The Therapy Edit - On feeling less guilty

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

We often carry guilt around for so much longer than we need to. It impacts our relationships with others and ourselves. Here's how to finally let yourself off the hook and let it go!

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello and welcome to episode 9 of the Therapy Edit today. I am going to be talking on feeling less guilty. I don't know about you, but so much of my life has been tainted by guilt that I have carried around. And I'm going to talk about and unpick two different kinds of guilt. And at the end of this 10 minutes, my hope is that you will go away feeling less guilty and more kind to yourself. So the two kinds of guilt that I'm going to talk about are unjustified guilt and justified guilt. And there's stuff we can do with both of these kinds of guilt. You know, guilt and shame

fill the gap between where we feel we should be and where we feel we should be and where. we are, what we feel we should have done and what we did, how we feel we should have responded to something and how we actually did respond. I'm going to start with unjustified guilt. So many of us carry unjustified guilt. Unjustified guilt is the guilt we feel for things that were not our fault, circumstances, situations that were really challenging and the way that we might have responded that wasn't about fault. It's so important to separate out what is us and what is something or someone that has been, that has impacted us and the circumstances that we found ourselves in and the way that we have responded as a result. I think a really good acid test

of whether guilt is justified or unjustified is asking yourself, have I done anything wrong? What would I say if a friend came to me saying that they felt guilty about this thing? How would I respond to them? A really challenging time in my life was when my second child had silent reflux. That was not my fault. The fact that we had no sleep as a result, that was not my fault. Yet I applied so much guilt. And when we feel this unjustified guilt,

we often feel shame and in fact when we feel any kind of guilt often it comes with that sense of shame that we're ashamed and when there's a deficit like we've done something wrong it evokes this feeling of we have to do something right to make it better we have to compensate

and when that guilt is unjustified when something has happened that was out of your control that you have not done anything wrong yet we allow ourselves to feel that guilt and that shame, we often end up engaging in kind of self-destructive behavior, almost punishing ourselves. Our critical internal dialogue might hype up. We get that sense of, well, you know, if you really knew, if you really knew what I'd done, if you really knew how I'd been, you wouldn't like me, you wouldn't care for me, you wouldn't love me. This guilt, guilt itself just drives a wedge

in relationships, it makes us feel unworthy. It's so worth addressing. Let's think of some examples. It might be grief. Grief takes us away. It takes us away from being able to respond in a way that we might normally. Is that fault or is that circumstance? You know, I've spoken to so many moms who feel so much guilt because they weren't able to feed or birth their baby in the way that they had hoped that they would. Is that fault? It's so easy to look back. and place blame when we think retrospectively. But when we think retrospectively, often what we forget about is the complexity of those times, the challenge of those times.

You know, if someone was to put me up in front of a court because I got post-natal depression, would they put me in jail? Would they give me a sentence? No. But that's essentially what we are doing to ourselves. In these times, we are saying, you've done wrong. you deserve to pay and then that shame we carry around that that guilt that deficit that we try and fill that hole with with payback so I want to encourage you if you know that you are carrying

around some unjustified guilt guilt for something that is not your fault take it look at it try and separate what separate out what is you what was someone else what was circumstance would you blame a friend for doing the same thing? Would you have more compassion for them? Often that's the thing, isn't it? We're lacking compassion for ourselves when we look back. Compassion that we would find so easily if someone we cared about came to us telling of the same thing. We have to make these decisions to let ourselves off the hook for things that we haven't done wrong. And it's compassion. Compassion fills that gap between what we feel we should have done and what we were able to do in the circumstances. Now, secondly, I want to talk about justified

guilt. Now, this is when, yeah, we've done something wrong. We've done something wrong. We've acted wrongly. And I often feel this kind of little prod of guilt. Often for me, it's when I'm on my phone around the kids and I know that I should put it down and engage with them or I know I should compartmentalize work a bit better. That guilt that we feel is there to prompt us. not to shame us. Often this is what we let guilt shame us. It's there to prompt us. You know, and in that moment, I can just feel guilt. Oh, I'm such a bad mom that I'm on my phone. I shouldn't be doing this. I'm just, oh, I'm such a failure as a mom. I'm ruining, you know, what am I doing to their childhood? I need to compartmentalize. I'm not balancing things. You know, and we shame ourselves.

But that guilt is there to prompt us, not to shame us. So, you know, I can let it prompt me that little prompt of guilt. I'm on my phone too much around my kids. Okay, what can I do with that? I can either let it shame me and push me into shame and self-criticism, which will just perpetuate low self-esteem, perpetuate low self-worth, drive wedges in our belief that we are worthy of love. Or I can let that guilt prompt me to put my phone down and pick up a book and read to the kids. You know, letting it prompt me to action. rather than to that criticism that we so easily flipped to. And when we do something wrong, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's that guilt is

prompting you to have a conversation with someone. Maybe it's prompting you to make a bit of a change to a habit or a thinking pattern. But act on it. You know, let it prompt you. Act on it and then let it go. Because so often it's like we sign ourselves. up for a life sentence for guilt, whether it's justified or unjustified, you know, something that let's think if you were to steal something from a shop, you'd have to pay a fine perhaps and

return it. Sometimes it's like we just commit these small acts and then we commit ourselves to a life sentence. We put ourselves in jail when it's not even locked. You know, how much of your shame and your guilt is leading to self-sabotage and self-criticism. unnecessarily. Forgiving ourselves is a process. We have to do over and over. There were many times and still are sometimes where my guilt and my shame for those really rough years just pop into my memory and I feel that sinking sense of they didn't get the best me. I failed them. That is unjustified guilt. I've got to forgive myself for that. I've got to let myself off the hook. I've not got to climb back into that jail cell of self-criticism and self-sabotage.

I've got to just let open that door. That door was never locked. Nudge that door open. Sometimes forgiving ourselves as a process, we have to do over and over. We have to remind ourselves that enough is enough. We've paid. We've paid for it now. We've paid for it.

Enough is enough. So let guilt prompt you, not shame you. hold it in your hand look at it what are you guilty about what are you shameful of is that is that unjustified do you need more compassion into that place into that you of the past that responded to circumstances in the way that you did because maybe it was a really normal response to those circumstances you did the best you could with what you had and if that if that guilt is justified then let it prompt you not shame you make a tweak act and let it go.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review. You can find more from me on Instagram, Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books called Mind Over Mother and Know Your Worse. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.