How to stop feeling guilt over things that aren't your fault
By Alicia Casey
Photo by Keira Burton / Pexels
A year ago, you were in a completely different mind space than you’re in right now. Since then, you’ve had to learn to adapt, change and grow with the challenges life put in your path. Was it difficult? You bet. But was it worth it? Definitely. From your lived experiences you’ve become stronger and more powerful than ever before, but it might not always feel that way.
When guilt takes a starring role in your emotional mind, it can feel like a roadblock on your journey forward. And although it has a strong pull, there exists a reality where your coping skills are stronger. What if, instead of turning away from the blockage, you face the guilt next time it comes around and try to understand what it’s telling you so you can keep moving?
Just like with roadblocks, guilt gives you an important message. Typically it informs you when there’s something in your life that’s out of alignment with your personal values. And it’s something everyone has struggled with at one point or another — a red face, jitteriness and an unshakeable pit in the bottom of your stomach.
For some people, guilt manifests in the form of over-explaining and over-apologizing, and for others it’s excessive gift-giving and trying to fix the perceived damage from an interaction. While these responses are valid, they may not ease the uncomfortable feelings brought on by a triggering situation. For long-term support in managing your guilt, emotional regulation skills are proven to be a useful, and most importantly, a non-stressful choice.
As with any mental health practice, the goal here is not to completely remove suffering, but to reduce its intensity. Where guilt is concerned, there is a focus on increasing resilience to improve your ability to cope ahead. To manage your guilt, you first need to come face-to-face with it. It may sound strange, but it might help to try imagining your guilt as a person and having a conversation with it. In that dialogue, open yourself up to understanding the reason why it made an appearance in your life.
Once you identify the emotion and acknowledge its reason for being, you allow yourself to have self-compassion toward the part of yourself that is suffering. Without taking this step, you fall back into the pattern of letting your guilt take charge. Avoid that mental trap by deciding that it’s your turn to step forward and give your coping skills a chance to shine.
When you start ruminating and worrying, remind yourself of your capability, determination and perseverance. By reinforcing your self-value, you bring your emotional regulation toolkit to the front of your mind.
A couple of tools to have on standby to combat guilt are opposite action, checking the facts and taking a personal values inventory. While you’re in a guilt-induced episode, opposite action encourages you to mindfully continue on with your day and not get locked in on the severity of the emotion. This looks like gardening when all you want to do is tuck yourself into bed and hide under covers, or go on a walk instead of calling up your friend to apologize about your behavior for the 10th time. And if this seems unattainable, checking the facts can offer additional support. Think of this tool as pressing pause on the remote control of your life so you can take in what’s going on in the story around you.
By slowing down and not getting caught up in your interpretations of the event at hand, you are able to see the 360 view of what’s actually going on. Writing out a personal values inventory can better reinforce these two skills. Grab a piece of paper and a pen, fold the paper in half and write down your values on the left side. Moving onto the right half of the page, write some bullet points reflecting on the presence of those values in your life. If the chart appears unbalanced, it’s time to push guilt to the backseat, and give your coping skills permission to take the wheel, and push the car into drive.
The scariest part about guilt is not the emotion itself, but the exhaustion it leaves on you when you let it have a 365-day unlimited parking pass in the road trip that is your life. Nothing, and no one, not even your close friends and family, needs that much access to you. When you start treating your guilt like a passenger in your story, you begin to repair the wear and tear of its stay.
While it’s important to recognize, feel and process your guilt, it’s also vital to realize that you deserve peace and distance from the emotional pain it inflicts on your psyche. And if no one’s told you lately, your life is not meant to be a cycle of suffering — it’s so much more than that. Sometimes guilt makes things bleak and rough where they once were hopeful and soft, and just so you know, it’s not meant to stay that way forever. There is a reality where you move through your guilt and learn to regulate your emotions, so it loses its grip on you, and that vision is closer to now than you may think. It is possible for you to find methods of dealing with guilt that aren’t avoiding, ignoring or maladaptive.
Let your guilt run its course, and when its motor dies out, bring in your coping toolkit. What you practice on a daily basis will eventually become second nature to you, so take advantage of the additional parts you have to run your vehicle. Not everyone takes the time to learn how to change a tire, or manually pump gas, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to the functionality of their car. Just like with your friend’s 7-year-old trusty Honda Civic (we all have that one friend), you have the grit, adaptability and resources to support your mental well-being for a long while. There is no one better equipped at taking care of you than yourself. You are the best mechanic for your issues that you know, but to get there you have to believe in yourself and your skillset. By turning over the controls to yourself and moving guilt to a background role, you get closer each day to the version of yourself that isn’t held back by its intensity. And when you get there, and it will happen, you will thank yourself for the hard work and commitment you put into reaching your desired destination.
