Travel Agents For Guilt Trips

Travel Agents For Guilt Trips

A Sermon to Countryside Church, Unitarian Universalist

Sunday, May 21, 2023

The Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

To the young people who are with us this morning I offer a bit of an apology that this sermon is on an adult topic. However, let me suggest that their might be something in it for you if you choose to stay with my words. If you’ve ever been bullied or blamed, perhaps you will gather some help from my remarks this morning.

The Dave Ramsey Show

I have a strong suspicion that I am probably the only person in this room today who regularly watches Christian Television. But, being a true Universalist at heart and sincerely believing that all spiritual paths are valid and tend to converge over time, I do tune in from time-to-time.

Among my favorite shows is The Dave Ramsey Show. Ramsey is an evangelical consultant who focuses on helping people manage money. And no, his solution isn’t to tell everyone to just give money to their church. Oh, he is quite sure people should support the church of their choice but he actually has dug down into what the Old and New Testaments teach about money and spending. It may not be what you think.

Ramsey is best known for his flat recommendation that everyone avoid debt. He knows that some debt is unavoidable - a mortgage, education loans, a car payment, etc. But he aims to help people manage consumer debt, believing that it is far too easy to get in over one’s head and end up in serious trouble. He believes that God doesn’t want that for anyone.

If you are curious about Ramsey and his six-step program for living debt free, you can find a lot of podcasts he’s made on YouTube and I suggest you check them out. I think he goes a bit far, but believe that much of what he says is sound.

But I like the additional sort of advice he gives as well. Advice about families, unsuccessfully launched children, abusive workplaces, and finding a place of comfort and peace in your life.

He says a lot of people try to control others by the use of guilt. He calls such people “Travel Agents for Guilt Trips,” and I stole the title of this sermon from him. And if you want to learn his advice for dealing with relatives and friends who think you should finance their lifestyles, or who believe you should do everything, while they do little, check him out.

What Are Guilt Trips

A guilt trip is when someone seeks to encourage you to feel guilty so that you will do what they want. It is a form of manipulation.

So what are some common strategies someone might use to put you onboard a guilt trip they have planned? I share some popular favorites from the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend:

•​“How could you do this to me after all I’ve done for you?”

•​“It seems that you could think about someone other than yourself for once.”

•​“If you really loved me, you would make this telephone call for me.”

•​“It seems like you would care enough about the family to do this one thing.”

•​“You know how it’s turned out in the past when you haven’t listened to me.”

•​“You know that if I had it, I would give it to you.”

•​“You have no idea how much we sacrificed for you.”

•​“Maybe after I’m dead and gone, you’ll be sorry.”

People may be passive-aggressive. “Well, I’m glad you FINALLY did your housework.

People may attempt to enforce a contract you never signed. “You should do this for me because I work so hard.”

Or there may be attempts at blackmail. “You need to take me on an expensive vacation, because I heard the way you talked to my mother!

Or there could be an attempt to claim an authority that is not real. “I’m the eldest in the family, so you have to listen to me.”

Probably everyone in this room has had people who have tried to control them with one of these strategies, or something like them. Such things always hurt, because in order for someone to do them they have to believe they know you well enough to hook you. So, every attempt to put you on a guilt trip is, in fact, a relationship betrayal.

And ultimately, trying to put someone else on a guilt trip is a fool’s game. Even if it works temporarily, it will cast a shadow. The other people will feel manipulated and that will corrupt the relationship.

While I now regard the story with humor, here’s a personal tale.

Many years ago at Christmas a relative presented me with a Christmas Stocking full of small gifts. I thought that was kind of cute until the stocking was unpacked in front of a room full of other people. Other than a small selection of hard candies the stocking was full of lumps of actual coal, wrapped in cellophane.

The relative then pulled out an actual list of times I had disappointed her by not doing what she wanted. She had one item on the list per lump of coal, and expected that I would sit there why she publicly recited a list of my perceived faults.

Well, I’ve been open about the fact I come from a family that is something of a train wreck. I wasn’t kidding.

I stopped that relative so her strategy failed. But afterwards I realized I had been the target of a Travel Agent for Guilt Trips on steroids. It was one of my most valuable life lessons. I resolved I would never let such a thing happen again. If someone turns out to be that sort of Travel Agent, I have no place for them in my world.

Study after study shows that when you become the target of a guilt trip it will worsen any anxiety you feel. Ditto if you have any tendency toward depression, obsessional compulsive feelings, shame or envy. It’s toxic stuff.

