Break Free From Guilt: The Surprising Secret To Letting Go

What does guilt feel like?

Ever feel like crawling out of your skin from the ick of guilt?

It’s a feeling you may know all too well. You’re out there, living your life, minding your own business, when BAM, you’re reminded of something you said or did that makes you want to just crawl into a hole and never come out.

And then the spiral begins.

“Why did I do that?” ”How will people judge me for this?” “Does this mean that I’m a bad person?”

Now, not only do you want to crawl into a hole, you feel like you could die in it too because you’re totally crippled by anxiety and guilt.

In this post, I'm here to help you learn how to get to the root of your feelings of guilt so that you can finally feel cool as a cucumber.

What does it mean to feel guilty?

What even is guilt? Guilt is that awful, icky emotion that we experience when we do things that we fear are bad or wrong. It’s kind of like when you ask your phone for directions and then think, “I know better than a daft computer!” and you start going wherever the hell you want. But then Siri’s like, “Hey dumb dumb, I said go straight! Why’d you go down this stupid street? Turn right!” because she wants you to get back on course.

Guilt is there to tell you that your actions are out of line with your morals or values and it wants to bring you back on track. Sometimes it’s for reasons that are totally valid and relatable, sometimes it’s for reasons that are kinda weird and don’t make total sense.

Now, this might sound weird, but even though guilt can feel really f*#@!ng terrible, it isn’t actually a bad feeling. Don’t get me wrong, it feels bad, but like all feelings, guilt serves a purpose. It’s there to help us remember not to make the same mistake twice…or 3 times…or maybe 6. It’s not like I would know!

You could think about it like your physical pain receptors: If you put your hand on a hot stove, it’s going to hurt, which (hopefully) discourages you from doing it again. You think, “Hmmm, that wasn’t fun. I need to rethink my relationship with hot stoves”. Guilt works in a similar way, just on an emotional level.

Because feeling f*#@!ng terrible sucks, guilt is there to teach us not to do things that threaten or hurt our relationships or our social standing. It’s like when you eat most of your kids’ Halloween candy and then see their sad little faces and lie to them and tell them that it was probably a rat that got into the house that loves candy, and it’s hiding it away in its little rat nest, and then you feel terrible, so tell yourself, “I need to do better”…that’s guilt. We care about their little fee fees and therefore we feel bad for hurting them.

Why is some guilt hard to shake?

Like a lot of feelings, the intensity of guilt tends to fade with time. In most cases, we feel really bad about something we did shortly after doing it, but we make peace with the guilt by learning from the experience. In our heads, most of the time this sounds like,

Guilt: “You did something bad!”

You: “Yeah, I did, and I’ve learned from it and am trying not to do it again”

But we’re not really here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about that guilt that just won’t quit. That guilt that hangs on like a leech that just won’t f*#@!ng let go! And you want it to let go, and frankly, we want it to let go too!

So if you want guilt to just chill for once in its miserable life, we need to go a little deeper. You need to understand your beliefs about good and bad, and how this relates to fears you have around rejection. Like literally all other emotions, guilt comes from how we see or understand things. If you believe something is wrong or bad to do, you’re likely to feel guilt when you do it. On the other hand, if you perceive something as somehow positive, you’re pretty much guaranteed not to feel guilty.

Sex and guilt: an example

Sex is the perfect example of this. If you were raised in a religious household and learned that “doing the nasty” outside of marriage makes God feel like he just had to put his dog down, there’s a good chance that you’re feeling super guilty if you happen to get lucky. This guilt is often mixed with fear because you not only did something considered bad, you know that other people believe it's bad and can judge the shit out of you for it. And that judgment is scary because we do not want to be rejected and be condemned to hell. That fear is some basic animal instinct shit, because we are pack animals at the end of the day, and our survival once depended on belonging to the group. This is why guilt can ring such strong emotional alarm bells for us.

Guilt is a matter of perspective

How you see things goes hand in hand with how you feel, so if you want to manage a feeling like guilt, you need to look at how your beliefs contribute to it. Part of the process of doing that can involve unpacking how you came to hold the perspective you have.

This is where I’ll invite you to bust out your journal, grab your favourite pen, and pick something you have felt guilty about. It could literally be anything. Now answer the question:

“How did I learn that thing is wrong or bad?”

