Guilt, Blame and Shame Series Part 1

I don’t remember a time in my life when guilt, shame and blame weren’t a part of my life. They were always just there – a throuple pestering me to join them constantly.

Following the birth of my first child I became acutely aware that other women were feeling the same regardless of their body shape, their income level, the car they drove or where they lived. The effects weren’t quite crippling (I mean we all still function in life) but there was a measurable impact being felt and the results meant we were all expending so much wasted energy and time. Energy and time we could be using to create a deeper sense of fulfilment and enjoyment in life.

This sparked a curiosity in me about what was driving these thoughts and feelings. I’ve learnt a lot since then and thought I would put together a series on guilt, shame, and blame to help you understand what lies beneath the surface.

Why?

Because we spend a lot of time wishing and wanting for change and to not think or feel certain ways, without really knowing what they are, where they come from and their true purpose. Getting below the surface and really understanding what is happening when then these thoughts, feelings and behaviours intrude is the actually the first part of the process to understanding how we can actively manage our mind, shift from reacting in life to responding and ultimately getting ourselves back into the driver’s seat of life.

So, let’s begin by exploring guilt.

What is guilt?

Guilt is the emotional response that accompanies feeling responsible for a negative outcome. What we know about guilt is that at around 3-6 years of age we are taught guilt as a conditioned emotion. In response to making mistakes or engaging in behaviour that the adults in our lives deem “bad,” we learn to use guilt as a means of assessing ourselves and our actions.

Guilt relates to the pain you’ve caused someone or breaking your moral code in some ways are two of the core reasons you may experience guilt. Whether you’ve lied to a friend, forgotten to do something important that you promised your child, or called in sick when you were feeling absolutely fine – if these go against your model of the world, you will feel guilt.

Many of us will experience guilt as a pain that urges us to take remedial action, we will want to fix the situation, make amends. This is how you get rid of the pain of guilt: you take a right action that makes up for your wrong action.

We all know that mistakes are a part of life, and that no one has the ability to live a perfect life, so guilt becomes an important experience when your decisions or actions have negative repercussions.

Guilt can be a powerful learning tool for personal growth.

But guilt may also be linked to events where you have no control or ill intention. We can often find ourselves spinning the wheels of our minds over and over again in cycles of guilt in situations where we have no control. It becomes exhausting, so exhausting that we don’t have the energy to decipher what is ours to make amends or remediate and what is ours to walk away from.

One of the most common uses of guilt is motivation; the desire to be the best or most moral version of oneself becomes a driving force. This motivation can be to either receive positive feedback or to avoid negative feedback. In both scenarios, an individual strives to be perceived as “good” by others, making self-valuation and self-worth practically impossible.

The desire to avoid guilt, or being told to feel guilty, can play a significant role in how we function in day-to-day life. Over time the conditioning can cause us to develop triggers that create angst and problems as we move through life.

So how do you know what is healthy, helpful, and true guilt versus unhealthy, unhelpful, and false guilt?

Healthy, Helpful and True Guilt

Healthy, helpful, and true guilt allows us to see the wisdom of the emotion. True guilt is caused by actions or behaviours that break objective definitions of right and wrong. It is a feeling of discomfort about something we’ve done that is objectively wrong.

An example is knowing your car needs new brakes, ignoring it and later having an accident. At that point, you know that the accident was your fault, and you decide to never, ever ignore your car maintenance again.

You’ve learned from the experience. With true guilt, we get to seek forgiveness as we correct the wrong. It can lead to healing for ourselves and the people we may have hurt.

Now you can keep what you’ve learned, shed the guilt — you don’t need to feel bad about the situation anymore, because you have learned the lesson. True guilt resolves as we repair the damage caused.

True guilt helps you know when you’ve done something wrong and provides pain to motivate you to do what’s right.

And that’s the key point: once you do what is right, the pain goes away.

How can I work towards resolving my true guilt?

• Get honest and truthful with yourself, face the behaviour that hurt yourself or others.
• Take responsibility for the harm done.
• Seek forgiveness from the person or people affected.
• Adjust and change destructive attitudes and behaviours that create harm.
• Heal the relationship with the person affected.

What if you have guilt that does not go away? Perhaps you haven’t truly taken responsibility for your actions or learned the lesson available to you through your experience or you have some amends to make with people to get rid of your true guilt. Or you could be experiencing false guilt.

Unhealthy, Unhelpful and False Guilt

Unhealthy, unhelpful, and false guilt is just as painful as true guilt, but trickier to get rid of. True guilt can be released by making amends. False guilt, however, is not based on something bad you did knowingly, so you can’t make amends. Once again, “knowingly” is the important word here.

False guilt is a feeling of discomfort about something we have done against our unrealistically high standards.

I remember being diagnosed with Cancer in 2017 and being consumed by guilt. Our home had burnt to the ground in 2016, we were living in rental accommodation, supporting 4 children through their loss and grief, and trying to rebuild a home as quickly as possible. I didn’t have time to get sick and I felt incredibly responsible for causing more pain and worry for my husband and children.

In reality, I didn’t knowingly get sick. I was measuring myself against unrealistically and unattainably high standards.

We feel guilty in these types of situations because we act in way that breaks the unrealistic standards of behaviour developed in childhood to please an adult.

The outcomes of false guilt are always unhelpful and will continue to have negative impacts because the emphasis is always on self-punishment over behaviour change. It creates a goofy loop of guilt. False guilt patterns remain in place until we do the work to understand and shift the irrational beliefs.

How can I work towards resolving my false guilt?

• Be realistic about what you can honestly control in the situation, knowing that you are only responsible for your actions, not what others think or do.
• Checking and challenging your own standards and any perfectionism in your life.
• Spend time separating out true guilt to uncover the false guilt patterns you are living with.
• Practice self-compassion and work to understand that everyone lives with a combination of strengths and weaknesses.
• Talk about your experiences with others and learn from the shared experiences.
• Seek support to help you ‘do the work’ to develop strategies and break patterns of being.

As humans we are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain – so as we try to avoid guilt (because it feels uncomfortable and unpleasant) or being considered a “bad” person by ourselves or others we can find ourselves in patterns of buffering, swallowing and denying our truth. The result is we cannot meet our own needs or create fulfillment in our lives.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Guilt belongs in the past and will never let us move forward. We can differentiate a healthy and true sense of guilt from the unhealthy and false internalised guilt we are living with, by learning to recognise the difference in how they feel, their triggers, and their impact on us. Once we can tell them apart and know what measures to take in both scenarios we can facilitate forward momentum, personal growth, and healing in ourselves and others.

Need help or want to explore your patterns of guilt? Reach in and we can talk about the options available. You can email me directly on workwith@collectivewisdomcoaching.com or book a call in my calendar.

Go gently

Mel xoxo