When I distribute a copies of this sermon through my website, I’ll actually footnote the studies. They are well done and scary.

Notice how all of these strategies are presented as something supposedly said for your good or betterment. But are actually expressed as an effort to manipulate.

If it is an occasional thing it’s probably just a careless slip by someone who meant well. But if it happens all the time, there is a toxin in your relationship and the sooner you deal with it the happier you will be.

My personal take on people who make it a habit to guilt trip others is a bit different from the financial management guru. I’ve come to this understanding by trying to better grasp the phenomenon of guilt tripping.

Dave Ramsey and others like him take the view that when someone tries to manipulate you it’s all about control, trying to achieve their dominance and your submission. I’m sure that’s part of it.

But deeper then that understanding, I came to realize that when someone wants to be a Travel Agent for Guilt Trips they disclose that they are the person who has a problem. Not you.

Or, as I’ve come to say it in my Consultation Room, “Someone trying to guilt trip you shows they have a problem. If it works, it shows that you have a problem.” You need to work on your boundaries so that the only person who gets to control your behavior is you.

Why Do People Guilt Trip Others?

As laying a guilt trip on someone is such an utterly toxic thing to do, and even if it succeeds it will stir up trouble downstream, why do people do it?

I think an attempt to lay a guilt trip on someone is actually anger in disguise. That’s why if the guilt trip does not work to control you, very often the situation devolves into threats and a relationship cut-off if the guilt doesn’t work. What is really underneath the attempt to lay on a guilt trip is a deep unconscious rage being indirectly expressed.

The Theology of the Scapegoat

In your spiritual explorations I am sure some of you have heard of the theological concept the the Scapegoat. For those who have not, you may be surprised to learn that it is one of the most ancient concepts in the Old Testament. It is also relevant to my topic today, which is why I put a photo of a goat on the pulpit screen when I began this talk.

The Scapegoat first appears in the Book of Leviticus, 16:10. It was the name given to a goat who was allowed to escape into the wilderness of ancient Judea, there to perish by starvation or predation. Before being allowed this fictional “escape”on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would lay his hands on the head of the goat and transfer to it all of the sins and iniquities of the people of Israel. As the goat perished, so it was believed, perished the sins of the people of the past year.

The idea was that the sins of a person, or group of people, could be spiritually transferred to another, who by being punished discharged those sins. Much later with the rise of Christianity, this theme would become basic to the theology of the Christos, or Christ, who by being crucified lifted the sins of all. Jesus was the idea of a Scapegoat writ large.

Today we often do not want to think of how primitive and bloodthirsty much of ancient religion was. Long before the Hebrew religion was a gleam in Moses’s eye, peoples even more ancient believed that it was important to sacrifice to appease the gods. As the world appeared hostile and scary to them, they assumed the gods were hostile and scary too and had to be appeased with sacrifice.

The typical sacrifice in the ancient world was of what was called “the first fruits.” Our modern holiday of Thanksgiving is a distant echo of this. The Sacrifice of the First Fruits meant one would offer as a sacrifice the first round of produce from the harvest. One would offer as a sacrifice the first animal successfully hunted in the season. And, for millennia, people would sacrifice their first born children, sometimes horribly.

We know that the ancient people who would eventually become the Hebrews did this too - in deference to the young people present this morning I will not go into detail, but suffice to say the archeological evidence is persuasive.

The Old Testament was written at the end of a thousand year literary dark age in the ancient world. By the time the scribes began their task the practice of human sacrifice become one that people regarded with horror (although traces of it can still be found in a careful reading).

It is widely believed by modern Bible Scholars that the story of Abraham intending to sacrifice his firstborn son, Isaac, but being stopped by God was inserted into the text as a way to justify ending the practice of human sacrifice. I think we can all agree it was an advance for human civilization.

So the tradition of the Scapegoat is an ancient one, pivotal to the progress of a barbaric ancient religion into a civilized one, and that basis of much Christian theology. Regardless of whether one considers oneself a Christian or not, it cannot be denied that Christianity has had a massive impact on the development of our culture.

In a more enlightened and evolved time a lot of us would like to believe that ideas such as the Scapegoat have outlasted their utility, and we’d all be better off if they could be allowed to fade away.

But I think the theme of the Scapegoat - holding others responsible for one’s own failings - is very much with us still. We see it in all those people who try to manipulate others by making them feel guilty if they do not what is wanted.

