss and we learn to live withoutloved one.

Step 3: Pay attention to those around you

Death of a loved oneprobably affected not only you. And no matter how it may sound, but our living relatives they need us much more than those who are no longer with us... Unfortunately, there are such sad statistics that after a bereavement, families break up, relationships between parents and brothers and sisters, husbands and wives collapse. And all because at some point one of the relatives became isolated in their grief and stopped noticing others. As my friend, a psychologist, candidate of sciences, said: “ Guilt before the deceased should not develop into real guilt towards those who are still with us and need us.” Take a closer look at your child, spouse, parents, and siblings. Surely they, too, are experiencing grief hard. You know, I was also on the verge and my family saved me: after of death husband, I became more attentive to the child,close relativesand, probably, to everyone who surrounds me. And this really helps, gives strength and awareness that you need to fight.

Hard blows in life are trials, and trials are best overcome by uniting with loved ones people. Don't turn your back on your families, now is the time when you need each other more than ever. Don’t become isolated and understand: no matter what happens, you shouldn’t give up on your life. yours guilt in what happened no.

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