Guilt Trip: How to Effectively Deal with Guilt
Making a decision is hard enough. Having the wrench of guilt thrown into your machinery while you’re making a decision is even worse. Many times, were not even aware of the guilt that we carry, and it operates beneath our consciousness and controls our thoughts, feelings and decision-making skills. When we indulge in our guilt, we are generally not making the right decisions for us, or what’s in our best interest as individuals.When we try to adhere to other people’s desires of us, whether it’s family, friends, or our significant other, we sometimes get lost in trying to both please them and ourselves. The friction that’s created is where guilt lies. Guilt is more about “should” or “have to,” rather than “wanting to.”Guilt is corrosive.
When we let it fester, it eats us up inside. It stops our better judgment of how best to live our own lives. I think guilt is more related to people pleasing, and when we: the people pleasing, we lose our own voice.What we call ‘guilt’ is usually representative of a blade within us, between pleasing some outside person or entity and ourselves. The more we can learn to tune into what we really want, the more will find happiness, contentment and confidence. We’re certainly not going to find those things if we endlessly tried to attend to or appease others, or try to do their agenda. Ultimately, will fail, and fall victim to addictive people pleasing.Ask yourself: “what is it that I really want, if I can cut away trying to always please others?”.
if you didn’t have to deal with guilt, what would your certain outcome or decision actually be? Would it looked different than how you’re used to doing it? Are you prepared for that outcome?If we actually take the risk of listening to ourselves and what we truly want, and not others, what are the risks? usually, there is fear or panic about letting others down, or doing the opposite of what others want from us. When we grow up, we often develop guilt from interacting with our parents. They usually have a certain agenda for us, and we usually just learned to absorb it. As kids, we never really considered doing things our own way, or if we did, it was usually in a defiant or flippant way.I think the first way to successfully deal with guilt is to start to recognize what it is that you actually want.
What would your relationship look like if you really wanted it to be free of guilt? Would your friendships change? would you end up dropping friends who you didn’t feel guilty around?On the other end, sometimes guilt is flared up by others manipulative tendencies. Manipulation and guilt are bedfellows. Where there is manipulation, there’s often guilt. if you’re feeling manipulated by someone close, it’s important to start to understand that dynamic in your relationship, and start to address it head-on. If you allow yourself to be manipulated, the end product will probably be guilt. And guilt is extremely corrosive to the soul.
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