constantly carrying guilt

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I feel guilty constantly. I don't know why, I don't think it's useful or that I can trust these feelings as my 'conscience' because they seem to apply to anything and everything.
I feel guilty that I need help with a lot of things.
I feel guilty that I'm not living a healthy enough lifestyle.
I feel guilty that I'm not having enough of a positive impact on others or helping them.
I feel guilty when I spend money on myself.
I feel guilty that I'm not being social enough and then when I am social, I feel guilty if I've had fun, and I always feel full of self loathing after ANY social interaction.
I feel guilty when enjoying dvds I bought cos I feel like people wouldn't approve of my selfishness and reclusiveness.
Sometimes I feel disgusting and guilty and ashamed and I have no idea why, it's like my brain sometimes can't be bothered to pick something as the cause.
What is wrong with me??
Always no matter what I do to try to improve myself or help people or not be a burden I still feel like total scum. (T^T)

The only thing I could say:

is to try to find a happy medium between what you feel guilty about.

In actuality, you're only "scum" if you like to molest little boys or something.

I don't actually notice anything you should feel guilty about.

What I feel is that you have to try to "improve" upon the "deficits" which you state you have.

Be more social. Have more confidence. Don't get upset if you're having fun.

Stop putting yourself in a Catch-22 bind all the time.

Swashy, I have this problem too. I hate it and it makes me worry about having bipolar or some other thing because years ago I read that it was a symptom of something. But lately I have realized this guilt is inversely related to how I feel about myself. When I feel bad about myself, I have more guilt. When I've been productive and accomplished something that was important to me, the guilt doesn't hit as much. I think KraftieKortie hit the nail on the head: do some things to improve on your lifestyle, send cards to people you know, letting them know you were thinking about them. Most people like to get mail.

Do you think it may be a piling up of guilt from feeling like you fail at a lot of things? I know that we aren't always connected with our feelings and I think things kind of get "backlogged" like an emotional overload that doesn't have a name or any particular cause. I wonder if it all mixed together makes the same physical feeling as guilt does.

Are you are perfectionist? Do you place a lot of pressure on yourself? Sometimes I wonder if the judgment we sense or expect from others is coming from ourselves instead and our own expectations of ourselves. I get this from my first paragraph above, how it seems to be more under personal influence.

I used to have the social guilt too but I'm not sure why or what it's from really. I think it might have been because I used to have this impression that other people my age thought I was a "joke" and "mentally ill" or "stupid" or not a legitimate person. Do you have this impression from others too?

I am glad you posted about this. You aren't the only one.

My theory: The feeling of guilt is subconsciously triggered by the nature of your moral code: Altruism (the opposite of egoism). If you want to get rid of the guilt you will either have to stop being selfish, or change the code. Some think selfishness is a virtue.

Me too.

Yes. It was much stronger when I was young. Definitely gets worse if I'm not working on my art. It has been reducing in strength as I get older. Almost like all the emotions that I have no idea about mix together in an even more unidentifiable mass, pretty much what QuiversWhiskers said.
To counteract the constant guilt get a habit of doing things: work on stuff, whatever you like or are interested in which make you feel good. For me, my art work is so enthralling to work on that it gets my brain off of its tendency to try to obsess on the guilt.

I believe some altruism is built into us, and is necessary.

Even many animals have at least some degree of altruism.