Online bonus chapter: Dealing with guilt
I often have to deal with feelings of guilt, and it can eat up a lot of time and energy. It sometimes feels like it is holding me and my thought, my emotion, hostage. In other words: it makes me feel bad.
In theory that is a good sign, because it means I want to do better. But being entrapped by guilt is actively keeping me from doing better. It can make me afraid of doing anything at all, lest I make a mistake again. It can also make it hard to do anything at all because I just feel too bad to move. It can lead into a downward spiral of thinking “because I did this bad thing, I do not deserve anything good”. Listing all the good things I did not think to deserve in detail usually leaves me hurting and in tears. That is not a good place to be in and does not help anyone.
I have learned that there are different kinds of guilt that need different ways of addressing. So while it is no fun, it helps me to look at it more closely.
Examine the guilt
I do not know how many types of guilt there are, for me it is usually one of these two:
- I (think I) did something wrong
- Something bad happened and I blame myself
Depending on what causes the feeling of guilt, different steps can get me (partly) out of it.
1. I (think) I did something wrong
Firstly it helps to figure out if it is just the fear of having done anything wrong of I actually did mess up some way. For example, I often worry I did something wrong when someone takes longer than usual to respond. Then I go over everything I *might* have done and feel guilty about that. Instead of obsessing about that I have started asking them. Usually the other person in question is just busy. That deals with the guilt nicely.
But sometimes I did something wrong, because I am human. In that case I apologize. Which can have two different outcomes.
I am forgiven
If the person(s) in question tell me, that it is fine, and I should not worry about it anymore, I try to trust them. They know if they are hurt, and if they are not, there is no need to hurt myself further. This does not work perfectly, yet. Because I still want to not have hurt them in the first place, which is sadly not an option.
Someone suggested to me to think about how I would feel if positions were reversed: a friend forgot my birthday? Someone spelled my name wrong? I got stood up because my friend mixed up the dates? Would I forgive them?
There is no need to treat myself more harshly that I would treat others. My friends love me no less than I love them, even though it feels preposterous to say that. My friends are awesome and kind, of course they forgive me if they say so. So I try to be on my own side and accept their forgiveness as they accepted my apology. Where did that phrase come from? Accept their forgiveness. Maybe this phrasing can help me the next time I struggle with this.
I am not forgiven
But what if the person(s) in question do not accept my apology or they accept it but still take a step backwards in their relationship to me? This too has happened and it is still haunting me at times.
This, I found much easier to accept as given, maybe because that is, for me, always the expected outcome. No one is forced to accept an apology or to be close to someone who hurt them.
What I found harder to understand it that it is not my fault that they made this decision. It is theirs to make, depending on their emotional situation.
And then?
I sadly have no fixed formula for that. It hurts. But it should not hurt forever. I did something wrong. That happens. I tried to make up. And this is literally all I can do. I can make a second attempt, but I also do not want to make them feel bad about not forgiving me, because that is their choice.
I did all I could under the circumstances.
The only thing left to do is to forgive myself for not being perfect. Once I have figured out how to reliably do that, I´ll let you know.
To be honest, I have done some things that I totally understand not being forgiven for. I have done stupid things, maybe out of fear, pain, grief, whatever. Maybe because I had not thought things through. And while I mourn these instances, I still need to understand that I can strive to do better without letting guilt overwhelm me. I do not have to spend the rest of my life paying for those mistakes. This would not erase them. I can only try to not repeat thenm.
Exercise 1: Next time you find it hard to accept forgiveness, imagine it was a wrapped gift that is offered to you. Accept it. Express your joy about it. Whenever you feel like you are discarding it by feeling guilty again, imagine the gift again and set it firmly on a shelf, keeping it in your sight.
Exercise 2: If that is too imaginary, try to picture the roles reversed. Feel yourself forgiving the other person. Try to transfer that feeling to yourself.
Exercise 3: If it is a close friend, maybe you could ask them to write it down for you: “You are forgiven”. Whenever you feel the guilt coming back, look at the note.
2. Something bad happened and I blame myself
My partner had an accident that landed him in a coma that he never recovered from. He died more than 12 years ago and I was still struggling with guilt.
Because I could not make it better.
Because I could not wake him up.
Because I did not offer my right arm to have him back.
Because I did not offer to trade places with him.
Because maybe, if I had just tried harder…
Many people share these feelings. Sick loved ones, close ones with addictions, people who got hit by natural disasters or accidents.
If only I had not gone out that day.
If only I had known how to help.
If only I had been enough.
If only…
For many years I tried to deal with that guilt was to ask me: “who do you think you are?” Why would I think that I could have done what doctors could not? This made me feel a little better, but not much.
This year a therapist gave me a different perspective:
Guilt is a way to imagine having control of a situation in which one is helpless.
And it makes sense. The situation made me feel helpless. Powerless. Guilt implies that I could have done something different. Guilt implies a measure of control.
I had wanted to be able to do something. So my brain came up with a way to make me feel as if I *could* have done something an to feel less helpless. Accepting that achieving the thing I would have wanted most, was outside my sphere of influence, accepting this helplessness, has changed a lot for me. For three months now I have not felt guilty for not having been able to make it all good again. For me, that is a long time to not carry this.
Feeling helpless is no fun. At that time, it was probably easier for me to feel guilty than helpless. But the situation itself is long past. Time to accept the helplessness and let go of the guilt.
If you have something in your life that you wish you would have been able to change, that you still blame yourself for not magically fixing – maybe it is time to let go of that, too. We are not all powerful. We cannot fix everything.
And sometimes even the things we could influence on a good day are out of our reach on a bad day. And that is not my fault or your fault, it just is.
Exercise: Do this only if you feel stable enough to, do not trigger yourself in a situation where you already feel bad. If possible, meet with a friend to do this exercise together. Or try to remember the exercise the next time you feel guilty about something that might fit in here.
Look at a situation that makes you feel guilty. I already mentioned having sick loved ones, often mothers feel guilty for not being able to make their child healthy.
This could also be something like having gotten off lightly with COVID, while others died.
This could be getting the last ticket for a concert and seeing other fans without one.
This could be being aware of privilege.
This could be just the awareness that we have wars going on and people suffer, and you are sitting in front of a computer screen, not fearing for your life and being able to turn off the news when it gets too much.
Maybe you have something that you have been carrying around for too long already.
Ask yourself: if my friend was in my position and told me they felt guilty about it – what would you say? Would you blame them? Or would you tell them that this is not their fault?
Tell yourself, out loud: “This is/was not my fault. There is/was nothing I can/could do. I am/was helpless in this situation, and while this is hard to accept, it is/was not my fault.”