Guilty

Is guilt the seed from which depression springs or the offshoot of depression itself?
I favor the latter.
That's not to say that nondepressives don't feel guilty. But the extent to which guilt affects them and the manner in which they process the guilt differ. Guilt can run rampant, even turning ostensible trivialities into gut-wrenching, sleep-obstructing, middle-of-the-night, tug-of-war opponents. Guilt takes hold in your stomach and gains rolling momentum like an avalanche, burying you in its path, smothering you, the pressure building in your head as you assume a fetal position in an attempt to strangle the pain like a constrictor as it constricts in kind. It's leprosy of the soul, eating from the inside out.
And the cycle can be vicious: Guilt induces a feeling of contrition, for example, even if unwarranted, precipitating yet more guilt, without resolution. The body seizes, like an engine bereft of lubrication.
Passive aggression is an attempt to induce guilt, and it's all some people apparently know. When the pattern is established with a child, as in a parent deliberately manipulating and making a child feel guilty, it becomes poisonous for the child and difficult to overcome. Poisonous in that it infiltrates the thought process at every turn and wields undue influence and taints decision making. Guilt courses through the body like venom circulating through the bloodstream, leaving paralysis in its wake. Guilt, a constant companion. Rational thoughts and prayer don't help to heal the wound, even for the blameless child.