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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 27, 2013)
♦ ♦ 13 - Street roots Sept. 27, 2013 GUILT, from page 12 catching a beat-down from said longboard’s owner. She won’t steal anymore — nobody wants to get hugged by a skateboard. But she still feels guilty about it. I meet a lot of people who feel responsible for stuff that’s totally out of their control. Lovers lost to overdoses. Exiting prison only to find parents represented by tombstones. I meet others whose guilt operates as a positive social mechanism: a male student in his 20s says he feels guilty all the time, but that it’s mostly procrastinator’s guilt, and it spurs him to hit the books and make the most of his education. A business owner tells me that guilt keeps him from cheating his customers on labor costs. “It’s good for the customer and it’s good for the business.” I begin to realize that guilt has many sides. Sometimes it’s healthy, encouraging a person stay on top of their personal responsibilities, and other times it keeps you in bed watching Star Trek all day. The more I ask around, the more stories I hear from people living without homes that revolve around excessive guilt, or guilt rooted in past situations that were entirely out of a person’s control. I begin to wonder if any data exists surrounding guilt and homelessness — if there’s a relationship to be explored. f you’re going to understand guilt, you’ve got to start with the youth. And by that, I mean, you have to look at how humans develop guilt and why it’s essential to establishing and refining a sense of morality. Experiments assessing the development of guilt in children can be kind of devious by description. It’s a lot of making kids believe they broke something valuable or tasks that guarantee failure; loaded situations where the results are never feel-good experiences. A study released in 2002 by Child Development (Vol. 73, No. 2, Kochanska et al) “examined whether children’s guilt, assessed at 22, 33 and 45 months, predicted their tendency to violate rules at 56 months.” The study posits that “guilt and the associated aversive arousal serves an adaptive function regarding moral conduct. Children who experience guilt following misbehavior are likely to transgress less in the future because of the history of those un-pleasant affective emotional states... or the resulting ‘somatic markers’ that bias attention and response choices.” This is to say that guilt, at least at a I young age, helps people learn how to act in accordance with codes of moral conduct. Moreover, the study points out the other side of the coin: “A large volume of psychopathology literature supports the notion that impaired or diminished capacity to experience post transgression discomfort may be one of the factors responsible for poor avoidance learning and anti-social conduct of psychopaths.” Wow! So the absence of guilt is believed to contribute to the personality traits of psychopaths? Interesting. But can’t an overabundance of guilt also lead to unhealthy mental states? Simply put, yes. Here’s the laundry list: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists excessive guilt as a symptom of depression. Here’s a brief rundown of conditions: Scrupulosity, a psychological disorder typified by pathological guilt, is considered to be the moral or religious equivalent to obsessive compulsive disorder, and as a personality trait, has emerged as a suspected indicator of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Survivor’s guilt, or guilt experienced after living through a catastrophe in which others have perished, has been studied as an irrational sector of guilt that takes emotional ownership for situations outside a person’s control. Sexual guilt has been correlated with religious indoctrination, in terms of masturbation, homosexuality, and so on. As far as I can tell, studies of unhealthy guilt are only beginning to produce limited and partially-convincing findings in academic and research contexts, and homelessness and guilt is an almost wholly untouched field of research (barring a few loosely-related studies, such as “the production of self blame and self-governing” in homeless shelters). The cultural vocabulary surrounding guilt is ambiguous. In psychology circles, there’s a general distinction between guilt and shame: feelings of guilt commonly lead to confrontation and reparation; feelings of shame produce avoidance behaviors. I found people using the terms interchangeably, or attributing shame behaviors to guilt. It’s a confusing little knot of emotions. Ultimately, I want to know if there’s a relationship between guilt and homelessness. A survey of 42 people gave me only a small sampling, and not a responsible one for drawing conclusions. But it is safe to say that guilt is an emotional presence that affects all walks of life, spanning socio-economic boundaries and the nuanced narratives we carry with us. Killin’ time -by Avendor Charlie had himself a full quiver, so he shot at the passing cars. One arrow shattered a mirror now he’s in jail playing cards. Mary had herself a beer, one could say she had one too many. So she passed out at the bus stop, and woke up next to two old pennies. Irena thought she lost the dream, she had been working her whole life towards. but it re-emerged like a blooming flower now she’s’ sharper than a samurai’s sword. David was in the enemy camp, and thought his time had come. But when they brought him forward he survived by playin’ dumb. I walk to the bus stop I ride out the waves... the sun beats down upon me so I hope for rainy days. So why don’t ya’ buy my paper Me-the fool standing here So I can go home and do my laundry and buy myself a beer. Non-selective Memory Lapse by Mike Vance I was dope sick Trying to get some sleep at ‘Right to dream’ I wanted to die. My world was over. You were passed out next to me Your beautiful puppy licked my face and my day so bright! Later that night at the Mission, I watched you kick that puppy aside And swing him by the neck from his leash. “Keep up you bitch!” you yelled. The puppy remembers that! But it can forgive you I wish I were more like your puppy. I guess I’ve got a lot to learn. ... to the health care you know and trust. Where senior and disabled adults receive the care and respect they deserve. 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