Guilt can be described as an emotion that a person feels responsible for and believes that she or he has violated a moral standard. The fear of being incapable of the deed or the expectation of an event yet to come plays havoc with the mind. One only has to have any imagination and you can easily understand the detrimental effects the resultant emotions can have. The resulting guilt brought upon by mere interpretation of events can have a permanent influence on an individual’s life. Often times this is detrimental to physically, emotional and mentally. You become a prisoner of your own mind.
Prisoner of your own emotions
However, knowing that guilt really is an emotional state, it can be overcome. Often what most people will do is to face the problem. For example, one has caused serious injury by accident to someone else. An apology and some form of compensation is usually the norm for a satisfied recourse. But then, what if the injury caused permanent disability? Did he or she do enough according to society or to his or her own living standards?
The Need for Approval
Approvals from the norms or self and guilt go hand in hand because without the requirement of approval there would never be any need for guilt. A simple concept that is so destructive to oneself. And yet, this is all about the dreaded emotions that run amok. It really makes one wonder about guilt becoming so powerful that physical symptoms appear. A child could become so ill that he does not go to school just to avoid bullying. Medical science is often confounded by the number of people seeing doctors who aren’t actually ill but believe themselves to be so.
The fear of failure from the need of approvals can go so far for a university exam candidate who failed that he committed suicide rather than face the shame of facing society’s disdain. Was that all in his mind? Could he have taken responsibility and become even more accomplished than otherwise?
Overcome Guilt
1) Approval is usually subject to someone’s acceptance or refusal, which one can do without.
2) One can and must take responsibility for the events that happen in our lives. Know that you have the ability to control your emotions.
3) Understand that some things are not in our control and we cannot be responsible for other people’s actions
4) Sometimes even when we act responsibly and appropriately things do not seem to work out. What we see is only a fraction of our life’s experience. Often the results are not clear to us immediately but in time, with patience, the wisdom is revealed to us.
5) Often times the information we received or perceived can be far from the truth and we have to make the best judgment possible. To realize that guilt or self punishment will increase the chance of the events reoccurring. Quite often guilt will make us do things that we will regret later.
6) Out of guilt we take other’s problems, and this karmic action will not cease until we stop it.
When we accept guilt and believe it is our fault even when it is not, we are acting from the place of fear and low self-esteem.
7) When we have accepted ourselves, and act from the place of knowingness with confidence, what other does have to judge us will have little or no impact at all.
8) I hope by now you realize that the problem is not you, nor about you. It is more about what you assume the other person who is judging about you. Know that they are neither in a position nor have the experience to judge us.
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I enjoyed your article and can so relate to how guilt can consume us in our lives if we allow it to.
Generally it comes through self inquiry to understand or recognize that we’re living from a place of guilt.
And yet guilt is really just an emotion we have or a belief that we deserve to feel guilty about either things we’ve done, not done or just about not being good enough in general.
It seems as mom’s we carry a great deal of self imposed guilt as we set up these nearly impossible expectations of ourselves to be everything to everyone all the time.
Imagine for a moment how mom’s of kids with disabilities can pile the guilt up higher and higher and higher creating obstacles that they might never overcome if they allow their minds to convince them that they have a need for not being enough for their child with the disability
Am I caring enough, am I meeting all their needs quickly enough, have I apologized to myself and others for not having what society views as a perfect or healthy child, have I kept my house in perfect order and completed all my chores in perfect order while I’m being exhausted by the demands of the care my child requires. The list goes on and on. And yet relief is around the corner simply by taking personal responsibility for thoughts by surrendering the limiting beliefs we have self imposed through our thoughts of guilt.
what a beautiful way to love and accept ourselves.
loving intentions
Nancy Battye
http://www.nancybattye.com
I have a recipe for helping mom’s of kids with disabilities maintain their sanity !
Thank you Nancy, for taking the time to make such an emotional and profound comment. And thank you for adding to how we can all use the power of our emotions to overcome guilt, not as a negative, but an energy we can tap into instead of wasting it away.
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