The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - When Guilt is Good... and When it's Not

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

If you've done something wrong, feelings of guilt can prompt us to apologise, make amends and change our ways. But many of us also feel guilty with little cause. We may think we're bad parents, lazy or incompetent workers, or unreliable partners - all without much evidence that we've done anything wrong.Life coach Valorie Burton (author of Let Go Of The Guilt: Stop Beating Yourself Up And Take Back Your Joy) felt guilty for combining her career with raising a family - until she started examining the values and assumptions that underpinned these draining feelings. She shares the strategies she developed to separate 'true' guilt from 'false' guilt with Dr Laurie Santos. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. is usually pretty long. But if I actually put down everything I wanted to get done, it would probably sound something like this. Meditate for 10 minutes. Go to a yoga class. Prep for my happiness course. Bring the car in for an oil change. Think about some cool new guests for the podcast. Don't get behind on that inbox. Get in some quality time with my husband. Make time to have more fun. Get eight hours of sleep. And so on. Now, when I think about it rationally, I realize it's literally impossible to get all those things done in a single day. But no matter how much I do,

I constantly feel bad about how much I didn't do. And that is the awful, yucky, not good enough feeling that we'll be digging into today. Because in this episode, in our season on enough feeling that we'll be digging into today. Because in this episode, in our season on difficult emotions, we're going to examine guilt. I think guilt showed up in a lot of ways for me that I wasn't even noticing as guilt. But on one particular morning when my son was in kindergarten, I think it was just kind of the epitome of guilt taking over. This is Valerie Burton. She's the author of Let Go of the Guilt,

Stop Beating Yourself Up and Take Back Your Joy. She hit her rock bottom with guilt over a bowl of cereal. We were getting ready and my son always wants just some cereal. He wants dry cereal and a cup of milk, which for me is guilt-inducing because my mother made a full-out Southern breakfast, grits, eggs, bacon, orange juice, toast. So cereal for me was always just a snack. I eat Rice Krispies after school. So I already, you know, there's this thing of cereal,

but it's what he wants. He doesn't like eggs. He doesn't want the other stuff. And so just as we were leaving on this particular morning, my son says, Mommy, can I eat my cereal at the table today? about the prospect of saying no. And so rather than saying what I knew I needed to say, I let guilt step in and say, well, we have to do it really fast, which you're talking to a five or six-year-old and really fast is not really fast. So by the time we get out of the door, I'm like, we are going to be so late. And the problem was my son's school's across town and there's a bus that comes to our area. So I have to get him to the bus. Otherwise, if we miss the bus, it's about a 25-minute drive to the school. And so we're racing up the street.

My hands are just gripping the steering wheel. My shoulders are tight. We get to the parking lot where the bus usually waits. And I'm turning in so fast that I hit a curb and bust a tire and I still don't stop. I can't go that fast, but I can hear like the rubber from the tire, like smacking the street. As I continue, I see the bus and the bus is moving and taking off. And I'm like, maybe he'll see me. And sure enough, he recognized my car. The bus driver stops. I get Alex off. I get him on the bus.

And I'm like, what just happened? And thinking back on it, like when I even tried to explain it to my husband, I was like, it was guilt. I felt so guilty that all he wanted was to sit at the table, which would have been fine if he had asked 15 minutes sooner. I felt guilty that I was feeding him cereal for breakfast instead of what my mom normally fed me. And so what I realized is that so often what happens is we allow guilt to get in the driver's seat. It's natural to feel any sort of negative emotion,

but what you don't want is for that emotion to take over your decisions. And that's what happened that morning, which was fairly expensive as I called the tow truck and waited for an Uber to pick me up. I mean, I love this story because it's so relatable, right? It has so many of the features of what happens to me when I'm going through this process of guilt, right? Like one is that you have this awful flurry of I'm not good enough thoughts over and over again. Like I'm not my mother. What kind of mother? Oh my gosh, I popped the again. Like I'm not my mother. What kind of mother? Oh my gosh, I popped the tire. But the other is just the way that guilt can cause these

automatic reactions to take over. So talk about how this played out in your scenario and why it's so powerful that we need to kind of pay attention to this so we can recognize guilt. Well, it happens so fast. I mean, it was probably not even two seconds before I had already answered his question. But a whole movie had played out in my mind before I answered it. You know, mommy, can I eat at the table? And immediately, like, I had this flashback to being a kid in Germany. And one morning, my mother feeding me cereal, and I thought she was just feeding me a snack. And when we got ready to go, I was like, where's my breakfast? Like all of this played in my head. Even my mother's own guilt at trying to give me cereal because it was going to be faster.

