Guilt And Altruism
Often I have heard my clients convey during their sessions a feeling of guilt when they recognize that a good deed, which they have completed for the sake of the well-being of another, has soothed and emboldened their ego. There is a recurring notion (perhaps delivered through our sensationalized and ill-informed mediascape and then transmitted through word of mouth) that the ego is something to fight against, primarily because it is something you should conceal or attempt to minimize.
While, yes, the ego does have the capacity for great harm, it also has the power to contribute to a greater society. Ego strength is a term that refers to the sturdiness and resilience one’s ego has in the face of conflict and distressing experiences.
Ego is not always the enemy; in fact, the ego can help you be a more highly functioning version of yourself. So the question then becomes: how do we build ego strength in others while simultaneously building it in ourselves? The answer lies somewhere in our understanding of the practice of altruism.
Conceptually, altruism is often considered to be selfless. The idea is to do something to contribute to someone else’s prosperity while simultaneously foregoing your selfish pursuits.
However, what’s interesting is that neuroscientific findings seem to rule that all altruistic acts are indeed selfish pursuits. Through fMRI brain scans, it is observable that the mesolimbic reward pathway (responsive to sex and food) is activated in radically different activities, profiting monetarily and providing a donation to charity.
Through replication, the study appears to yield consistent results; altruism acts, as it turns out, in our brains to be just as gratifying as receiving some type of pleasurable reward. Meaning, regardless of your guilt, doing something good for someone else feels good in many of the same ways that it feels good to do something for you.
Helping others is a way of helping yourself; however, it can be taken to unhealthy extremes. Research shows that altruistic endeavors can become pathological, mainly when the results manifest in some type of unexpected harm to the do-gooder. Some examples of this could look like donating so much money to a charity that you cannot afford groceries, staying in an abusive relationship because you believe you can help your partner, or anorexia (e.g., a hunger strike).
These are extremes of deficiency, acts that deny yourself of something that you need for optimal functioning, which coincidentally may be motivated by unresolved guilt. This perhaps warrants another article at some point in the future, when guilt motivates altruistic extremes of deficiency).
Extremes of abundance may be done more so for power or prestige (say making some size-able donation primarily with the purpose of having your name put on the side of a building). Finding a middle place, which looks different for everyone, seems to be somewhere between providing for another without inflicting suffering upon yourself or seeking opportunistic gain.
Acts of altruism are heroic undertakings that should feel good for one’s self. If you didn’t feel psychologically rewarded for helping another, what’s the motivation for societal progress? The better your family, neighbor, community, state, country, continent, or world’s well-being is, the better you feel.
In its most liberating form, altruism is an act of empowerment. Lending one’s ego strength, as we have all been through distressing situations and been assisted by others, empowers someone else to do the same.
This is one of the better angels of our nature; humanity appears to be hardwired for progress. There is no need to feel guilt for the rush of dopamine your brain gets when providing assistance. Have compassion for yourself in these moments. If you do feel guilt, be a hero to yourself as much as you are a hero to another.
References
Kaufman, S. B. (2020). Love. Transcend: The new science of self-actualization (pp 118-148). New York: TarcherPerigee.
Moll, J., Krueger, F., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., Oliveira-Souza, R. D., & Grafman, J. (2006, October 17). Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/content/103/42/15623