In Through the Looking–Glass, Lewis Carroll tells of the Red Queen’s Race. Alice and the Red Queen run faster and faster, the scenery behind them never moving, until they fall down exhausted. “Why, we’ve gotten absolutely nowhere,” gasps Alice. “Everything is just as it was!”

“Of course!” says the Queen. “In the Red Queen’s Race, it takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place! If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast!”

That’s the crazy logic of unhealthy guilt. We run and run, straining desperately to make some headway, but get nowhere. Guilt is such a treadmill!