And then me having the reaction of I can't believe you're sending me to school with no breakfast. I think particularly women, we are more guilt prone. The research shows that. What happened for me is that I started talking about guilt very casually as I would be speaking around the country. And I just noticed that women in particular had a very strong reaction. It would be like a collective sigh if I just said the word guilt. And I began wondering if we were more guilt prone. I realized men also feel guilt, but men feel guilty around

different things and they process it very differently. So oftentimes as women, when we're we were more guilt prone, I realized men also feel guilt, but men feel guilty around different things and they process it very differently. So oftentimes as women, when we're talking about our guilt, men are perplexed. There's even some research showing that women feel more guilty if we have to work after hours, whether we're married or have kids or anything else, we still feel guilty. Like we're not supposed to be doing that. And so when you become more aware of your own guilt triggers, you can start to be more intentional about really seeing those before they hijack your decisions and your actions. And one of the simplest things you can do is just label the emotion, right? It comes and you go, ah, that's guilt. And it just interrupts the thought pattern.

There's guilt. There it is. And you have an opportunity once you interrupt it to be intentional about what action you're going to take next. And so I think in understanding guilt, it might help us to kind of define what it is. So give me a definition of guilt. What is it? Guilt basically is us saying either we've done something wrong or we feel like we've done something wrong. Those two things are not the same, even though they can feel the same. So I've done something wrong is very clear. You've done something wrong. You probably need to atone for it, try to make up for it, fix the problem. If you just feel like you've done something wrong, you can still behave as though you're guilty. And so because guilt says, I owe, there's a debt that

I owe, right? We will go about trying to pay for whatever it is we feel we've done wrong. And so this false sense of guilt is very different from authentic guilt. And yet we can react in very much the same way. So the single parent who feels guilty that their child doesn't have the other parent every day, who overcompensates, who knows they're spoiling them, who knows they're not disciplining them about something in the same way, but they feel they owe, right? Guilt is a debt. I can try to make up for the fact that things aren't perfect, so I'm going to overdo it. And so we can see how the false guilt can cause us to make decisions that are counterproductive. And this idea of false guilt is really powerful, right?

Because it kind of explains why we're going through so much guilt nowadays, right? You know, you talked about going to give talks to so many people and you ask about guilt and you have a whole audience of thousands of people nodding like, yep, I have guilt too. And it doesn't feel like we're all doing actual harmful things to other people, right? You know, and so talk about the prevalence of this false guilt. It feels like it's kind of everywhere right now. So false guilt can occur from successes. False guilt can occur from guilt trippers in our lives, right? So people will use guilt to manipulate you, but you can't be manipulated unless in some

way you might agree or you might not have come to terms with your own values of what really matters. Now you are kind of participating in that and allowing them to get you to do things you wouldn't normally do because you're feeling guilty. So it shows up in a lot of different ways. And what I found is that oftentimes we don't even realize that it's guilt. Even if it's just that feeling, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing enough. Oftentimes that's a sense of guilt. Somehow I'm not working hard enough or I've been given more than I ought to be entitled to.

