Dealing with toxic guilt for a brighter future
Holding on to guilt will only land you in a world of pain. Let go of your toxic guilt in order to build a brighter future.
by: E.B. Johnson
When bad things happen in our lives, we can internalize the experience to create and harbor a toxic sense of guilt that eats away at our happiness. We fill ourselves with shame and anxiety, and lash out at the world and sabotage the future we’re building for ourselves. In order to find happiness, we have to let go of this guilt and find more effective ways to live in peace with who we are and where we’ve come from.
Has life signaled to you that it’s time to let go of the guilt? You don’t have to hold on to your mistakes (or the mistakes of others) forever. You can free yourself from the shame and find better ways to become the person you were always meant to be. In order to do that, though, you must accept where you’re at, where you want to go, and the positive commitment and action it takes to get there.
Toxic guilt makes it hard to thrive.
The hardships in our life have a way of leaving an imprint on us that impacts us in the deepest ways, and in the deepest places. Among these remains, toxic guilt does the most to undermine our happiness, which makes it hard to thrive in a life that is designed and defined on our own terms. We have to let go of this guilt in order to become the people we were always meant to become, but this means releasing the past and all the pain that led us here.
Guilt is incredibly toxic and destroys our sense of self and purpose. Whether you hold on to guilt related to your own mistakes — or you’ve wrongfully internalized the guilt of someone else’s wrongdoings — it eats away at your self-esteem and enables to establish harmful patterns that reinforce the worst beliefs you hold within.
Letting go of this guilt requires us to dig deep, tapping into a well of self-acceptance that we’ve perhaps never experienced before. The process can be uncomfortable, but it’s a beautiful one too. By forgiving yourself and cutting ties with your past, you can rebuild your relationships and separate yourself from the shame that’s corrupting your joy so dramatically. It’s time to extract yourself from the shadows and reward yourself for thriving authentically.
What happens when you can’t let the guilt go.
Guilt sits in our bellies like a poison, seeping through us so slowly that we don’t notice the pain until it’s too late. It corrodes our relationships, our self-esteem; it can even prevent us from tapping into important opportunities. When you don’t let the guilt go, it destroys you.
Self sabotage
One of the most toxic ways in which our guilt destroys us is the act of self-sabotage. Both consciously and unconsciously, we engage in acts of total self-destruction because of unaddressed guilt. This guilt tells us that we aren’t worthy, or that we’ll never be “whole” — so we engage in behaviors meant to reaffirm those beliefs through negative feedback. Think toxic relationships and lashing out and pushing away others before they get the chance to see you for who you are.
Harmful patterns
We form a number of patterns throughout our lives, and these range everywhere from coping patterns to communication patterns and beyond. Some of these patterns are picked up in childhood, or carried over from poignant experiences that left a deep mark on us. Guilt, however, can also cause us to engage in a number of harmful or toxic patterns; as we attempt to punish ourselves for all the darkness we’ve internalized along the way.
Sleep disruptions
Guilt doesn’t just disrupt our mental states, it can disrupt our physical states too. Dealing with intense feelings of guilt can even lead to sleep disruptions, such as struggling to stay asleep or to fall asleep. Over time, this causes us to become exhausted — which can wear down our immune system and even our cognitive function. Getting enough sleep (believe it or not) is a big part of battling negative emotions like guilt.
Physical erosion
Along with sleep disruptions, other physical issues are common when it comes to dealing with toxic guilt. Any major negative emotion usually results in a great deal of stress, which takes its toll on our hearts and our brains. This is thanks to the increased production of cortisol, a stress hormone which feeds our panicked, anxious flight-or-flight responses. The more stressed you are, the higher your cortisol becomes. This (in turn) can lead to increased risk of heart attack, headaches, muscle pain, and more.
Avoiding opportunity
Holding on to guilt destroys our self-esteem, which manifests differently in different people. For some, this decreased self-esteem causes them to settle for toxic environments and even more toxic people. It’s a form of self-punishment, and along those same lines there is also a complete denial and avoidance of opportunity. Believing you aren’t “good enough” you may shut doors before they even have a chance to open for you.
Resentment and contempt
Perhaps the most common side-effect of unresolved toxic guilt is the increase in resentment and self-contempt. Holding on to your mistakes (and the mistakes of others) as anything more than a lesson is toxic. The more you dwell on those past mistakes, the more you will come to resent yourself for making them, or those around you for allowing them to happen. It’s no way to live and undermines true happiness and honest communication.
Corrupted relationships
Our relationships are important, but they can become corrupted and disfigured by the guilt that shapes them. Our guilt forces us to self-sabotage, and this often happens by pushing others away. When things implode, we are able to blame ourselves and feed the guilt the negative feedback it craves. This is because guilt exists on the back of negative beliefs, and we often reinforce those through toxic and harmful relationships.
The best ways to rid yourself of toxic guilt once and for all.
Ridding yourself of guilt is possible, but it’s not a process that happens magically overnight. There are no miracle fixes here. You have to commit to changing who you are and commit to taking action in the name of a new perspective. It’s worth the reward, however, when you find yourself standing guilt free on the other side of the finish line.
