Perhaps the only entity on earth that equals the destructiveness of anticivilization governments is institutionalized religion. Whereas anticivilization governments rely on physical force and compulsion to control and drain everyone, religion relies on guilt to control and drain everyone.

Long ago, criminal-minded theologians conjured up universally applicable frauds that trapped everyone. Some of these frauds include the following:

man is plagued with Original Sin, man is wicked by nature, sex beyond procreation is sinful, the naked human body is shameful and erotic pleasure comes from the devil.

These frauds come under a larger, all-encompassing fraud, which the criminal mind used to gain unprecedented power shortly after the time of Christ. That universal fraud consists of linking guilt with pleasure.

Pleasure is a universal emotion. Everyone wants to experience it and most people do experience it, at least occasionally. Sexual pleasure is an especially strong emotion that nearly everyone wants to experience.

There are also other pleasures that people desire, such as esthetic pleasures, achievement pleasures and friendship pleasures. By linking guilt with pleasure, criminal-minded leaders undermined everyone's passion for life. But that isn't all they did.

What can guilt do to you?

Guilt can:

• Make you become over responsible, striving to make life "right." You overwork. You over give of yourself. You're willing to do anything in your attempt to make everyone happy.

• Make you over conscientious. You fret over every action you take as to its possible negative consequence to others, even if this means that you must ignore your needs and wants.

• Make you over sensitive. You see decisions about right and wrong in every aspect of your life and become obsessed with the tenuous nature of all of your personal actions, words and decisions.

You're sensitive to the cues of others where any implication of your wrong doing is intimated.

• Immobilize you. You can become so overcome by the fear of doing, acting, saying, or being "wrong"' that you eventually collapse, give in and choose inactivity, silence and the status quo.

• Interfere in your decision making. It's so important to always be "right'' in your decisions that you become unable to make a decision lest it be a wrong one.

• Be hidden by the mask of self denial. Because it's less guilt inducing to take care of others first, instead of yourself, you hide behind the mask of self denial. You honestly believe it's better to serve others first, unaware that "guilt'' is the motivator for such "generous'' behavior.

• Make you ignore the full array of emotions and feelings available to you. Overcome by guilt or the fear of it, you can become emotionally blocked or closed off. You're able neither to enjoy the positive fruits of life nor experience the negative aspects.

• Be a motivator to change. Because you feel guilt and the discomfort it brings, you can use it as a barometer of the need to change things in your life and rid yourself of the guilt.

• Be a mask for negative self belief. You may actually have low self-esteem, but claim the reason for your negativity is the overwhelming sense of guilt you experience.

• Mislead or misdirect you. Because many irrational beliefs lie behind guilt, you may be unable to sort out your feelings. It's important to be objective with yourself when you're experiencing guilt; be sure that your decisions are based on sound, rational thinking.

A monthly rant by
Kelley Cunningham Cousineau

This month: Quality schmality.

• How many more times can modern mothers hear about enrichment, quality time and child empowerment before they sock a Child Development Expert in the pie hole?

I wouldn’t mind being a part of that study, especially if the cage they put me in comes equipped with a wet bar.

Working Moms - Got Guilt? - By Debi Bogard

If you're a working parent, particularly a working mom, it's likely you're among the 95% who feel guilty when they leave their kids and go to work.

Many moms leave their day care in tears and then spend the rest of the day aching to be with their child. Few people can afford to quit their jobs so they go on, day after day, living this vicious cycle of guilt.

The truth is that until you acknowledge the true antagonist, you can't change it!

So where did this guilt come from anyway?

Since monsters hide in the dark, let's shine a light on this one so it will go away. Most likely, you were working before you had children and fully intended to work after you had children. No surprise there!

The surprise came when that first day arrived to drop your baby off at day care. It was almost impossible to leave, wasn't it? As you got used to the idea of saying good-bye to your child for the day, that nagging guilt manifested in many other ways -

you know, the temptation to not discipline in the evening so you could have "quality time"; the keeping her up too late because you haven't been with her all day.

Not to mention that underlying fear that your child will become more attached to and have a stronger relationship with your day care provider than she has with you.

For starters, when we use guilt to motivate our kids-for that matter when we use it in any of our relationships - we create a distance between ourselves and the other person, in this case, our kids.

Rather than bringing both of us to the same side to work on the problem, we create a tug-of-war where there can be only one winner. Usually in a tug-of-war it is the strongest person who wins, rather than who is right.