And so that sense of guilt can really cause us to take actions or not to take actions that if we didn't feel guilty, perhaps we'd make some different choices. And so you've argued that even this false guilt might be there to teach us something that is kind of giving us an important message. What do you mean by this? Well, I think it's really important for us when we are feeling guilty and we label that guilt, ah, that's guilt, that we kind of peel back the layers and we ask ourselves, did I actually do something wrong? Again, guilt is indicated you've

done something wrong or you feel like you have. And oftentimes if we get really honest with ourselves, we discover, no, I have it actually. I found for a lot of people that resetting their expectations is a big part of this process. So oftentimes expectations are put upon you, right? So people tell you what they're expecting. And if you don't have a strong sense of your own expectations of yourself, others' expectations will then guide what you are saying is right or wrong. And so some of this requires getting quiet, asking yourself some very basic but profound

questions. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I actually doing something wrong? Does this line up with my values? When you do that work, there's a freedom that begins to come. Feeling guilty doesn't just feel crappy. It can also lead us to get stuck in the past and to make bad decisions in the future. We wind up caught in that happiness-sapping cycle of rumination. After the break, we'll learn more ways to identify when our guilt is false and some strategies to feel better when it is. We'll also hear how we can handle guilt in cases in which we did actually do something wrong. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Some days I feel like I can't get out from the weight of my own guilt.

I get remorseful about the things I've done and all the things I didn't do. I feel guilty for letting myself down and for not doing the best for others. And then I even start to feel guilty about feeling guilty all the time. For me, this guilt upon guilt upon guilt cycle can feel really overwhelming. So I was surprised to hear from author and guilt expert Valerie Burton that being a guilt-prone person may have some benefits. Look, there's actually an upside to guilt that I was pretty excited about, made me feel better about it all. So when you are a person who, number one, cares about what other people think, right? You can overdo that, but it's actually a very good thing to care about other people and your impact on other people. You're going to be more guilt prone. Those who have the trait of conscientiousness, which is a very strong feeling about right

and wrong and how you ought to do things, those people tend towards guilt. Those people also tend towards being better managers, better to be in relationship with. And so it's important for us to not say guilt is bad. Guilt is actually a guide. It's a really important guide to help you do what's right, to help you avoid what is wrong. So when guilt comes up, it's not like, oh, I shouldn't feel guilt.

Because again, authentic guilt is actually a guide for you in terms of doing what's right and wrong. And then one of the big benefits it seems like we can get from understanding our guilt better is that when we experience guilt, it can tell us when our actions are really misaligned with our values and our expectations. You experienced this a little bit, I think, in the scenario you talked about with breakfast. So talk a little bit about why that guilt was a misalignment with maybe expectations and values that weren't really good for you at the time.

Yeah, I mentioned the guilt with that little incident with my son, but I had a lot of guilt that came up around motherhood. I was over 40 before I became a mom. I had this vision at 20 that I wanted to have my own business. I wanted to write books and that that would give me the flexibility and freedom to have a great career and also have a family. I found myself finally reaching my vision, having the career, being an author, having a family, and yet still feeling oftentimes guilty. So even when I would be out speaking, I would feel guilty for being away from home, even if it was just overnight. So one of the things I did, and I did it through journaling, was I started asking myself, what are you feeling guilty about exactly?

Okay, what are your values around this? And what I discovered is I have these very old-fashioned thoughts and voices that were playing in my head about what it meant to be a mother, what it meant to have a career, what it meant to be a woman. And I had to get really clear, is this what I believe? That I should be home with my son. My husband was the one that actually reminded me of my own vision, that that was never my vision. My vision was always having a business and having a family so that I could have flexibility. So when I began to own that, and really peeling back the layers meant saying, so what harm do you think you're doing to your son or to your family? And I was like, actually, when I'm gone, especially when my mother decides she's going to come over and help and my son isn't even missing

me. He's like, oh, grandmommy's here. He's excited. I realized when I really peeled back the layers that the things I was feeling guilty about were basically non-existent. And so that helped me clarify my values around entrepreneurship, around living a life of purpose, around contributing to my family in a very significant way, and showing our children what's possible. significant way and showing our children what's possible. So I had to slow down and really push back. My mother was at home when I was a kid. And then when I went off to school, she started working. She never suggested that I needed to follow her path. And yet when I got really honest

with myself, I realized I was looking around me. I was in a neighborhood with a lot of stay-at-home moms. People would make comments, oh gosh, you're gone so much. And I actually wasn't gone that much, but that was their perception. And if you're going to take back your joy from guilt, at some point you really do have to say, is this what I believe too? Or do I have a different set of values for my own family? Another thing you've argued we need to look into more deeply, and this was really helpful for me reading the book, was we sometimes have expectations that aren't necessarily helping us. One of my favorite ideas that you talk about in the book are cases where we have what you might call vague expectations.