1. Embrace the act of acceptance
Getting rid of our toxic guilt allows us to create a plan for moving forward, and healthier pathways to happiness. In order to get this forward momentum working in our favor, though, we have to first look around and take full stock of where we are. Without acceptance, we can’t create effective plans of action that truly address our root issues and the root causes of our toxic guilt.
Find some time and space to process and consider your guilt. Question it, and question the emotions that rise with it. Is this guilt something that’s rooted in your past? Does it stem from painful events that involved your mistakes? Did it involve the mistakes of others?
It’s important to look at these instances from a detached and logical place. Put the responsibility where it belongs. We all make mistakes, but we are not responsible for the mistakes of other people. All we can do is learn from the missteps and strive to do better in the future. If all you do in this life is the best that you truly can — that is often enough to thrive and establish a life you can be proud of.
2. Actively release the past
So much of the toxic guilt that haunts us is based on experiences, emotions, and events in our past. Whether in distant childhood or a recent relationship, these specters of yesterday make it hard for us to move on, and can make it even harder to embrace our self-worth. We have to actively release the past if we to hold any hope of creating a better future. Once we do that, happiness opens up before us.
Find a meditative practice that helps you get in touch with your past, and the moments and experiences that shaped you in it. You can journal about pivotal moments, try some slow, contemplative yoga, write, draw, stretch. Use anything that helps you look back and process the moments that filled you with guilt.
It can also be helpful to reach out to loved ones you trust, or a mental health expert than can help you navigate some of the more challenging emotions and memories safely. The past does not define us. It’s simply a reference point to figure out where we want to go, and track where we’ve come from. We can hold on to its lessons without giving it power over our person. To do this, we must detach ourselves however and accept our right to move on.
3. Forgive, forgive, forgive
How much time have you spent forgiving yourself for the past? How much time have you spent forgiving others? Forgiveness is such a powerful part of becoming who we were meant to be. It allows us to process and detach emotionally without burying ourselves away, and it allows us to accept things without making excuses for them. To forgive yourself is to say to the guilt, “You don’t have a place here anymore. I’m in charge of my life and my feelings.”
Consciously forgive yourself for the things you got wrong. Share the compassion you would show others with yourself. Be as gentle and understanding with who you were then as you would be with a child. Acknowledge what went wrong, hug yourself, and let it go. Holding on only hurts you in the long-run.
No one is capable of making all the right decisions all the time. No one is perfect, and no one knows your life better than you do. Accept your humanity. Embrace it. Forgive yourself in all the broken and bent places that you feel yourself falling short. Forgive the broken people who hurt you, and the inner child that was always doing the best they could with what they had been handed. Forgiving yourself is release — release of guilt and release of all the things that no longer suit you.
4. Reward yourself for thriving
Does your guilt get in the way of your enjoyment? Do you struggle to fully engage in your life experiences, because you’re constantly suffering at the hands of your toxic guilt? Overcoming this is tricky, and a process which usually requires a few creative approaches. One of the most superior approaches is rewarding yourself for thriving, or giving you something to look forward to.
Build up the hope and excitement in your life again so you can learn to enjoy it. Reward yourself for every single positive stride you make — no matter how small. Tell yourself that there’s a special treat waiting for you on the other side of the next hurdle. Inspire yourself by brightening up your own future.
Getting caught up in the guilt, we often lose sight of all the hundreds of little celebrations we should be engaging in. Life is hard and getting past the guilt and the shame of it all can be even harder. Gift yourself the ability to get excited again, so you can shed that person and the life that no longer exists anymore. Tap back into exhilaration by rewarding yourself for growing.
5. Separate yourself from the shame
There’s this storyline that many of us were raised with, and it usually goes something like this: If you screw up, you’re a bad person. If you don’t screw up, you’re a good person. The problem here, though, is that life isn’t that absolute. There is so much gray area when it comes to who we are and the decisions we make in our life. You need to understand that you are not entirely defined by your past. You alone make or break who you are.
Separate yourself from all the guilt and the shame. These two negative emotions can point us in the direction of important lessons, but they are no place to dwell. You can change the course of your life, and you can become someone who is completely unrecognizable.
Divide from who you were then. Hang them up in a shadow-box on the wall so you never forget where you came from, but now you can put on an entirely different coat. If you’re ready to be better — then be better. Separate who you want to be from who you were, and work every day (consciously and mindfully) to be the person you need to become in order to be happy and fulfilled.
Putting it all together…
Toxic guilt erodes our relationships and undermines our overall happiness and wellbeing. The longer we hold on to this guilt, the more detached we become from our sense of self-worth and the vision we have for our futures. We have to embrace our guilt in order to resolve it and take action in the name of letting go and moving on.
Embrace the art of complete acceptance and begin to understand the battle you and your guilt are fighting. Until you acknowledge where you’re at, you can’t effectively move forward in the right direction. Get active about letting go of your past and know that you have a right to live a future that’s aligned to who you are. Pasts serve as lessons, they have no right to dwell in our futures. Forgive yourself and forgive the person that you were, so you can become the person you were meant to be. Reward yourself for thriving and give yourself an incentive for getting better and letting go. Separate yourself from your shame and know that you are not the sum of your past. You can choose to be different right now in this moment, and you can start letting go of the guilt today.