As best you can, flesh out the people and societal rules that have contributed to the formation of this perspective.

Now, the kind of guilt that causes seemingly endless torture is usually not just about the fact that you see something you've done as wrong - it’s about the meaning we make of having done that thing. What I mean is that the clincher tends to be what your actions say about the kind of person you are. As in, “Does having done this bad thing make me a bad person?”

Let’s go back to our sex example, and not just because I have a one track mind! So let’s say you have a hot and heavy sexcapade with another person you find hot, hot, hot. You don’t have any stupid shame because of how you were raised, and so you’re overall pretty pleased with yourself. If you were to ask yourself, “What does the fact that I did this say about me as a person?”, chances are you’d say, “It says I rule.”; “It says I’m attractive, desirable”; “It says I’m down for a good time”. All good things.

Now, on the other hand, let’s say it was drilled into your head that premarital sex is demon behaviour. People who carry on like that are sinners, and sinners go to Hell, and Hell suuuuucks. It’s hot and it smells like egg farts. You are a bad person. And bad people get kicked out of the group.

If you really believe that, or if you struggle to totally discount and disbelieve that idea, it’s going to be hard to not struggle with the kind of guilt that just won’t quit.

How to stop feeling guilty all the time

This may not be a popular opinion with everybody, but we believe that the meanings and abstract consequences that we associate with stuff are totally subjective. There’s no objective truth here, it’s pretty much all a matter of subjectivity. I like to think of these perspectives in terms of societal ideals and norms. As in, the standards that our society sets to define our value and worth, and whether we belong or ought to be excluded.

For example, we have the societal story that says that consensual sex between two individuals who are DTF is a great way to spend a Tuesday afternoon, versus the story that says that those two people are naughty biscotti who ought to be dipped in the hot, stinky rivers of Hell. Neither is objectively true, but one lends itself to making people feel really bad, while the other probably has the opposite effect.

Now it’s time to pick up that journal again and do a little reflecting on how you came to see that particular consequence for the thing you feel guilty about.

Ask yourself, “What does this story say about people who do the thing I feel guilty about?”, and “How does this explain my feelings about the thing I did?”, or simply, “How does this explain my guilt?”

Once you have a solid understanding of how you came upon the perspective that informs your stubborn feelings of guilt, and you understand that the story is both arbitrary and totally subjective, it’s time to go shopping! But before you get carried away and blow your whole paycheck on a baller Amazon order, you need to know what we’re shopping for. You are in the market for a new story. One that doesn’t make you feel like crap for dumb reasons.

You need a perspective that’s a little bit fairer and more considerate of the human condition, not one that holds you to unrealistic or totally unnecessary standards. Here’s where you get to be creative. For one last time, drag out that journal and reflect on the question, “How do I want to see this issue, and what are fair consequences for having done the thing I feel guilty about?”

Here’s a personal example: I’ve done plenty of things while stumbling my way through life that I regret deeply. I have acted against my ethical beliefs and have suffered with the bitter taste of guilt as a result. However, the story that I choose to listen to says that everybody screws up, and that learning from those mistakes is what really matters.

I generally don’t believe in the idea of good or bad people, and I believe that what counts is trying my best and learning from my mistakes. I want other people to like and accept me, and see me as valuable (because I’m human after all), but I also know that I can’t control how other people judge me, and if they think I suck, then so be it (yes it stings, but I can handle that feeling without it turning into a belief about myself).

Haters don’t define me or my worth, even if I experience fear that they do. I can’t change my past, but I can choose how I behave in the future. All of these principles are part of my belief system, and they hit the sweet spot between taking responsibility for my mistakes and allowing me to sleep at night without crippling anxiety over whether or not I’m a horrible person who deserves to be marooned on an island in the middle of the ocean.

Change your relationship to guilt

You’ve got enough bullshit to deal with in life. You don’t need unfair and unnecessary guilt making your life even worse. And we want to help you with that. Now, an important reminder here is that shifting your relationship with guilt takes practice! This isn't about expecting guilt to somehow vanish from your life. It’s about shifting how you respond to it. It's normal to feel guilty and worry that you’re a bad person. Your evolutionary human survival instincts are just trying to get you to control your behaviour so that you’re not ousted by your people.

