Definition of "self-reproach" [self•-re•proach]

• The act or an instance of charging oneself with a fault or mistake. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He was periodically paralyzed by self-reproach and insecurity, and once wrote a defensive third-person preface to one of his later novels (The Age of Longing) in which he described its style as modeled on that of a certain “A. Koestler,” whose writing, “lacking in ornament and distinction, is easy to imitate.”"
• "In his article “Mourning and Melancholia,” published in 1917, Freud characterized grief as a normal reaction, but also noted that it becomes “pathological” when the survivor has mixed feelings about the deceased, leading to guilt and unconscious self-reproach for his or her death."
• "The National played a set at the Hollywood Bowl on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 that made their signature subjects -- self-reproach, uncertainty, despair -- turn sublime."