Tips on Avoiding Guilt Trips That Take False Turns : Orange County psychologist Ty Colbert, with a new book on the subject, provides some useful guideposts.

Your mother calls and invites you to a family dinner she’s arranging to welcome a visiting aunt. The timing is bad for you and this is not someone you’re longing to see, so you say no. Then mom pushes--”I was counting on you being there!”--and your stomach knots up. The feeling that you’ve done something wrong lingers long after you hang up the phone.

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You’re sitting at a traffic light and the person behind you honks when you fail to react the instant the light turns green. Instead of getting irritated at the other driver, you chide yourself for not being more alert--and quickly change lanes to avoid the stranger whose impatience has left you feeling inept.

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You arrive at the office late and get a steely look from your boss, who also came in late and had expected (but hadn’t asked) you to get things started in his or her absence. Even though you have a legitimate excuse for being delayed, you avoid eye contact with your boss the rest of the day and try to make amends by working overtime.

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Do you see yourself in any of these scenarios? If so, you’re among those for whom Orange psychologist Ty Colbert wrote his recently published book, “Why Do I Feel Guilty When I’ve Done Nothing Wrong?” (Thomas Nelson Inc., $8.99).

Colbert said that question had been coming up so often in his sessions with clients--particularly those still suffering from childhood traumas--that he decided to write a book to help them liberate themselves from unnecessary guilt and the sense of shame or low self-worth that often accompanies it.

Although the book is mostly psychological, it includes a section written from a Christian perspective that focuses on how guilt-ridden people can find spiritual relief.

During a recent interview, Colbert said his book reflects his desire to “help people quit beating up on themselves and quit letting others beat up on them.”

He gets that message across by making a distinction between “true guilt,” a healthy emotion that drives us to make amends when we intentionally do something hurtful, and “false guilt,” which causes us to take responsibility for--and feel badly about--things over which we have no control.

It’s true guilt that prompts us to apologize when we lose our temper with a family member because we’ve had a hard day at the office, false guilt that causes us to try to appease a raging loved one who is totally out of line.

True guilt disappears as soon as we admit wrongdoing, ask for forgiveness and take whatever action is necessary to set things straight. But false guilt lingers, acting as a shield against pain.

“False guilt is a self-defense mechanism that kicks in when people experience too much emotional pain,” Colbert said.

For children dealing with divorce, for example, the question, “What did I do that made Mommy and Daddy fight?” provides protection from an overwhelming sense of loss and powerlessness.

This false guilt gives children a desperately needed feeling of control. They think: “If I can find out what is wrong with me and correct it, then my mommy and daddy won’t divorce.”

Adults are just as likely as children to try to avoid pain by asking, “Where did I go wrong?” when they have no reason to feel guilty, Colbert added. For some, self-blame is a lifelong habit resulting from an upbringing that fostered what Colbert calls “destructive shame.”

While “constructive shame”--our intrinsic sense of morality or conscience--is a valuable, gut-level feeling that, like true guilt, vanishes once it has served its purpose, destructive shame is persistent and debilitating. It robs people of their ability to experience joy and inner peace.

People who have a lot of destructive shame are likely to be victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse, which “tears at the deepest and most vulnerable parts of a person’s innocence,” Colbert said. They end up feeling unworthy and unlovable and tend to lose touch with themselves as they struggle to gain self-esteem by winning the approval of others. They often have a need to be punished that can lead them into unhealthy relationships and self-destructive or addictive behavior.

Colbert points out that, for people with destructive shame, healing comes through non-violating relationships. “We’re powerless to heal shame on our own. We need love and affirmation from others. Someone has taken away our ability to love ourselves, and we need someone else to help us get it back.” That “someone” might be a friend, a co-worker, a therapist, a spouse--anyone who can help us find and appreciate our true selves, Colbert added.

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According to 35-year-old Lisa, a former client of Colbert’s who asked that her real name not be used, just understanding the differences between true and false guilt and constructive and destructive shame is a big step toward emotional health. She said Colbert’s book has helped her see how she has been hindered by guilt and shame as a result of growing up with an alcoholic father.

