Most everyone has guilt, and as emotions go, it’s a pretty sucky one. Because really, who wants to feel guilty? As we’re all trying to figure out how to deal with guilt, what if we could simply wave a magic wand and make it go away?
I actually think this is possible, but we don’t need a magic wand. We just need to shift our perspective a little.
Start by looking at why you did the bad thing
We so often beat ourselves up for doing something bad. But we don’t often stop and look at why we did this thing.
Another way to put it: we need to look at why our heart (which is in charge of our feelings) and not our head (which is in charge of our rational thoughts) controlled our actions. (For more on this dynamic between head and heart, check out the key post, “Head vs. Heart: Growing a Neck.”)
Every time we do something we regret, our heart’s feelings are the cause, not our rational thinking. And this is the key in how to deal with guilt.
While understanding your heart is helpful, it’s not necessary for dealing with guilt
If you can get at the feelings that caused you to do this bad thing, that’s excellent. If that’s the case, you’re on your way to figuring out what might have triggered these feelings, or what narratives might be causing your heart to control your actions. This will help you not only relieve your guilt but control future actions.
But if the feelings that caused your misdeed are all muddled and difficult to figure out, then you’re like the rest of us. And it’s okay.
Just know that why you did the regrettable thing was based on your not-so-rational feelings that come from somewhere in your past. These feelings temporarily overpowered your judgment and thinking; understanding this fact is an important step in letting go of guilt.
The key for how to deal with guilt is self-acceptance
And here it is, the key to self-acceptance:
All of us, all the time, are doing the very best we possibly can, given where we come from and our early experiences.
The post, “The Most Important Premise of All,” looks more at this idea, but the quick synopsis is that our past interferes with our present. We are all good at heart and we always try to do the right thing, but what we were taught and what we experienced as small children gets in our way. Our early experiences completely affect what we do for the rest of our lives—unless, of course, we unpack our past and understand it so that it no longer controls us. (For a deeper dive into how this works, check out the website’s most central post, “Childhood Narratives: How They Impact Kids for a Lifetime.”)
A quick example: when I lose it and scream at my child, then immediately regret it, I have to remember that I was raised by parents who frequently screamed at me. Yes, I want to change how I parent, but that means unpacking my own past. Until then, I need to remember that, given my childhood, it’s extremely difficult to control my explosive anger.
If we accept that we are doing the best we possibly can—even though we did something regrettable—then it follows that we could not have done anything better at the moment.
If guilt is this feeling that “I did bad, and I should have done better,” there is no way we could have done better, right?
Sure, after the fact, it’s easy to come up with better ways of acting, because after the fact, our heart has chilled out and isn’t running our life. After the fact, our rational, thinking head can chime in and fool us into believing that we could have done better.
The reality is, in the moment, when we were having intense feelings, our rational mind disappeared and we acted/reacted badly.
In the end, we’re talking not just about self-acceptance here but about forgiving ourselves, too.
If we’re doing the best we can at all times while simultaneously our past is interfering with our present, then we can stop judging ourselves for a misdeed. Let go of the guilt that says we should have done better.
Hope and plan to do better in the future, but let’s stop beating ourselves up for the past.
A common narrative that both interferes with self-acceptance and promotes guilt
If you’re reading the above stuff and thinking, “That all sounds good, but it doesn’t apply to me,” you may be running into a core narrative in yourself that says something like, “What I’m doing isn’t good enough. I can always do better.”
This is a common narrative that comes from early childhood. How it got there is based on your individual story—perhaps your parents had incredibly high standards, or you had a very critical parent, or you were regularly expected to accomplish something you couldn’t actually do because you were too young.
For whatever reason, the narrative is there, and like all narratives, it creates intense emotions which overpower your rational thinking.
While you may understand that you’re doing the best you possibly can, your narrative will prevail, telling you, “Yeah, maybe I’m doing the best that I can, but I still need to do better.”
This is quite the internal conflict, and if this describes your experience, you deserve some help working through it.
An important caveat
This guilt-free perspective is not a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” to hold yourself unaccountable. Here’s what I mean.
I once explained my no-guilt theory to someone who was three weeks sober. She was feeling incredibly guilty about having had a number of relapses in the past and I was trying to encourage her to stop beating herself up. She listened to me explain how all of us were doing the best we could, given our circumstances. An hour later, she went on a serious bender.
So, what happened?
She tossed in the towel, allowing herself to say, “F*** it, I’ll just do whatever I do.” She mistook the idea of forgiving her past deeds with ditching responsibility for any future deeds.
The take away? If you only beat yourself up for the past, you don’t learn from your past. Put aside the guilt so that you can let yourself be curious about why your past has interfered with your present. By doing so, you have a better chance to do better in the future.
Related Posts
The Most Important Premise of All
An outlook that could change how you see everything–it did for me.
How to Manage Emotional Triggers in 5 Steps
Emotional triggers can revive painful childhood experiences so that we unknowingly over-react and make poor choices in the present. Here’s how to manage those triggers.
Head vs. Heart: Growing a Neck
Good mental health starts with strong communication between your head (your thinking) and your heart (your feelings). Here’s how.
5 Ways to Prevent Shame in Your Child
Shame is a toxic feeling that can radically affect your child’s self-esteem. Here’s what you can do to prevent shame from forming.
Childhood Narratives: How They Impact Kids for a Lifetime
Narratives are one of the most important things parents need to know about a child’s psychology. This post will tell you what they are and how they work.