You know, so talk about vague expectations. This is something that plagues me a lot, I think. So the vague expectations are, you know, I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to eat better, work more, or whatever it happens to be. It's not defined. And so no matter what we do, there's a possibility that we haven't quite met the expectation because we never defined it. So I'm going to work out more. Well, maybe you did. Maybe last week, you didn't work out at all. And this week you worked out twice. But you feel guilty because you still haven't done enough because you never clearly defined

what enough is. And so when you find yourself in the whole, I've not done enough or I need to do more, ask, well, how much would be enough? How much is more? Because oftentimes we've never clarified that and the guilt that we feel, you can nip it in the bud by defining what that means. So if working out twice this week is enough, great, you don't need to feel guilty. And another thing I think that crops up with these vague expectations is that we tend to have them in every domain, right? You know, we feel like I

should do more as a parent, I should do more at work, I should do more in terms of my personal life and my health. But then when you add these things up, you simply can't do more in all of these different domains. Is this something you see coming up with your clients too? looking at what we think everyone else is doing, right? But no matter what we're doing, the upward social comparisons really can not only dampen our joy, but bring more guilt. And so being very intentional about setting those expectations in a reasonable way and noticing when they're harmful. When you have unrealistic expectations that cannot be met, or maybe they can't be met in this season, give yourself permission to change that expectation. You know, when I married my husband and suddenly was a bonus mom to two girls, leading up to that time in the prior five years, I had written a book a year. Those previous five years, I had gone through divorce. I was single. I didn't have anyone else to take care of. I didn't even have a dog anymore. It's just like, so oftentimes I was

writing late. I might write on weekends because I'm a recovering procrastinator. So I'm pushing to those fringe times. And we got married. And so the first book was due and I found it really hard to write. I got it written, but it was hard. And then the next year my son came along and I couldn't do it. And I just had to call the publisher and say, I cannot get this to you. I'm going to need to take a year off. Like I've been waiting my whole life that this might happen, right? That I might get to have a child and here I am, I can't do it. I had to change the expectation in that season. Great, I wrote a book a year, but I can't do that anymore. And that's really this idea that you talk about

of outdated expectations, right? You know, those might have been expectations that worked before, maybe pre-pandemic they worked, maybe at a different time of your life, but it can be really hard to be compassionate enough with yourself to update these expectations. It can. We're all so good at beating ourselves up. Self-compassion is absolutely critical. Outdated expectations often lead us to say, I did it before, I did it before. But before, you didn't have these other responsibilities or these other circumstances that are very real. How do you want to show up now?

What's reasonable now? And what's important now? That's the other very critical question. And so I had to decide in those early years, my son is still a baby. I don't want to miss this time because I'm stressed out about a deadline. It'll be there. I'll still write. But right now, my focus is really here.

And so we have to give ourselves permission. We have to show ourselves some grace. So go easy on yourself. How do we deal with it when the guilt is real? We've forgotten someone's birthday. You know, we've said something inappropriate to our spouse or something like that. Because sometimes, you know, we really have messed something up. That's a really great question because sometimes we really have done something wrong, right?

And we need to deal with it. And that takes some courage because it depends on what you say to yourself about being guilty of something. And for a lot of people, it's a sense of denial, which is the worst approach. So being able to one accept, yeah, I did something wrong and I'm going to take responsibility for it. So I give six A's in the book around when you really are guilty. So one is just admit it, right? You're just acknowledging, hey, I did something wrong. I caused harm in some way.

The second is just to assess it. You know, what is the harm that I caused? And this can be hard to look at, but be willing. It takes courage, be willing. And then apologize. And it's that real apology, right? Who do you owe an apology to? It might be more than one person.

