Burdening guilt: an empirical research

The present work investigates burdening guilt, a specific type of interpersonal guilt rooted in the pathogenic belief that one’s needs, emotions, or way of being are a burden to or drain on others. Drawing on Control Mastery Theory (CMT), this research integrates theoretical and empirical approaches to clarify its psychological features and clinical relevance. Across four empirical studies, burdening guilt consistently emerged as a marker of vulnerability to psychopathology. The first study validated two new assessment tools, including a dedicated subscale within the Interpersonal Guilt Rating Scale-15s (IGRS- 15s; Gazzillo et al., 2018), now expanded to the IGRS-20, confirming the construct’s reliability and its associations with anxiety, depression, shame, attachment insecurity, low self-esteem and poorer overall mental health. The second study showed that burdening guilt is closely linked to emotion dysregulation, frustration intolerance, and low body appreciation, highlighting its role in emotion regulation problems. The third study demonstrated that burdening guilt mediates the relationship between childhood trauma and personality dysfunction, both directly and through epistemic mistrust, emphasizing its impact on trauma-related personality pathology. Moreover, in the fourth study, burdening guilt uniquely predicted dissociative symptoms and mediated the relationship between early adverse parenting experiences and dissociation, particularly under conditions of intense emotions such as anger, underscoring its contribution to dissociative vulnerability. Overall, these findings identify burdening guilt–related pathogenic beliefs as a significant factor in psychopathology and emotion dysregulation that undermines mental health and interpersonal functioning. The aim of this work is to deepen understanding of burdening guilt and interpersonal guilt, highlighting their implications for psychopathological outcomes and therapeutic interventions.