In reality, when it comes to win-lose tug-of wars with our kids, no one wins.

The second serious consequence we can count on when we use guilt to motivate and shape our kids, is the creation of an external motivational system rather than an internal one.

Stated simply, kids who have been consistently motivated by guilt are often not guided by their own internal sense of right and wrong (conscience), but rather, by the need to avoid feeling guilty and the need to be accepted.

The thought process and choice of guilt-motivated kids goes something like this:

"If I have to choose between feeling guilty and unaccepted because I act, think and behave differently than my friends and feeling accepted and guilt-free because I conform, then I'll choose guilt-free acceptance from my peers by living up (or down) to their expectations of me.

I'll do what it takes to get their acceptance and a freedom from feeling guilty because I don't conform".

This pattern of being motivated by external peer expectations is likely to extend into adult life where they continue to be motivated by the expectations of others, rather than their own internal sense of right and wrong.

Their life long pattern becomes one of blind compliance, all for the hope of being accepted and at the same time, avoiding feelings of guilt. Needless to say, there are significant dangers that arise when the expectations of others' becomes the road map for the behaviors of our kids.

Using guilt can be unintentional; for most of us good parents who want to be better parents, it probably is. For others, unfortunately, it might be overt and actually intended to hurt, control, even punish.

For most of us hard working, responsible, well meaning parents, though, our use of guilt is more likely to be subtle and not at all meant to be hurtful, controlling or destructive.

Nonetheless, it can be.

"If you really loved your dad, you would help him more around the house".

"If you care about my sanity, you'll give me a little peace and quiet".

"You make me look like such a terrible parent when you dress like that".

"Your constant back talk causes all sorts of pressures between your dad and me. Our marriage is hard enough as it is".

"It certainly doesn't seem to me that you could really care for your sister when you yell at her that way".

It's essential for all of us parents to find healthy and more positive ways to motivate and bring about compliance in our kids. It isn't easy and may even at times seem to be impossible. But there really are better ways.

Am I motivated in my behaviors toward my kids by my own guilt feelings?

In the previous section, we addressed the natural temptation most of us have to use guilt as a motivating factor in getting our kids to behave, live up to our expectations or whatever our desired goal might be.

It was suggested that there are a number of consequences that may occur when parents use guilt to get compliance.

Two results were described:

first, motivation by guilt creates a distance between us and them, rather than the unity we all desire to have with our kids.

Secondly, guilt tends to establish an "external" conscience rather than an "internal" one.

There's a 3rd consequence that commonly occurs when we use guilt to motivate our kids and their behaviors.

In time, kids who've been motivated by guilt, often become adults who, as parents, are manipulated easily by guilt.

If it's our goal to raise great kids, it helps if we know and understand as much as we can about what motivates our actions and behaviors as parents.

Healthy motivations will usually work well for us, while unhealthy ones are more likely to hinder us in the task of raising great kids - ones who like themselves and who have a healthy view of their worth and value.

One unhealthy motivator that can lie behind how we deal with our kids is our own unresolved guilt feelings, guilt feelings that may have begun in our own childhood experiences.

If your parents used guilt to motivate you to behave, "shape up", or just generally live up to their expectations, then you may still have the tendency to be motivated by guilt.

If this is true, then it's possible that your kids now will use it to get their way.

So just as our kids are influenced by our use of guilt, so also is it possible that we parents have been influenced by our parents' use of guilt with us? Where this has been the case, it isn't uncommon to bring into the role of parenting a need to avoid feeling any more guilty than we already do.

"If it takes giving in to my kids when I know that I shouldn't, then so be it". In such a case, we're more motivated by our need to please in order to be accepted and avoid feeling guilty, than by our need to be the kind of parent that is necessary if our kids are to grow up healthy and great.

The irony of such unhealthy motivations is that such a pattern in the process of raising kids back fires and actually leads to less acceptance from our kids and in turn then, to greater feelings of guilt ("if I were a better parent, Johnny would love & accept me more").

This is because the more that is given in order to avoid guilt and gain approval, the more that's demanded until, as parents, we've reached our limits. Then when we do say "no" (because we're out of time, patience, financial resources, or maybe just because we've had enough) kids who have learned to use guilt can really pull out all the stops!

It's at this point that parents who so desperately want to be loved and want to avoid feeling more guilt than they already do, actually feel more guilty and less accepted.

A vicious cycle has been established and one that's difficult (but not impossible) to break.