And what specifically would a sincere apology sound like? Not only stating what's wrong, but acknowledging the impact on that person and apologizing for your contribution, whatever that happened to be. And then whenever you can, atoning for it. How can I make amends? Some things you can't undo, but you can certainly at least try not to make the situation worse. And if there's a consequence, a way that you could pay back in any way, again, it just depends on the circumstance. Do what you can. And that's where this fifth one comes in, which is just adjust your behavior. That's a big one. It's not okay to apologize and just keep doing the same thing.

Right. And then lastly, accept forgiveness. And a lot of times we withhold the forgiveness from ourselves. And so being able to accept it from the other person, be thankful if they're willing to give it. Sometimes they're not going to give it. Sometimes there's not an opportunity. I mean, it might be someone who's moved on, who's passed away. And that's when you really do have to do the work of being able to forgive yourself for your own humanity, for things you can't change so that you can eventually just move forward. Feeling guilty can be an honest signal that we've screwed something up and that we need to take steps to make it right. But once we've done that, we can forgive ourselves and let that guilt go, case closed. But sometimes guilt isn't really about having done

something wrong. It's based on outdated, vague, or even unreasonable expectations about the kind of person we're supposed to be. We'll talk about some concrete strategies we can use to reset these not-so-good expectations and lose the unhelpful remorse that goes with them when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. Life coach and author Valerie Burton argues that we can learn something from our feelings of guilt, but only once we've determined whether our guilty feelings are actually warranted in the first place. One of the big opportunities that happened for me was recognizing that my guilt was actually, it was fear. Happiness is a risk and guilt is safe. I realized that I never allowed myself to fully be happy. Guilt was the thing that dampened my happiness. And it was a tool I was using out

of fear that my happiness wouldn't stay around, that something was going to come up that wasn't going to go my way. And so if I get too happy, that's really risky. But if I put a little guilt in there, things aren't, I mean, they could be great, but they're not that great. I felt safe that way. That for me was a real eye opener. I had never thought of guilt as something that was safe for me, that I was choosing when I didn't have to. that was safe for me, that I was choosing when I didn't have to. And so the first step of embracing this opportunity really is to notice and allow that you're feeling guilt. Talk about the science of how it can be powerful to label our emotions. Well, there's something that happens when we have an emotion. This happens even when the emotion is quote unquote positive emotion, right? One, it's our thoughts that lead to our emotions. And so those thoughts of guilt,

I've done something wrong, I am wrong, whatever the case might be, or really what leads to the feeling, the emotion of guilt. It relates back to cognitive behavioral therapy, right? What are you thinking and what does that lead to in terms of your actions and your emotions? The real key is to practice thought awareness, to practice noticing what you're saying to yourself that's leading to the guilt and having the discipline to discern whether it's valid or not. Have I actually done something wrong or am I just feeling that I've done something wrong? Or am I just feeling that I've done something wrong? If it's just a feeling, how might I change the thought so that it leads to a new feeling? I give an example in the book of a woman who had had a child very young. She'd gotten

pregnant in her senior year of high school, which she, number one, felt guilty about. But even more, school, which she, number one, felt guilty about. But even more, she felt guilty because her daughter didn't have a father. Later, she married and she had a second child. Wonderful husband, great dad to both girls. But the continual guilt was the guilt that the younger child had a different and more stable experience than the older child. And so it was very interesting as I did that particular interview of the things that this mom had never even asked herself or really thought about. Just her hardness. She was very hard on the older one of, you've got to do this and then this and then this. And so anything that went wrong, even if it wasn't anything really wrong, she blamed it on, well, if I had not had my child so young, if she had had this better experience in her

early years, if I had not been trying to go to school and work at the same time. And what we realize is she's saying to herself that, okay, my daughter got a C because of all of these things. We start talking it through. Well, what about her friends that didn't have that experience? Are they all doing perfectly well? Well, no, actually she's doing better than they are.

