Why You Shouldn’t Feel Bad About Your Feelings

You can’t help your thoughts, so don’t feel guilty

The other day I was talking to a friend who felt guilty because she didn’t want to visit her sick mother.

“I know I shouldn’t feel this way,” she said. “But my mother hardly knows whether I’m there or not, and to see her wasting away depresses me.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “I thought you visited her yesterday. And the day before.”

“I did, but I feel guilty about not wanting to.”

My friend was doing what she thought was right by visiting her mother. But she felt guilty about it because she didn’t really want to go. In my opinion, it was the action that counted. Not the feeling. Was I wrong?

I thought back to times when my feelings didn’t jive with the way I acted. Like the time I was envious of my sister-in-law because she published a book, won a Woman of the Year award and was featured in a magazine. Instead of feeling happy about her success, ugly feelings bubbled up. I was a stay-at-home Mom taking care of toddlers and collecting rejection slips for my writing. She was winning accolades, and she was also beautiful. I was envious.

But I didn’t act on those feelings. Instead, I attended her awards banquet, watched my beautiful sister-in-law glide across the stage to collect her trophy, and congratulated her.

Years have passed since that time. We are now close sisters, phoning each other to share our ups and downs. I haven’t felt envious in a long time, and I’m glad I didn’t act on those ugly feelings so many years ago.

My spouse, who has a strong guilty streak over just about anything, said to me, “You never feel guilty, do you?”

“Why should I feel guilty? I can’t help my thoughts and feelings, and I can’t change past actions,” I said.

And that’s the truth. I used to chastise myself about feeling the wrong. When I wasn’t in the mood to babysit my grandchildren, I’d think, What kind of grandmother am I? Every grandmother wants their grandchildren to come over!

If I volunteered to walk laps in the cancer walkathon and started dreading it three weeks in advance, I felt guilty about my lack of enthusiasm.

But I’ve come to a conclusion since then. I’ve decided it’s not our thoughts and feelings that count. It’s our actions. I didn’t flake out on the babysitting stint at the last minute. I didn’t blow off my promise to join the walkathon. I went ahead and did them both. And enjoyed it.

I’m not indifferent to negative feelings. I believe feelings are important because they can spill over into action. There’s a bible verse that says, “From the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

And this from Buddha: “What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.”

But every thought that flits through our mind; every resentment that pops up from our subconscious, isn’t an indication of where our heart is. It’s what we act on that reveals who we truly are deep down.

The only way to overcome negative thoughts and feelings is to refuse to act on them.

We shouldn’t feel guilty about how we feel because we can’t help our thoughts. They come unbidden, tricking us into believing we are bad people for thinking them. Just like we can’t will ourselves to stop blinking and breathing, we can’t stop the rush of thoughts that bombard us every minute.

Michael Stein, PsyD, says the problem is that we take our mind so seriously. Thoughts are not facts.

“What is important is how you treat your mind. If you take everything it says seriously, give it too much respect, and put too much trust in your mind, that is a recipe for an anxiety disorder. There is a healthier way to approach your mind: don’t take it so seriously. Don’t believe everything it says. Don’t treat your mind as a trustworthy source of information, especially about the things that make you anxious.” (Michael Stein, PsyD in “Thoughts are Just Thoughts: “How to Stop Worshiping Your Anxious Mind.”)

We aren’t in control of our thoughts and we shouldn’t let them fake us out.

I used to have panic attacks when I was younger. I would be driving down the highway or sitting in church when overwhelming, inexplicable fear would averwhelm me. There was no reason for it. Out of the blue, my body responded as if I were being chased by a bear. I would have to pull to the shoulder of the road or get out of church.

Soon I began dreading the feeling so much that I stopped doing things that might trigger it. My life was severely curtailed. Then I read a book called Hope and Help for Your Nerves, by Dr. Claire Weekes. She explained in the book that people who suffered panic attacks were faked out by their feelings. Their bodies were responding to something that wasn’t real.

But if we refuse to let fake feelings influence our actions, we can overcome them. Dr. Weekes recommended accepting our feelings rather than fighting them. If we observed the panic attack in a detached manner, we could float through it. Eventually we would lose the fear and the panic attacks would recede. When we stopped fearing them, they would lose their power over us.

My friend who dreaded visiting her mother was taking a natural, human feeling too seriously. She believed the feeling represented who she really was. But in reality, she was the loving daughter who overcame those feelings and visited her mother anyway.

I’m not a jealous, envious person because I felt a few brief stabs of envy. Those feelings were normal and human. By not acting on them; by choosing a better way, I got over those feelings.

The feelings we feed are the ones that expand and grow. If we move in a certain direction, our thoughts and feelings fall in line with our actions. In Bob Dylan’s words, “Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.”

We shouldn’t feel guilty about thoughts and feelings we can’t control. Instead, we have the ability to analyze them in a detached, interested way. Then we can ignore them and move on. By not giving our feelings too much power, we empower ourselves to be the people we want to be.