Fearful people seem to feel the guiltiest. And it seems that fear and guilt are connected. People who experience the unpleasant affects of panic attacks and anxiety may be more prone to guilt and shame.
In March of 1943 a tragedy struck in the Bethnal Green area of London. 173 men, women and children were killed in a crush as they tried to enter an air raid shelter. As it was no air raid came (1). This mass panic was pretty hushed up at the time so as not to damage war morale but it did actually seem out of character for ’sturdy blitzed Londoners’ to panic to this degree.
Writer Joanna Bourke surmises that this sweeping increase in fear may have been caused by guilt. Londoners had previously sustained heavy bombing but there had been no mass panics like this before. So why the guilt?
In 1943 Londoners were aware of the devastating bombings the RAF had carried out on German civilians. Since mid January many Londoners had been awaiting retaliation and many seemed to think that their ‘comeuppance’ was due. A sense of guilt can both increase and be caused by guilt.
Scientists working at the University of Irvine have found that, guilt fear and shame share the same neuronal circuitry.
The seemingly inhuman phenomenon of bystander apathy may in part be caused by fear producing guilt but rather than the guilt (at not helping) motivating bystanders to help it may just get them more fearful.
Guilt gives us a sense that we ’should’ be punished and we fear punishments. It could have been the expectation of inevitable even justifiable ‘punishment’ that in part prompted the fatal tragic crush in Bethnal Green in 1943. Fear is a ‘commanding’ mechanism that is it commands (or tries to) us to do its bidding. We can also be manipulated by guilt (as a second cousin to fear).
Fear and guilt are useful and without them we can be comfortable but psychopathic, see ‘No strings on me: Is there a psychopath in your life?’, but can sometimes these emotions get ‘above themselves.’ The chariot, after all, needs a driver.
(1) See Joanna Bourke’s wonderful book ‘Fear-a cultural history’ page 232
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