Letting go of guilt? How? Thinking differently, forgiving and accepting yourself as you are, seem great, but stay a top source of anxiety for many. From people-pleasing to complete out martyrdom, there’s entirely too much hanging on to the damaging effects of guilt. Though guilt is an obstacle to joy and achievement for both sexes, many would agree, and research now points to the fact that women suffer with this issue more than guys.
Feelings
Feelings commonly experienced include: sensing a lack of balance, loss, responsibility for issues of others, heightened pain in seeing suffer, feeling you will need to fix things. The terms, hyper-responsible, hyper-conscientious, hyper-sensitive frequently hit home. You could also feel or be trapped, and have trouble making decisions.
The syndrome is mired in negative beliefs about itself. These are irrational, and sometimes require the support of professional counselors to fully reverse.
- Negative or positive circumstances that affect my spouse and kids, are largely my responsibility.
- I must keep secret, what happened to me previously.
- My kids deserve to have more toys, adventures and other things than I had.
- Others are judging me. I place high value on their own judgment.
- One of the greatest goals I run under, is to’save face’ with other men and women.
- I will never relax. Something I’m doing may be incorrect or cause injury.
- I am accountable for my husband’s (spouse, partner or partner ) happiness. To top this off irrational thinking, others might benefit from your feelings of guilt and shame! Some of this might be virtually unconscious, habitual or/and seemingly benign, and some of this might be more serious.
- Fake illness, incompetence, look unhappy, or other behaviors to activate your own guilt. You follow along with taking over. The next thing you know, you’re responsible for the activities they have to have been taking good care of.
- Play upon your own irrational guilt for you to fulfill their requirements, even though it violates your rights.
- Heighten your sense of low self esteem. Result? More guilt and shame.
Start Letting Go of Guilt
For those who have serious problems with guilt, 1 article is only the start. However, a continuing and determined approach to healthy positive thinking will get you to let go in time.
- Spend some time, maybe over a period of a couple of days, pondering that which you understand deep down, are the root causes of your guilt. Jot them down in a notebook, as a part of your Stuff I wish to forego list. Some of the issues that will come up might be past hurts, fear of rejection, basic survival problems from the past, mistakes you made re-playing on mind, victim syndrome, past or present issues with anger, depression and depression, experiences of being manipulated by others. NOTE: You may feel very miserable going through all of this. Keep the introspection brief, and get on to the upcoming steps.
- I pulled some of my Psychology 101 teaching notes for this guide, and compared the concept we had been teaching at the school level from the 80’s and 90’s. Not much has changed, except that a growing number of professionals are using positive thinking phrases, the Sedona method and terms like law of attraction.