What you need to do is take a beat after feeling it and question whether or not the guilt you feel is truly fair and based on a valid perspective that you agree with. From there, question whether you’re really doing anything wrong to deserve being branded as a bad person.

To help you shift your relationship with guilt, here’s a link to a totally free exercise to help you dial back the guilt and turn up the chill vibes.

Why Understanding Context is the Key for Effective Therapy

Do you ever have the feeling that something isn’t right in your life, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is?  Or maybe you know very well how things aren’t working, but you struggle to see why?

When people first sit down to with us to talk about the challenges they’re facing, it’s not uncommon for them to say, “I feel this way for no reason”, or “I don’t know why I feel this way…I just do”.  When you feel stuck and are struggling to make sense of why that is, talking with a counsellor who can help you see the bigger picture can make a world of difference.

Why Context is Crucial

Reasons are important.  For better or for worse, how we make sense of the problems we face directly informs how we deal with them.

Examples of this are clear throughout human history.  Just look how far we’ve come in the field of medicine!  For instance, have you ever heard of bloodletting (apologies to our squeamish readers)?  This was a practice used over several thousand years to treat illnesses, which were thought to be caused by people having too much blood in their bodies.  When people got sick, medical professionals would remove blood in attempts to restore equilibrium and good health.

If you’re alive in 2017 and have ever seen a doctor, you know that bloodletting is not considered a standard (or even remotely appropriate) practice.  Instead, we treat illnesses with things like antibiotics, probiotics, vitamins, immune boosters, and specially developed interventions that directly target the problems our bodies face.  Because we know more about the context surrounding particular ailments than we did 3000 years ago, we can address them more effectively in context-specific ways.

Why the Big Picture Can Be Hard to See

That’s all fine and good when it comes to issues around our physical health, but what about the kinds of problems people bring to counsellors like us?  These are often issues that have more to do with emotions and experiences than the nuts and bolts mechanics of our bodies.

As social beings, the popular ideas of our societies and cultures inevitably make their way into our thought processes and lead us to think certain things about how we respond to our experiences.  Here’s an example of how we see that in our work as Victoria BC counsellors:

After her health declined significantly over the course of several months, Sam’s mother was diagnosed with both cancer and an auto-immune disease.  Sam found this profoundly upsetting, and put forth all the effort he could muster to support and care for his mom, as well as his father and sister who were also struggling with these developments.  The weight of the situation was tremendous for Sam, and he experienced a decline in his appetite, more frequent moments of irritability with his partner, and wakefulness at night when he was trying to sleep.  In counselling, he lamented that although this was the most difficult period he and his family have ever faced, these feelings were out of character for him, as he’s usually a happy and carefree person who rarely feels upset when the going gets tough.  Coming in to counselling, Sam had the idea that his despair was unacceptable and invalid, which added another layer of distress to his situation.

Because no one lives outside the influence of culture, we have to consider how ideas about “appropriate” experiences and expressions of emotion inform someone like Sam’s understanding of their responses to what they’re dealing with.

Ideas that suggest “being strong” means not feeling profoundly upset when hardship strikes (or not showing that we’re upset when we are), or that we should just be able to “carry on like normal” can lead us to believe that there’s something wrong with how we’re feeling.

This places the emphasis on “fixing” our emotions rather than exploring what we need within the situation we’re dealing with.  By doing this, the context surrounding our distress is made illegitimate and we’re left scratching our heads as to why we’re experiencing things this way.

The Cost of Easy Answers and Quick Fixes

Simple, individualistic explanations for why we struggle can be both appealing and troublesome.  It can be easy to think about the issues people bring to counsellors, like feeling unhappy or experiencing a lot of worry, as problems of the mind.  Period.  Just like with Sam’s situation above, this leads us to see our responses to the adversity we face (like our emotions) as the parts that need fixing.  We believe there’s more to it than that.

There’s a sea of information on the internet about how to address so-called problems of the mind, and more often than not that’s where people begin their journey of trying to make things better.  “Strategies to not feel anxious” or “ways of not feeling depressed” can be really helpful in some practical ways, but they may not address the reasons behind the feelings you’re experiencing.  In short, they look at the small picture – the emotion or behaviour – but not the bigger web of relationships between the emotion or behaviour and other important contextual factors.

