Insightful post and pernitanate for a culture that has been conditioned with the idea that there must be a debt that must be paid, but never know how much or why...so that leaves the mind to create the guilt task master in the form of every religious dogma or ideology ...or even an avowed atheist, there is always a rationality,
But your childhood triggering, from the pox is very understandable.
I talk to guilt like the asshole it is, and say you work for me buddy...its not the other way around.;)

Lynn