Key Takeaways
- Feeling like a bad person can be linked to mental health issues such as depression or anxiety.
- Reflecting on your actions and caring about others’ feelings is a good sign you’re not a bad person.
- Talking to a mental health professional can help you understand why you feel this way.
Many people experience regret, even when making everyday decisions. Making mistakes is part of life, but sometimes these regrets can leave you wondering if you are a bad person.
The good news is that examining your actions often means that you care about treating other people in positive ways. It also indicates that you have the self-reflection, insight, and awareness to make a change if you aren’t satisfied with who you are or who you’ve been in the past.
However, for some people, wondering, “Am I a bad person?” isn’t a fleeting thought or existential question—in some cases, it can be a sign of a mental health condition such as depression. This makes it important to be aware of the symptoms to watch for so you can seek help.
Here we share what you should do if you find yourself thinking, “I’m a bad person.” We also provide some signs that suggest you might have a deeper issue, along with actions you can take to get over your regrets and start to feel better again.
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What Does “Bad Person” Mean?
There is no single, simple definition for what it means to be a “bad person.” One person might define it as someone who engages in harmful or destructive behaviors. Another person might define a bad person as an individual who doesn’t care about others, regardless of the type of actions they engage in.
Labeling yourself as ‘bad’ is often a judgment that stems from your value system. These values arise from beliefs you’ve formed through your upbringing and experiences but are also heavily influenced by culture. In other words, the expectations for what it means to be ‘good’ can vary depending on the society in which you live.
The definition of a “bad person” is highly subjective and often dependent on factors such as your values, belief systems, and religious background.
The Dark Factor of Personality
According to some researchers, there is a certain pattern of traits that make up what is referred to as the “dark factor of personality” or D-factor. People who exhibit these characteristics often engage in actions that are harmful to others and include traits such as:
- Entitlement
- Immorality
- Neuroticism
- Psychopathy
- Sadism
- Self-centeredness
- Self-interest
- Spitefulness
These traits are all focused on pursuing one’s interest at the cost of other people’s happiness, health, and well-being. People with these traits often do whatever it takes to fulfill their desires and wants, even at the expense of others.
Signs of a Deeper Issue
Again, feeling like a bad person may be due to regret over something small that you did or didn’t do. But it can also be an indicator that something bigger may be going on, causing you to consider how you treat others. Here are a few signs that you might need to evaluate your actions further.
Lack of an Apology or Remorse
When we feel angry, our natural tendency is to respond aggressively. This can cause us to lash out, act thoughtlessly, or say things in the heat of the moment, leading the other person to feel hurt or experience emotional pain. How you respond afterward can say a lot about who you are as a person.
If you have feelings of remorse when you hurt someone and can apologize for the pain you have caused, it indicates that you care about the feelings of the people around you. It also means that you are willing to reflect on your actions and make amends when needed.
Conversely, if you are not willing to do these things or struggle to admit that you’ve harmed others, it may be a sign of a deeper issue.
Self-Centered Behaviors
There is nothing wrong with putting your own needs and interests first at times. Taking care of yourself is crucial as neglecting your personal needs can lead to unhappiness and poor well-being.
That said, if you’re always thinking about yourself and your own needs, never considering the feelings or welfare of others, it may indicate an issue that needs to be addressed. Self-centeredness can be particularly damaging if you neglect the needs of the people you are closest to, such as your partner, children, other family members, and friends.
Empathy is an important ability that helps you understand others and share their pain. A lack of empathy can signify a need for change in how you treat others.
Manipulation, Exploitation, and Dishonesty
Putting other people down and engaging in gaslighting is a form of manipulation and exploitation. People who engage in exploitive or manipulative behaviors typically have no problem lying to get what they want.
If you lie regularly, it may indicate that you need to evaluate your behavior and make a change. While almost everyone tells little white lies from time to time, it can signal a more serious issue when lie-telling is chronic, pervasive, and does not lead to feelings of remorse or regret.
Recap
Certain patterns of behavior can be harmful and destructive, including self-centeredness, dishonesty, manipulation, and exploitation.
Why You May Feel Like a Bad Person
If you sometimes feel like a bad person, it can be helpful to consider some of the factors that might be contributing to these feelings. Possible influences might include your personality, experiences, and mental health.
Personality
Certain personality traits can affect how you feel about yourself. For example, neuroticism is one of the core dimensions of personality. People with high levels of this trait tend to feel negatively about themselves, others, and the world in general.
