I feel guilty all the time

Guilt is a useful emotion with a precise function: it signals that I have done something affecting someone and orients me toward repair. Once repair is made, it fades. That is the complete cycle.

Chronic guilt is something else. It attaches to no act and does not respond to repair, because its message is not “I did something bad” but “I am some kind of bad person” — which no action can repair. It is closer to shame than to guilt proper, and confusing the two is why so many people do more and more and feel exactly the same.

Three frequent sources. Impossible internalised standards: if the internal rule is that you must be available to anyone at any time, any rest produces guilt. Excessive responsibility: taking on accountability for states you do not control — a parent's mood, the atmosphere in a house, someone else's happiness — a common pattern in children who had an unpredictable adult. Depression, in which excessive guilt is a symptom proper, listed in the diagnostic criteria.

A useful test: ask someone to name exactly what you did. If there is no concrete answer, it is not guilt — it is something else wearing its name.

• Ask for the act. Write down exactly what you did, to whom, when. If it cannot be completed concretely, you have already established this is not guilt proper — and that changes entirely what to do about it.
• Separate guilt from shame. “I did something bad” can be repaired. “I am bad” cannot be repaired by action, and trying to repair it through effort is why it never ends.
• Check the rule, not the situation. Note for a week what triggers the guilt. The underlying rule usually emerges from the list on its own, and it is usually one you would apply to nobody else.
• Make amends once, then stop. A repeated apology is not repair but a request for reassurance — and, like any reassurance, it strengthens exactly what it tries to settle.
• If the guilt is retroactive and global, get an assessment first. When it is a symptom of depression, it is not worked on with arguments; it is treated.