How to deal with the feeling of guilt?

In our lives we experience sensations of everything two type through the situations we live in. Some, as we well know, produce well-being and are pleasant to us, and those we call positive. On the other hand, the ones that make us uncomfortable and with which we can have a really bad time, the ones we call negative . The blame is located in the latter.

No one is immune from having experienced this sensation that can be so destructive . Guilt can have very deep roots because it may have been triggered, perhaps, in our early childhood. and accompany us throughout our life cycle until adulthood.

If we think about it, many of the phrases we receive in the first years of life were intended above all to control our behavior by projecting a feeling of guilt.: “what you just did is very wrong, you should be ashamed of it”. These are situations that, without a doubt, may be more or less familiar to all of us.

The feeling of guilt is very common dimensions among human beings. Therefore, it is necessary to remember that in life we ​​can adopt two types of roles: that of someone who carries a feeling of guilt throughout his life (and the consequent victimhood) or freeing ourselves from those yokes, repairing possible errors and avoiding states. chronic illnesses of unhealthy anguish and resentment.

1. Anatomy of guilt: understand what it is and how it acts

Guilt is above all an emotion. Fischer, Shaver and Carnochan (1990) define this state as that type of negative state that also includes sadness, pain, bitterness and anguish. They are internal dynamics that are not very comfortable and that in the long run can even lead us to states of clear helplessness.

Likewise, it is interesting to know that this dimension has extensive clinical and scientific documentation. In fact, in a study carried out at Vanderbilt University in the United States, it was shown that After depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and even eating disorders, there is often a feeling of guilt.

This emotion that arises after a behavior, a situation for which we believe ourselves responsible or even as a result of those projections that our parents may have directed on us in the past, impacts oneself in various ways:

Physical influences: lThe psychophysiological activation of the feeling of guilt manifests itself with chest painsstomach, pressure in the head and discomfort in the back. Emotional influences: irritability, nervousness, and it is common for us to identify it as something similar to sadness. Mental processes: self-reproaches, self-accusations and thoughts destructive of self-esteem and self-worth .

2. To deal with guilt, accept its existence but do not intensify it

Many actions we take help increase the feeling of guilt. Without even realizing it and frequently, we can generate discomfort that is as useless as it is unnecessary. No one is supposed to like being their own executioner, yet in most cases we end up being one. These mental actions are the ones that can feed our feelings of guilt to the greatest extent.

Let us therefore see what the mechanisms that feed guilt are like and how they act.

Beware of polarized thinking

One of these actions is extreme polarized thinking.. Within this vision, everything before us is either black or white, but on rare occasions we can see that there are nuances and a wide range of possibilities and circumstances. Thinking that things are good or bad, positive or negative, drastically reduces our vision and leaves us little room to maneuver. It is a form of rigidity typical of perfectionism, with a strict system of rules.

Don’t shy away from the emotion of guilt, understand it

Another is the way of coping. Coping with the feeling of guilt does not lie in stopping feeling this emotion, in eradicating it or avoiding it.. That it appears is inevitable and will appear frequently in our lives, and of course it will hurt. The meaning is to let it be felt and then consider, reflect, why it has appeared.

Your internal dialogue should not be your enemy

The last of the actions that help us increase the feeling of guilt is internal dialogue . We should be able to talk to ourselves without reproaching ourselves. When we experience the shadow of this emotion, the ideal thing is to ask ourselves: Why do I feel this way? What situation has caused me to feel guilty? Can I assume this guilt without making it bigger or undervaluing myself for it?

3. Understand, mediate and heal guilt

The feeling of guilt is an emotion that acts as a warning. It is an alarm system from which we should not flee. The ideal therefore is to reflect on what has caused it, and understand why we feel that way. It is like a learning to understand where we have to put the focus of attention in our lives to deal withs vulnerabilities.

By doing this constructive analysis we avoid suffering and discomfort that have nothing to do with guilt., but rather with our devaluation and incomprehension of ourselves. In this way we can provide a solution and understand that there are alternatives to face the situation in which we have felt guilty.

Guilt can be mediated, for example, by not having asked someone for forgiveness for our behavior. Other times, because we think that we have acted with little success, with little effort or in the wrong way. Understand therefore that there are often an error to repair allows us to deploy a mechanism of action and repair.

It is part of our responsibility to try to understand each other without falling into our own devaluation., punish ourselves or disqualify ourselves, unfairly thinking that we are bad or selfish and there is nothing to do about it. This leads us to a loop in which we waste time and self-destruct without solving anything, or taking the actions that lead to the external solution and that of our internal conflict.

Let’s learn to manage guilt in an effective, constructive and, above all, healing way.

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