So then what really are you saying to yourself? A lot of times we don't really question our thoughts and how our thoughts are leading us to feel things that may or may not actually be rooted in the truth. One method that you've given folks to kind of think about their thoughts better is this PEAL method. What is the PEAL method? Yes. So PEAL is just an acronym and it's really simple. And it's really about you being able to peel back the layers to see, is this authentic guilt or is this false guilt? So the first P in PEAL is simply pinpoint your guilt trigger. What is it that's

really triggering your guilt? And for a lot of people, they know what that guilt trigger is, right? For me, it's often been something with my son, but for you, it may be something else. The E, the first E is examine the thoughts. So what am I saying to myself about this guilt trigger? What am I saying that's causing me to feel I've done something wrong? The second E is exchange the lie for the truth. So each time you notice that there's an inaccurate thought, you're asking what would be a more accurate thought about the situation? So in the example of the woman who's saying,

my daughter doesn't have straight A's because I had her young and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A more accurate thought is, you know, she just has a hard time in that subject. We need to get her some help. I don't have to give this whole explanation that may or may not have anything to do with the real reason why she doesn't have a higher grade in this class. And then the L is list your evidence. What's the evidence that supports the truthful thought about this situation?

So as I just gave that example, what is my evidence that it's not about the past? Well, the evidence is that a lot of kids are having a hard time in this class. And my daughter isn't expressing anything that tells me that she's struggling with these things I'm talking about. So you actually start listing the evidence. It's not just telling yourself that there's a different truth. It's actually telling yourself the truth and then listing your evidence for that truth. I love this process

because it allows you to do something that we know is so powerful when you're trying to switch your thoughts around, which is that you're really harnessing curiosity. You know, what am I really thinking here? But also what's the evidence for that? Not judgmentally, but just kind of being curious about where this stuff came from. I mean, have you seen that this PL technique can really work? Do you have examples of this being really powerful? Absolutely. I am amazed at the things that people are able to let go of. Sometimes it's the mother-daughter guilt. I was amazed at how many stories of that I got as I began writing the book, researching, and then hearing from readers. I won't go into detail about why is there mother-daughter guilt, but there seems to be a lot of feeling like you've got to live up to these certain expectations. A lot of times our upbringing from a religious standpoint can have all sorts of expectations that somehow you need to be perfect.

You need to be so very good in every way. Inevitably, you're going to fall short and the guilt is going to come in. So I really believe that the biggest outcome is when you're able to just accept where you are. And it really does require a bit of humility to say, I won't always get things perfect. And that's okay because I'm human. I don't have to beat myself up. Beating yourself up literally is about you feeling that guilt, that debt that you owe. And if no one else is going to make you pay, you're going to make you pay. And when you realize I don't have to do that,

I can give myself some grace. I can let go of the guilt. I can literally just say it is what it is. Now, how am I going to grow from it? What can I learn from it? But beating myself up does not need to be a part of the equation. And so getting comfortable with that, I think can be a big step for many people who are perfectionists, who feel like they have to get it all right, or they fail completely. Instead saying, I don't have to get it all right. And in fact, I can't. And here I am still trying. When we start to ask ourselves the right questions, we can come to see false guilt for what it is.

False, fake, simply not warranted. In addition to making us feel less guilty, this process can also help us connect to what our true values really are. So whenever I start to go into guilt overload, I'm going to plan to use Valerie's peel method. I'll try to pinpoint my triggers, really examine my thoughts, exchange all those lies for the truth, and start to list the evidence. And when all those unchecked boxes on my to-do list make me feel like I'm not good enough

or doing enough, I'll just add one more item to the list. Give myself a little grace. And I'll plan to check that one off right away. I hope you've learned some strategies that you can use to reset your relationship with guilt. And I hope you'll come back to hear the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for only $4.99 a month. As a special gift to Pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be sharing

a series of six guided meditations to help you practice the lessons we've learned from our experts. Pushkin Plus is available on the show page and Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Ann Vaughn, and Courtney Guarino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Mia LaBelle, Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carly Migliore, Christina Sullivan, Grant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,

Nicole Morano, Royston Preserve, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.