The Seven Emotional Deadly Sins

Sin from the Old/Middle English syn/synne meaning to miss the mark (an Archery term)

Excessive amounts (or sometimes even any amount) of the following can destroy your emotional well-being and the emotional well-being of those around you:

Fear- Guilt- Shame- Sorrow- Lies- Illusions- Attachment

They act by closing down part of you and preventing a full engagement with life.

Fear Excessive fear interferes with my right to exist, to be here, my right to engage fully with my world.

Fear keeps us safe. It is the basic emotion behind the “flight or fight” reaction. Healthy fear allows us to exist by monitoring our safety. It is when we allow that fear to control our life, that our right to exist is interfered with. Fear which causes us to freeze for an instant while we assess a situation is helpful. Fear which keeps us frozen, makes us question our very right to be here, to exist, is not at all helpful. That kind of fear is most commonly learned from over-protective or over-authoritarian parents or significant others in our life, who wish to protect us from actual danger throughout childhood. Alternatively, they may have had their own fearful or shaming experiences and cannot see the difference between their lives and ours. Most of us learn what is healthy to fear and what to let go. Some of us struggle with fear all of our lives and adjust our lives to minimize fear or shame. Thus, we do not engage fully with life. We use fear from the past to direct our future and cloud our present.

I have the right to engage fully with life, acknowledging that while I need to keep safe, I have the right to exist, to be here.

Guilt Excessive guilt interferes with my right to feel (whole).

Guilt is a very useful emotion. It assists us to do the right thing and monitors whether we have done so against an internal set of values which our culture/religion/family has given us. It is about feeling, then showing, regret for a wrong action, seeking to be forgiven, and keeping the social group together by that forgiveness which releases the perpetrator from guilt. It is when guilt is taken to excess that the damage is done. Like punishment, guilt should be immediate, appropriate and forgotten. Often our development is frozen because we cannot let go of guilt about something. The guilt keeps coming back although we know that we cannot turn back time. Guilt is something we impose on ourselves. Sometimes, that happens after being blamed by someone else. Living without excessive guilt is about: (1) recognizing the difference between blame (someone else’s stuff) and responsibility (our stuff); (2) acknowledging our degree of responsibility; (3) letting it go. I have the right to live a life free of excessive guilt. I have the right to feel whole.

Shame Excessive shame interferes with my right to act and to have/own.

Shame often comes from the spoken or unspoken message that we don’t belong in a particular, usually social, place or that we are not wanted, that we have no personal power (t)here. Sometimes that message is perceived whether or not it is sent. It may then lead to a personal need to restrain oneself from participating in ... for fear of offending others by our presence or our participation. Unlike guilt, it is about perceiving that we have offended or violated a group, social value, or more. Sometimes, the shame comes from a belief that we don’t measure up (too fat, too plain, too ...,) to some superficial value declared as important by either the media or some, often, self-appointed aficionado. Because the value is imposed from outside, shame is an emotion which we perceive is imposed on us by others. It is then that we feel that we do not belong, that we do not measure up, that we are not wanted.

I have the right to live a life which is free from shame. Provided my right does not impinge on the rights of others, I have the right to have and to own and to act. I have the right to participate in life, to have my own personal power.

Sorrow Excessive sorrow interferes with my right (and my ability) to love and be loved.

Sorrow or the grief that we feel when something or someone is ripped out of our lives is normal. Especially, although not always, when we have had little say in that, we must go through the cycle of emotions (numbness, denial, questioning, etc) that is called grief. It is when that sorrow becomes our defining moment, the badge of courage that we wear with sad pride that we cheat ourselves. In its extreme, it becomes both the means and the reason that we do not/cannot move on, cannot learn to love ourselves enough to open up to new experiences and people. Those around us are caught between sorrow and concern for our situation and anger at us because we cause others to define themselves by our sorrow.

I have the right to live a life that lets go of the sorrows in it, that allows me and those around me to get on with all of our lives. I have the right to let those sorrows shape me but not define or restrict me.

Lies Lies interfere with my right to speak and hear truth.

Lies are about listening to, or spreading words which you or someone else knows to be untruths. Let us be honest: Everyone lies at some time – a white lie to protect someone’s feelings, or a barefaced lie when caught out. Whether by omission, or commission, only those who have little care for how their opinions are received are brutally honest in all situations. There are, however, those who take the lies of others and live their lives by them. Battered spouses who believe they are responsible for the violence visited on them are living someone else’s lie. So too are those who choose to spread the lies an office gossip tells about another for fear that they will be the next target. Often, this distortion of spoken or written reality pervades one’s life. We live with that distortion daily from the media, advertising and politics.

I have the right to life with truth, even when that truth requires courage to face it. I have a right to speak and hear the truth, especially when that truth does not harm another. I especially have the right (and responsibility) to never harm another in any way with an untruth.

Illusions Excessive illusions interfere with my right to see clearly the reality of what is going on.

Like lies, illusions are about distortions of reality. The saying, There are none so blind as those who will not see, was about those who cannot, or will not see what is in front of their eyes. The children who will not grow up, move out, get a job, whatever; the incipient racism or bigotry or just plain thoughtlessness that exists in our language, in our business policies, our friendships; the failure to see the metaphors in life that are presented to us eve ry day: all are examples of the illusions we live by every day. This is about either not having the insight to see, or not having the courage to do other than pretend it is otherwise, while deflecting the comments of others who see the truth. Lack of insight can be learned from those who deflect the truth until the truth becomes illusion. Lack of courage comes from having to face a deeper problem. For example, allowing our adult children to bludge off us helps us not to face the reality of what our empty nest would be like without them. Not having to face reality is often easier than facing the enormity of the changes we would have to make if, in fact, we faced that reality.

I have the right and the responsibility to see and to acknowledge what is going on before me without needing to ignore, to deflect, or to explain things away to myself or others.

Attachment Excessive attachment interferes with my right to know and grow and interferes with the growth of my loved ones.

Attachment is a necessary part of growth and development. Many relationships, whether personal or work-related, go through phases: dependent, independent, interdependent and back to dependent. We use attachment in each of these phases: dependence, as we create a secure base from which to develop, whether in childhood or beginning a new job or study course; independence, where we grow, testing our skills away from our base but using attachment as a reference point, knowing that we can return to it; and finally, interdependence, where we provide ourselves as points of attachment for others. When attachment becomes excessive, we are trapped in the dependent phase, relying on someone else to complete us, to tell us that we have a value we don’t see in ourselves. At its most extreme, it either: becomes a Borderline personality where we define ourselves by the actions and attitudes of others; or a controlling, abusive relationship which simply cannot or will not let someone else grow and be; or someone who feels the need to send dozens of text messages each day “just to say I love you”; or someone who begs and sulks and pleads and cries until things go our way. This stops us from facing the scary reality of growing and definitely stops growth in those around us.

I have a right and a responsibility to live a life with just enough attachment so that I can grow authentically and allow those around me to grow as well.

Emotions are, in themselves, honest, and come unbidden. The best way that we can be in the now is to feel them and perhaps express them and then let them go. Where we miss the mark, i.e., sin, is when we allow those emotions to dominate our lives, where we become stuck, when our fear, our guilt or shame, etc, hold us back from living our lives to the full. Rather than living in the now, we are stuck in the past and mis-shape our futures.