When Your Child Goes Missing: Grappling with Guilt

This week, I want to share something personal that happened to me recently.

One afternoon, I arrived to pick up my youngest son from his swimming class. I stood in the usual place, right where I always wait for him when the lesson ends.

He wasn’t there.

At first, I assumed there had been a small delay. But as the minutes passed, I began searching the area. I looked everywhere. He was nowhere to be found.

What made the situation even more distressing was that there were renovations taking place nearby, along with foreign workers moving around the area. My thoughts immediately spiraled toward worst case scenarios. Feeling completely unsettled, I called the police and asked for help.

Let me reassure you right away. Thank God, my son was eventually found, safe and unharmed.

And yet, the emotional experience stayed with me.

Two Similar Stories, Two Very Different Experiences

This incident brought me back to another moment from years earlier. It was a Friday afternoon, and I had taken my children to a large park in Modiin. At some point, my young daughter disappeared.

The park was vast. I searched for her for nearly half an hour. There were unfamiliar people around, and my anxiety intensified with every passing minute. When I finally found her, safe and innocent, she explained that she had gone to look for her pacifier in the car parked a few hundred meters away.

As the saying goes, Hashem protects fools.

What struck me only now was the difference in how I experienced these two events.

On that Friday in Modiin, my suffering was overwhelming. I felt helpless, frozen, barely able to think clearly. I remember the pounding in my head, the cold sweat, the tightness in my chest. It took me days to recover emotionally.

In contrast, during the recent swimming incident, I was anxious, but far more composed. I acted deliberately and responsibly. On the surface, the situations were similar. But internally, they were worlds apart.

So what changed?

The Role of Guilt

The difference was guilt.

When my daughter disappeared in the park, I felt guilty. I was the responsible adult. I believed that perhaps I hadn’t been attentive enough, that I had failed in my role. When she went missing, the guilt crashed down on me.

During the swimming incident, however, I felt no guilt. I had arrived on time, stood in the expected place, and acted responsibly. Despite that, the situation unfolded as it did.

The emotional gap between guilt and the absence of guilt was dramatic.

In the park, guilt hijacked my ability to think clearly. Instead of focusing on what needed to be done in the moment, my inner dialogue revolved around questions like What kind of father am I and What does this say about me. I was busy defending myself to myself.

How Guilt Enters Relationships

This dynamic appears frequently in relationships.

One of the most painful experiences between partners is mutual blame. People instinctively recoil from blame, almost as if it were fire. When a partner blames me, it becomes nearly impossible to truly hear their pain or understand their message. My entire focus shifts to defending myself and clearing my name.

Often, blaming the other serves another purpose. It allows the person who is blaming to escape their own guilt. If the other is at fault, then I am not.

This leads to an important misunderstanding. Many people believe that guilt creates responsibility. If he realizes he is to blame, then he will change.

In reality, the opposite often happens. The more overwhelmed a person feels by guilt, the less capable they are of taking healthy responsibility.

Two Ways Guilt Distorts Responsibility

Guilt tends to push people into one of two extremes.

One type responds with excessive responsibility. They rush to fix, appease, and act without reflection. Their goal is not growth or clarity, but simply relief from guilt.

The other type withdraws. They become emotionally distant, indifferent on the surface. This detachment is not strength. It is protection. Guilt feels so threatening that they build emotional armor to keep it out.

Both reactions block sound judgment.

Learning to Stay With Guilt

So how do we cope with guilt?

Like any difficult emotion, whether jealousy, fear, or anxiety, guilt needs space.

This sounds counterintuitive. Why would we make room for something so painful?

Because fighting guilt only intensifies it. Pushing it away turns it into something overwhelming. Allowing it to exist, observing it, and feeling it calmly often softens its grip.

If we give guilt room, without running from it or attacking it, we begin to regain clarity.

Helpful questions to ask include:
What am I being blamed for?
What is the most frightening aspect of this guilt?
Who am I afraid of disappointing?
What is the worst that could happen?
And if that happened, then what?

Gradually, the emotion settles into proportion. Only then can we examine it honestly.

False Guilt and True Guilt

At this stage, we can ask an essential question. Is this genuine guilt or false guilt?

True guilt arises from recognizing a real wrongdoing and wanting to correct it.

False guilt, however, does not stem from moral failure. It grows from fear. Fear of criticism. Fear of rejection. Fear of losing love or belonging.

When guilt comes from fear rather than wrongdoing, there is nothing to fix externally. The work becomes internal. Strengthening self worth. Building confidence. Learning that personal value comes from within, not from constant approval.

Recognizing this distinction allows responsibility to return to its healthy place, calm, grounded, and constructive.

Rabbi Aryeh Ettinger is an advisor and the founder of a school for training relationship counselors.