Focusing on the small picture, and the small picture alone, can lead you to feeling more upset, frustrated, and discouraged that things aren’t improving despite your best efforts.

Focusing on Context Makes for More Effective Therapy

The field of psychotherapy has a long history of trying to get to the bottom of things as simply as possible.  Over the decades, this has involved reducing the reasons for the problems we experience to singular origins.  For example, someone might say they struggle with confidence because their parents never encouraged them enough, or they feel unhappy because their self-talk is negative.  Period.

While it’s nice to have simple and straightforward answers to things, perspectives like these leave out more aspects of your experience than they actually take into consideration. They may be relevant pieces of the puzzle, but they probably don't account for the whole picture.

When people come to us, we find it really helpful to not just focus on their feelings, behaviours, or pain, but to expand the scope and explore their place in the tangible world they live in.  We invite people to get out of their heads and into the broader realm of their experiences.  One way we do this is by asking questions that go beyond your thought processes and feelings.  You can read more about that here.

This is a good time to revisit Sam.  If we were using a more traditional, less contextually-focused approach to our work, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, we might guide him toward monitoring his thoughts and practicing private interventions when he notices himself feeling low or anxious.  That would, in all likelihood, be helpful to some degree, but may also fall short at addressing other important aspects of Sam's situation.

A more contextually-focused approach, like Response-Based Practice, allows us to help in even more tangible ways.  Here’s an example of what that might look like with Sam:

• Asking Sam questions about how he’s managing the complex situation he and his family are facing:

  • “What do you worry about the most throughout the day: your mom’s health or your own responses to the situation?”

  • “What’s more stressful: not knowing whether your mom will be ok or trying to ‘hold it together’ for her, your dad, and your sister?”

  • “Who would you worry about the most if they were to know that this has been so hard for you to deal with?”

  • “Who do you imagine would worry most about you if they knew how much you were struggling?”

-Questions like these can shed light on Sam’s awareness of the social dynamics between himself and the others involved, and how he’s navigating those factors.

• Asking Sam questions about the meaning behind his emotional responses:

  • “If your despair could speak for itself, what would it say about what your mom, dad, and sister mean to you?"

  • “What do your worries and fears say about the care you have for each person in your family?”

  • “Who in your life would be most concerned if you weren’t feeling much of anything about the situation at hand?  Why would that be cause for concern?"

-Questions like these can clarify Sam’s values and show how the feelings he’s concerned about are expressions of love or care.

• Offering questions that help identify Sam’s needs or longings behind his responses:

  • “If you could absolutely trust that someone in your life would be ok if they knew how hard things were for you right now, who would you want that to be?”

  • “How much pressure would be released if you knew you didn’t have to hide the extent to which you’re struggling on top of the worry about your mom?”

  • “What do you like most about being a support to the people you care about? Who in your life do you think would be most grateful for the opportunity to support you at this time? How would you let them know you value that support?”

-Questions like these can help reveal practical solutions that can actually make a tangible difference for Sam’s wellbeing.

Our hunch is that a conversation like this would help Sam go out on a limb and recruit more support for himself, thereby reducing the strain he feels from having to “be strong” in such an understandably difficult time.

Using Questions to Better Understand the Context Around Your Own Problems

We hope this gives you an idea of how response-based, context-focused questions can help draw your attention to pieces of the big picture that are totally relevant in understanding your struggle, but which are also often left unexplored.

You can use questions like these on your own to shed light on the big picture of struggles you face:

• When did you first notice that things took/were taking a downward turn?  What was different between this time and before things got bad?

• Who noticed that things took a turn for you in this way?  What was their response like?  Did their response help or did things get worse for you after?

• Is there anyone you’ve been careful to keep out of the loop regarding how you’re doing?  Why is that?  What difference does self-censorship around certain people make for how you’re doing?

• Who is most worried about you and how do they let you know?  What difference does their concern make in terms of how you’re doing?

• If you could imagine removing or adding certain “key ingredients” (contextual factors) to make things better, what would those be?  What difference do you imagine that making?

Are there any particular ways that you use to see the bigger picture of what you or others are dealing with?

If you think it could be helpful having these kinds of conversations, feel free to drop us a line.