“Never having a father who spent time with me and made me feel loved really damaged my self-esteem,” said the mother of four. As a child, she said, “I always tried to fix everything and keep everybody happy.” And she tended to blame herself when things went wrong.

She carried that misplaced sense of responsibility into her adult life, and ended up overeating, losing sleep or getting depressed whenever she fell back into the family-fixer role.

But she recently discovered something that Colbert says is vital to the emotional independence and well-being of those who are prone to false guilt: the ability to set boundaries in relationships.

Lisa, who has long been concerned about the impact of her father’s alcoholism on her own children, wrote him a letter not long ago telling him that she didn’t want her family around him as long as he was drinking.

“I realized I couldn’t be responsible for him. I had to do what was right for myself and for my children,” she said. “It was a major growth step for me. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking to my father for validation.”

She managed to stay firm--and ward off guilt--when her mother called to tell her how much she had hurt her father, who has neither responded to his daughter’s concerns nor made any effort to stop drinking.

Lisa said she’s learned that “it’s OK to feel what you feel” and--in the process of looking out for her own best interests--to “make a decision that someone else doesn’t care for.” It’s painful to be cut off from her father, but the payoff has been a growing sense of self-esteem that she said has enabled her to be more assertive and made her less vulnerable to false guilt in all her relationships.

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Linda, another fan of Colbert’s book who asked for anonymity, said she often uses the therapist’s “Guilt Work Sheets” to determine whether she is feeling true or false guilt. The work sheets are designed to help people identify what’s making them feel guilty and whether they’ve intentionally harmed anyone. If they haven’t, they are encouraged to examine the pain underlying their guilt, allow their anger to surface, set proper boundaries in their relationships and seek counseling if they are unable to release the guilt on their own.

Linda, who is 33 and has sought help from Colbert in dealing with her domineering parents, said: “I’ve got a lot of guilt, and a lot of it is not necessary.” It’s most likely to come up when she’s with her mother, who once threatened to “emotionally divorce her” because she had refused to go to an annual social event she’d been attending with her family since childhood.

For once, Linda ignored her mother’s threats and did what she felt was best for herself. She needed to rebel in this small but significant way because she’d been allowing her mother “to dictate how I should feel about things and to pressure me when I didn’t conform.”

She said she’s getting along better with both of her parents now that she’s no longer ignoring her own needs and wishes in order to fulfill theirs.

“They’re slowly learning that they can’t push me anymore. I’m becoming more resistant and more assertive with them and they’re backing off,” she said.

Linda has also been trying to overcome her obsession with perfection, which comes out mostly in her work. “I sometimes miss deadlines or I’ll procrastinate because I can’t get something perfect. Then I’ll try at the last minute to pull it off. My perfectionism works against me,” she said.

According to Colbert, perfectionism is a way of avoiding the pain underlying false guilt and destructive shame.

Lesley Donovan, a Newport Beach marriage, family and child counselor who has referred a number of her clients to Colbert’s book, agrees, adding that perfectionism, like any addiction or compulsion, “covers feelings the person doesn’t think he can handle.”

Most perfectionists felt they had to earn love as children--and were led to believe they could never do enough, Donovan observed. As adults, they have difficulties in relationships because, she said, “the person is never at rest, so you can’t make contact. It’s in those still, quiet moments that we get in touch with ourselves and reflect to others who we really are. But a perfectionist usually can’t bear to sit still and think their thoughts and feel their feelings.”

They’re so busy pursuing perfection that relating to them is like trying to hit a moving target, Donovan added. She encourages her perfectionist clients to stop and ask themselves: “What am I trying to achieve? Can I ever really be perfect? What would I gain if I were?”

“They usually come to see that (striving for perfection) is an absurd exercise,” Donovan said. “They start to slow down and notice the people around them and enjoy the pleasures of everyday life, and it’s wonderful for the whole family.”

Letting go of perfectionism is one way of “clearing away the layers of false self” that grow out of guilt and shame, according to Donovan. Many who manage to unmask their true selves discover that some of their best parts have been hidden. And then, Donovan said, they are able to bloom.

“It’s a very dramatic process. They go from being a minimally functional person to a happy person who has tremendous depth, empathy and gratitude for being alive.”