You see the Travel Agent for Guild Trips is someone who is trying to hold another accountable for how they feel. They feel you should do what they want. You are not doing that, so they feel anger.

Anger is a secondary emotion. When we have a primary emotion like fear, loss, sadness, etc. those emotions cause us to feel vulnerable and endangered. One way to cope with feeling endangered is to shift into anger, because then the brain will produce a surge of energy which helps us feel better, and we instinctively try to establish control to lower of sense of risk.

Manipulating others is one of the easiest ways have a sense of control, and trying to make them feel guilty is a very easy way to do that.

The Travel Agent for guilt trips is always someone compensating for inner feelings of vulnerability. By getting you to do what they want, they make you into a Scapegoat for their own fear and weakness. If you do what they want, they feel better. The Scapegoat has carried away the darkness just as in days of yore.

The Travel Agent for guilt trips is feeling anxiety. They have selected you to be their anti-anxiety drug.

The archetype of the Scapegoat is still with us. It’s just gone under the surface of things. People still want to hold someone other than themselves accountable for what they desire. When the guilt trip comes out, that’s the agenda.

Don’t let yourself be a Scapegoat. It never ends well.

The End of the Scapegoat

One of the very few things advice columnist Ann Landers had to say that I agree with, was that “No one can take advantage of you without your consent.” Like a lot of things she published this is something of an overstatement. Anyone can be victimized or deceived, and one doesn’t give permission for that.

Still, there is a level where, frequently, when someone is trying to take advantage of you, make you a Scapegoat if you will, they need you to play along. If you will not get hooked, the guilt trip can’t start.

Therefore, the wisdom from the ancient religious theme of the Scapegoat is not to get hooked. That is the spiritual skill to acquire if you want to deal with the Travel Agent for a guilt trip.

In this matter I can only speak for myself about what has helped me deal with those in my life who sought to control me by trying to make me feel guilty

First, I do try to have empathy. I’m not a soft person but I do try to be a compassionate one. Therefore, when someone tries to pull a manipulative stunt I remind myself that what they are doing says a lot about them and not much about me.

They are in pain, or scared or weak. That doesn’t mean I will roll over, but it does mean that I will not be cruel if there is any other option open to me, besides confrontation or capitulation. I might speak with a softer voice. I might find a polite way to decline the attempt, or just ignore it. If I know what my guilt trippers is scared of, I may try to speak to that. Sometimes this works. But not all the time.

The other thing I do is to remind myself that I don’t need anyone’s permission to live my own life. If someone doesn’t like a decision I’ve made that is their right. But I don’t have to go along with them, nor do I need to explain myself.

I see this one a lot. You say “no” to an inappropriate request but still feel you need to say more. So you try to explain yourself, give excuses, or try to convince the other person that it’s okay for you to decline what they are trying to get you to do.

That is a mistake. You don’t need anyone’s permission to live your own life. You do not have to explain yourself or give reasons. No means no. You may, in the interest avoiding future misunderstandings choose to explain your thinking to another person, so they have that as information against future requests, but you are not obligated to do so.

For example, I sometimes get requests to loan money. I’ve learned such loans are a very, very bad investment because they are never repaid. So I simply say no, and that it’s a personal policy not to loan money. And then I shut up. I do not engage further in conversation about that, even if it means I’ll need to get up and leave. I don’t need anyone’s permission to live my own life. I don’t have to explain my “no.”

Nor do you. You do not want to be a Scapegoat for someone else’s anxiety. Just as the ancient Hebrews created the story of God staying the hand of Abraham so he did not Scapegoat his son Issac, it is the testimony of the ages that scapegoating is wrong. Nothing good ever comes from it. As was said by a computer in the movie Wargames, the only way to win that game is not to play.

And that’s my sermon

Sources

Carlos Tilghman-Osborne, David A. Cole, Julia W. Felton, Definition and measurement of guilt: Implications for clinical research and practice, Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 30, Issue 5, July 2010, pp. 536-546.

Nicole C Overall, Yuthika U Girme, Edward P. Leman Jr., Matthew D. Hammond, Attachment anxiety and reactions to relationship threat: the benefits and costs of inducing guilt in romantic partners, Journal of Personal Social Psychology, 2014 Feb;106(2):235-56. doi: 10.1037/a0034371. Epub 2013 Sep 30.