Guilt Traps

I read a bunch of books on psychology in the past week. They have a detrimental effect on the way we think. We start analyzing every reaction, every response and then try to relate them with the theory in the books. The analysis is involuntary, it doesn’t stop and can’t be stopped either. In the beginning it may seem a bit interesting but as we go deep it gets confusing and everything relates to everything and nothing. Somewhat like Kyle’s paranoia in the episode “Tooth Fairy tats”. On the plus side though, you get to understand people better and also, ourselves better. But in the end it all comes down to a person’s mental strength, a weak mind can turn totally paranoid or a sensible one can find his weaknesses and improve on them. If you are one of those whose thinking is most of the times influenced by other people or surroundings, don’t ever read these! However, if you feel you are strong enough, go ahead read them and see what you really are or aren’t.

What I observed is that Guilt is an inconceivably strong weapon. You can force, order or push a person into doing something but there is always a possibility that he might rebel. You can also plead, beseech, but again there is no guarantee that the deed will be done. But, if we bring in guilt into the picture and make the person feel guilty for not doing something, I assure you, that job will be done whatever the odds. I call this the “Guilt Trap”. When I knew about this and thought back, I found out that I was trapped into these guilt traps in numerous occasions. One might not realize it but it is true. The moment we are guilty we start hating ourselves and that is the catalyst for what follows. Some people use this to their advantage and get things done, in my opinion it is nothing but manipulation and cruel. This manipulation soon becomes a habit as it is the easiest way to get things done. So my advise would be to ask you people to think whether you have been trapped into feeling guilty or you are genuinely guilty. If you think you are being trapped into feeling guilty, reverse the whole situation, try and make them feel guilty or put all the responsibility on them or just ignore them.

What effect the books had on me? I started to worry about what people thought of me. I stopped caring what people thought about me long back, but it all came back for those three days, I was, you can say paranoid for a while.

Warning psycho alert!

Since school, I had many awful experiences, like being sent out of class for sleeping, almost everyday, at Ramaiah. They had no long term effect on me, but I slowly turned into an insensitive, anti-social, irresponsible, Para geek. Then my two years at the IIT changed me a lot again. I was ever more confident about my abilities. Although I wasn’t able to develop my ability to prioritize, I became stronger. I still had more negatives than positives but it was an improvement none the less. Still it proved costly as I was slow in developing myself. However since I don’t let drawbacks take me down, I was working on myself all last year. Frankly, I again have changed a lot and this time. I think I now have more positives than negatives. I now know what my priorities are; I now stand up for myself and what I believe. I now assert myself whenever I have to, which I never could before. I know a lot more about myself.

The most significant development is that I am now able to balance my academics with my passion for computers (or you can say obsession). I never had the balance before, that’s why I was forced be away from computers whenever I had to study. Since I was always forced, I never valued the balance and took it for granted. In the end I was kicked out of IITD. A painful experience, the worst part about this is, even though I and my family are over the disaster, outsiders aren’t.

And yes, I was this big a psycho even before reading those books.