What You Need to Know about Eating Disorders
by Lynn Grieger, R.D., C.D.E.

It often starts as a simple desire to lose weight, but the diet soon takes over your life.

All you think about is food, yet you're afraid to eat. Afraid to be fat. Afraid to lose control.

Sometimes you do eat & then often the eating turns into an uncontrolled binge. Ashamed and disgusted, you purge the food through vomiting or laxatives or even by using the stair climber for an hour. You know something isn't right and you're afraid. Yet you don't know what to do.

Eating disorders are dangerous and can lead to:

• malnutrition
• dehydration
• electrolyte imbalances
• muscle wasting
• neurological impairment
• rupture in the esophagus
• sudden low blood pressure
• osteoporosis
• loss of menstrual cycle (amenorrhea)
• erosion of tooth enamel
• irregular heart beat 
• even death

Disordered eating is estimated to affect 5 to10 million girls and women and 1 million boys and men.

To deal with this crisis, we need to understand disordered eating and know where to go for help.

Types of disordered eating

Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia often begins with a need to control surroundings, low self-esteem and the fear of becoming fat.

Obsessive dieting leads to starvation. And controlling the amount of food eaten becomes a major source of control for everything else that goes on in life.

Typical symptoms of anorexia are obsessive exercise, calorie and fat gram counting, restriction of food, denial of hunger, use of coffee or smoking to avoid eating and an overwhelming concern with body image.

People with anorexia never see themselves as thin. In their eyes, they're always fat, no matter how little they weigh.

Bulimia

Bulimia involves a cycle of uncontrolled binge eating followed by purging. A person with bulimia will purge by using laxatives, inducing vomiting, exercising compulsively or fasting. The binge-purge cycle can be triggered by:

• hunger
• stress
• depression
• anxiety
• or other emotions.

Typical symptoms include binge-purge episodes, a feeling of lack of control over eating and life in general, strict exercise and dieting guidelines, use of laxatives, diuretics or diet pills and a poor self-image.

Compulsive overeating People who feel they're ''addicted'' to food and often find themselves using food to satisfy emotional needs such as stress, depression, or anger may be compulsive overeaters.

They typically don't follow overeating with purging but often berate themselves for not being able to follow a diet, have low self-esteem and feel ashamed of themselves.

Eating to satisfy a void in your life or as a way to cope with feelings has a strong underlying psychological element that needs to be addressed.

Combinations
It's not uncommon for someone to restrict her food intake compulsively (anorexia) for a period of days or weeks, then suddenly start eating large amounts of food followed by purging (bulimia).

Sometimes people use exercise as a method to purge. It's often more socially accepted to run an additional 2 miles because you ate a cookie than to make yourself vomit, but the reason behind the purge is the same. Symptoms of anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating often go together.

If you think you have an eating disorder:

Admit you have a problem and that you need help to solve it.

Tell someone about your feelings. Talk with a friend, teacher, counselor, physician, pastor or parent. Talking about your feelings with someone you trust is crucial.

Find a doctor who is well informed about eating disorders. Disordered eating can lead to medical problems that need to be addressed.

Assemble a treatment team that consists of a therapist, a dietitian and perhaps a support group. You can't beat eating disorders on your own and there are always numerous issues that need to be addressed. Find professionals you feel comfortable with who can help you through your journey toward recovery.

What can I do to help?

If your friend, spouse or child has an eating disorder, of course you want to help. These methods will help both of you through the recovery process:

You can't force an anorexic to eat, or prevent a bulimic from binging and purging. Don't even try.

Remember that disordered eating really isn't about food. It's about emotional pain and low self-esteem. Focusing on food as the answer only complicates matters.

If you have a child under 18 with an eating disorder, you're responsible for making sure they receive treatment. They probably will refuse to visit a physician, therapist or dietician, since a big part of eating disorders is denial and fear.

If you're a friend, spouse or parent of someone over 18 with an eating disorder, the most important thing you can do is listen. Listen to what she says, show concern and encourage her to seek effective therapy.

Resources

There are numerous online resources for people with eating disorders and those who want to help.

Some of my favorites:
The Something Fishy Website on Eating Disorders includes a variety of useful information as well as chat rooms and support. It should be your first stop.

Mirror Mirror is a complete site that offers information on finding treatment help, living with someone with an eating disorder and specific sections for children, teens, older women, etc.

Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention has extremely useful information, statistics and resources.

night eating.... my site concerning night eating syndrome...