Individuals with a D-factor personality also often have traits that can make them feel like a bad person. Traits that research has associated with this personality type include narcissism, spitefulness, egoism, psychopathy, and sadism.
People with high levels of D-factor personality traits tend to have a disregard for the well-being of others.
Experiences
Our upbringing and life experiences also play an important role in how we perceive our own actions. Our earliest experiences in life involve watching our caregivers and other adults. Their behaviors and the value systems they raised us with serve as a model for how we feel and act today.
Other experiences and influences also play a role. Peers, social pressures, culture, media influences, and our individual experiences shape how we relate to other people in our life. Adverse experiences can contribute to an overall negative outlook, ultimately impacting how we engage with others.
Talking to a mental health professional can help you process your experiences, examine how they influence your behavior today, and develop new skills to engage with others in a healthier, more meaningful way.
Mental Health Conditions
Some mental health conditions can lead to problems with empathy, relationships, behaviors, and self-perceptions. They include:
Feeling like a bad person may also be an indicator of depression or anxiety. Symptoms of depression include feelings of guilt and lack of self-worth. In some cases, people with this condition feel fundamentally bad or that the world would be better off without them.
Sometimes this feeling is accompanied by other symptoms such as low mood, decreased interest in activities, loss of pleasure, fatigue, irritability, social withdrawal, and a lack of motivation. In that case, it is crucial to seek help.
If this is how you feel, talk to your healthcare provider or a mental health professional about what you are experiencing. These experts can assess your symptoms, make a diagnosis, and recommend treatments to help relieve your symptoms.
Recap
If you have one of these mental health conditions, getting a diagnosis is an important first step. With a diagnosis, a treatment plan can be created, which may include medications and psychotherapy to change negative or unhealthy thought patterns and social interactions.
How to Get Help If You Feel Like a Bad Person
If you’ve been struggling with feeling like you are a bad person, there are a few steps you can take to get help and make a change in your life. Start by talking to your healthcare provider or mental health professional.
This type of professional can evaluate your symptoms and help determine if there may be an underlying problem, such as a personality disorder, which may be contributing to behaviors that make you feel bad about yourself and your interactions with others.
If feeling like you are a bad person is accompanied by other mental health symptoms related to depression or anxiety, it is vital to get help. A mental health professional can recommend treatments, such as psychotherapy and medications, that can relieve your symptoms and improve your beliefs in yourself.
As mental health professionals, our job is to look for a comprehensive diagnosis. Feeling like you are a bad person may be the symptom of some deeper underlying mental health issue. Getting to the root of that in an empathetic and nonjudgmental way can not only improve the patient’s life, but help improve dynamics within their inner circles as well.
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DR. SASHA HAMDANI, MD, PSYCHIATRIST
Additional Steps You Can Take to Feel Better
Feeling like you are a bad person can be distressing. In addition to talking to a mental health professional, there are steps that you can take to begin to feel better about who you are and how you relate to others.
- Treat others with respect: Work on showing kindness and respect to others. Being nice to people can be a great place to start. Approaching others with kindness can also lead to more positive interactions, which can be helpful for forming new social relationships.
- Find ways to help others: Research has found that helping others helps people feel better about themselves. You can start by doing good deeds in your daily life or volunteering to support an organization that you care about.
- Practice forgiveness: Being able to forgive isn’t always easy, but research has found that people who can forgive experience more positive emotions, less stress, better relationships with others, and feel a greater sense of purpose in life. Don’t forget to show yourself compassion by learning how to forgive yourself too. This can be a positive first step toward improving how you feel about who you are as a person.
- Think positively: Maintaining a more optimistic mindset may help you interact more positively with others and feel better about yourself. Pay attention to the types of negative thinking that contribute to feeling like you are a bad person and look for ways to replace those thought patterns with more positive ones.
It is important to know that labeling yourself and others can have negative consequences. Additionally, if you believe that these self-labeled qualities are innate and unchangeable, it can limit your ability and motivation to make positive changes in your life.
Even if you have moments where you feel negatively about yourself, avoid labeling yourself as a “bad person.” Everyone makes mistakes, has bad days, and has things they’d like to change. Show yourself compassion.
Remind yourself that even if you’ve made mistakes, you are not defined by them. There are things you can do to make a change and improve how you feel about yourself or others.
