I can remember feeling guilty, after my transplant, for the burden I put on my family members and the medical personal who were responsible for my care. I believed my care was my responsibility. As I improved, the process of healing included finding ways to handle my own care. Once I took charge of my care(my responsibility), the guilt was gone. The guilt served as a catalyst for change for me.
Coaching encourages a conversation about guilty feelings to determine their authenticity and relevance. Is the guilt learned or self-inflicted? Often the feelings are without merit. If they do have merit, the conversation creates a safe place to find the cause of the guilt, face it, and change the feeling into one that is useful and empowering. If the guilty feelings have no merit, they can be dismissed completely.
A friend expressed using the 12 step program to handle guilty feelings by making amends and absolving one of the misdeed. What else can help? How do you come to terms with your feelings of guilt? Maybe we can discover empowering ways by sharing and learning.
Have a guilt free week!
1 comment:
A good summary of guilt! As stated, we can experience guilt because we have a moral standard that we hold ourself to. If we fall short of this, we feel a sense of having failed. Sometimes we need to examine how we judge ourself. Are we setting our standards on the things that are really important?
Guilt can be instilled in children. I believe that religion should stress that we all have a need to be humble, but not a need to focus on our being "unworthy". However flawed we are, these religions do best when they stress that we are made in the image of God.
We have all heard jokes about how mothers can raise their children to feel guilty. In the name of fairness, this applies to fathers as well. While we can all see the damage that physical abuse does to children, equally sad is the effect of being told - in so many words - that you are a disappointment to your parents. This can become a source of chronic feelings of guilt.
At times all of us fall short of being the person we want to be. It is so healthy to make amends to others if we can. I believe that in the Jewish faith, the most holy day of the year is Yom Kippur - the day of atonement. I understand that even secular Jews observe this holiday because of the sense of renewal it brings. Even if you can't make amends to someone you may have wronged, when you show kindness to someone, you can work toward making up for past wrongs.
We often feel uplifted by helping someone in need. Michelle referred to the common reaction of feeling that you are a burden to your family when you are very ill. I'm sure that Michelle would not have felt burdened if a loved one was ill and in need of extra support.
In fact, Michelle illustrates the point very well. She has made her struggle to survive a health crisis into an opportunity to give back to others. I hope she realizes that the sense of purpose she finds in her work reflects how others felt in her time of need.
We can all do this in our lives. As a therapist, nothing pleases me more than to see a parent, who grew up feeling she didn't measure up to her parents' expectations, being able to raise a child who is confident and free of senseless guilt.
Let's take the time to decide what is really important in our lives and do our best to live up to our beliefs. Kindness can uplift the spirit and wash clean years of guilt.
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