Are your feelings of guilt holding you back?

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Feelings of Feelings of guilt can hold you back.

Guilt is a powerful emotion and it can affect in two ways: When it is a legitimate guilt, it can guide and correct our (bad) actions towards the good, and reconcile relationships.  But false Guilt can keep us from living the life we want. False guilt often masks feelings of unworthiness. Why do I say that? Let me start by giving some context: We experience guilt on a spectrum. Some of us don’t ever feel guilt - and others feel it daily and chronically, not because they are doing something wrong, but because they have been hardwired to feel guilty since they were young.  

Now, the vast majority of us feel guilty when we do something that we know is wrong. Like saying something nasty and hurtful, or doing something vindictive, or selfish.  But we don’t have to DO something to feel guilty; we can feel guilty for having ugly feelings. For example, we can feel guilt for having feelings of jealousy, envy, annoyance, indifference, hatred, and how about this: feeling secretly happy when something bad befalls a person we dislike or distrust. Frankly, I am guessing that all of us have felt that at one time or another. 

Where it gets really unhealthy, is when we feel guilt chronically. We feel guilty just for breathing and taking up space.  We feel guilty when someone looks sideways at us. We feel guilty that we did something wrong when something does not go the way we expect or when someone does not react the way we want.  Assuming we are not manipulating them, we feel like we said or did something wrong. 

Now if you are still reading, you probably fall on the right side of the Guilt spectrum - feeling false guilt alot - and this guilt is holding you back from being the person you want to be. So it is constructive to ask how did we get this way? 

A most common reason for this is not surprising; usually we can source it back to childhood. Some of us had people around us like parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters who invalidated us. And, most likely, it was not intentional because no one - and especially, parents - are perfect, right? But it is invalidating comments, said consistently and frequently, that have ways of infecting our psyche and altering the way we think about ourselves and our place in the world.  These comments have a way of making us feel guilty like we did something wrong.  For example, how often have you heard comments such as, “you shouldn’t be angry” or “don’t be that way” or “how could you say such a thing?” or “Nice people don’t say such things” or “how could you even think that?”, “What is wrong with you?” And there are so many more that cut our confidence. And what is so damaging is when these comments are said to an innocent child. 

For most of us who suffer from a guilt complex, the invalidations started very early in our childhood - probably before we can remember the first time it was said to us.  When we are consistently invalidated, we stop sharing our thoughts and feelings. We go inward.  But we still have those thoughts, and we feel guilty for having them. And over time, if we don’t address this, it sabotages and undermines our hopes and goals.  We allow this voice to tell us we are guilty and don’t deserve life’s best.  

The other thing that might have happened is someone said something hurtful to you, or wrongly accused you and you expressed what was on your mind - maybe in anger - but instead of the other person admitting or apologizing, that other person turned the table around. This person acted like the victim, breaking down and crying and gaslighting you saying, “you are so mean, how could you say such awful things to me?” 

I remember when my mother accused me of being so hurtful, mean, and evil, after she violated my privacy by reading my diary where I wrote how much I hated her for the hurtful things she said and did to me. She would cry and say how hurt she was that I wrote what I wrote and how mean and hateful I was. She often acted like the victim, saying how she is doing her best, “poor me - no-one loves me” kind of stuff.  I felt so confused and at the center of that confusion was a feeling of guilt - feeling guilty that I made her feel bad.  More importantly, I felt wrong -  like the person I was, was wrong; I was wrong for feeling the way I felt, for reacting the way I reacted and for writing what I wrote. I felt I had to apologize for hurting her feelings while she never acknowledged her first offense to me.

I share my own story because the more I talk to clients, the more common my story is among so many people who carry chronic guilt. Carrying false guilt causes us to be easily manipulated.  Think about it. If you can be easily guilted, I can push that button whenever I feel like it with a look, an accusation, a comment, by withholding, gaslighting and so on. I can make you go in circles simply with a look or a comment.

As an example, let’s say I had a bad day at work, and you meet me at the door happy to see me, but I look at you with a scowl and say, “what are you wearing?” There are two ways to address this:

1. Guilty approach:  you stop and say, “I’m sorry - I’ll go change.”

2. Non-guilty approach: “Happy to see you too, darling. Did you have a bad day at work? Do you need time to unwind?”

In the first response, because you already feel guilty and seek to not feel guilty, you are quick to apologize. But the truth is I was the one who was in a bad mood. There was no reason for you to apologize. And certainly no reason to change. In the 2nd response, the feeling and corresponding action from me is not your responsibility. You might have been a bit snarky with your response but you returned my response back to me, where it belonged. 

And that is what I mean by saying guilt often masks a feeling of unworthiness. Because we feel unworthy we can easily be guilted with false guilt. But you are worthy of living a guilt-free life, especially when you did nothing wrong.  If you find yourself erring on the side of feeling guilty too often for no apparent reason, I encourage you to STOP. Ask yourself “is there a reason to feel guilty?” If not, do and say nothing. And be good to yourself.

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