Do You Feel Guilty if You … ?

Or if guilty if you don’t?

Guilt must be the most useless emotion that you can feel. Guilt always relates to the past because it’s impossible to feel guilty in the future or else you wouldn’t do what you might potentially feel guilty about. And as you can’t change the past, what’s the point of feeling guilt?

If there is something that you can do differently in the future because you feel guilty, crack on. I’m all in favour of that, but does feeling guilty make you feel any better?

Maybe you imagine that because you feel guilty, you must be a nice person? Because if you were any kind of sociopath, you wouldn’t feel guilty, wouldn’t you?

Or maybe you think that feeling guilty stops you from being guilty?

There are as many reasons to feel guilty as raindrops on roses.

Romantic guilt

Maybe you think your romantic partner cares more about you than you do about them?

This kind of guilt is insidious. You may not even feel it creeping up on you, but if you’ve snapped at your partner for the fourth time today for hanging around you or for just not being what you want, you will feel guilty.

And then you might try to make it up to them, but that doesn’t feel authentic, so you feel worse. If this is the case, this type of guilt might be doing you a favour and signalling that it’s time to pull the cord.

Parental guilt

Now this one is a humdinger. It can take many forms, and they’re all crap.

You might feel guilty because you work. Because you don’t work. Because you give your child oven-ready meals and too many sweets. Because you’ve banned sweets.

And on and on.

Parental guilt seems to arrive with the baby. Maybe you feel bad when you go to bed because you’ve not been the parent you want to be, and you think about the times you raised your voice that day or wouldn’t play with your child because you were busy.

But this type of guilt is because you have an idea about who or what you think you should be, and you’re not measuring up to your ideal.

And the only way around this guilt is to be the best parent you can be and do your best to stop beating yourself up when you fall short.

Adult child guilt

This is another doozy. It doesn’t matter what kind of parent you had; whether they were the best or they left you alone when they went raving, you’re bound to have some guilt about parents as they get older.

Maybe you’ve moved away and hardly see them?

Your parents might try and lay guilt on you about visiting them? They shroud you in should’s.

But remember, the feeling of guilt you have can only come from you. Someone else might do their best to give you reasons they think you should feel guilty, but the emotion can only come from your thoughts about yourself and your actions.

If you don’t get on with your parents or you don’t want to see them, who am I to persuade you?

But if you’re holding on to old hurts and resentments, these will, ironically, add to your feeling of guilt because even if you think you’re justified in thinking the way you do, and no one needs to justify the way they feel, you’ll still imagine that you ought to act differently.

You’ll feel guilty because you don’t want to see them or don’t like them. You’ll assume guilt because you aren’t acting as you believe you should.

Assuming guilt

Assuming guilt is a tricky business. You might feel bad about things that are not your fault simply because you believe you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes this guilt can be crippling, making you unable to act or to think clearly.

To escape from the weight of guilt you unconsciously take on, it’s important to recognise when you’re assuming guilt for something that isn’t your responsibility.

You aren’t responsible for other people’s feelings. Even if someone tells you that it’s your fault that they feel the way they do, this isn’t true. They’re experiencing their own thoughts about you and your actions and this is out of your control.

And you don’t have to feel guilt on someone else’s behalf. If something happens to someone you love, you don’t have to assume guilt because they suffered. This type of guilt often occurs when someone survives war or a catastrophic event.

Survivor guilt

Survivor guilt is when someone feels guilty because they survived a traumatic event when others didn’t.

I once had a client who had been involved in a robbery as a child when he and his family lived in South Africa. His sister had been raped multiple times while he was forced to watch. His sister, he said, had recovered well and was now happily married, living in the UK.

When he told me his story, which took place twenty years before, he became visibly upset. “I’m luckier than some’ he said, ‘some people have to go through this kind of thing every day.’

‘But you are’, I pointed out. This poor man suffered his memories every day, and the worst part, he said, was the guilt he felt that he hadn’t been able to stop the attack.

This man’s guilt was toxic and eating away at every part of his life. As he let go of guilt, he could move away from feeling stuck in the past. Guilt had kept him trapped in reliving the memory as he felt that he was being disloyal and irresponsible if he didn’t keep the memory alive.

And guilty thoughts breed even more guilty thoughts.

Guilt breeds faster than rabbits

If you start to feel guilty about anything at all, before long, you’re feeling guilty about everything.

You feel guilty when things don’t go right, even if it rained on the day of the family bbq or because your child didn’t pass an exam.

You feel responsible for everyone’s feelings and health.

You start to say sorry at the start of every sentence.

But who put you in charge of humanity?

Letting go of guilty feelings isn’t evading responsibility; everyone needs to take responsibility for their own actions but not for everybody else’s actions.

If you feel that you haven’t acted in the most ethical or kindest way, apologise and move on. If there is any point to guilt at all, it’s that you don’t make the same mistake again and again.,

As the stoic Seneca said, There is no guilt so great that guilt cannot be removed by atonement.’

And let go of guilt.