Guilt is a powerful emotion. The holidays are a season ripe with it–guilt about spending too much, indulging in food, and guilt about our relationships. Guilt can be beneficial if we use it as information, but it can be paralyzing if we allow it turn into shame.
The Plague of Guilt
For a lot of my life, guilt was a bit like a plague in my life. No matter what I did, I felt guilty. If I spent time playing with my kids, I felt guilty I wasn’t doing the laundry. When I did the laundry, I felt guilty I wasn’t playing with my kids. Even making dinner for a neighbor made me feel guilty I was putting my kids off. However, when I prioritized my family, I felt guilty I wasn’t helping others. I had this long list of things I “should” be doing and they always seemed to conflict. There never seemed to be enough time for all of it and I always felt like I was failing. I felt like I was a bad mom, a bad housekeeper, a bad neighbor and the list goes on.
Guilt is Information
Brene Brown, a shame and vulnerability researcher teaches an insightful principle about guilt. She explains that guilt is just information. It tells us that we value two things that are in conflict.
Guilt can also be an indicator that our actions are not in alignment with our belief system. I had plenty of guilt from this too.
I felt guilty every time I yelled at my kids because I wanted to be a calm mom. Health is important to me, so I felt guilty when I didn’t get up to exercise like I’d planned. Guilt was there when I was tired and zoned out with the internet instead of being present with my kids, because I want to be the kind of mom who’s present and engaged.
Looking at guilt as simply information can remove some of the unnecessary drama around our feeling and actions.
What To Do With Guilt
I like to think of guilt sort of like the body’s pain system. If we feel something hot, we notice and our ne-jerk reaction is to pull our hand away. However this might or might not be the right thing to do. For example, if we are pulling something out of the oven, we might continue doing it. However, if we are getting burned by touching fire, we want to pull our hand away.
When we feel guilt, our brain is alerting us and giving us information that we may want to be aware of what we’re doing. This can be useful if we use the information to decide if we want to continue doing the behavior. Then we make a choice and own it.
Use the Information to Own Your Choice
For example, the other day I was sewing costumes for my girls to be in a nativity pageant last week. I saw it was time to pick up my girls from the bus stop, but I also needed to finish the costumes before a certain time and it was getting down to the wire. I started feeling guilty. My kids love when I come to walk them home and I love it too. I also wanted to make them the costumes. I consulted my guilt and decided that for that day I would finish the costumes. It was important and I would continue every other day to pick my kids up from the bus. I owned my decision and choose to feel good about my choice to sew instead of pick the kids up. The walked home and were disappointed at first, but excited when they saw their costumes.
This process of consulting myself when I feel guilt instead of just wallowing in guilt has been transformative for me. It helps me recognize I value two things and make the best decision I can in the moment.
Use the Information to Change Your Choice
Sometimes when I notice guilt, I notice the information and I do change my behavior.
The other day after I got my kids snacks and helped them with homework they all got busy playing. I came upstairs and got busy working on Christmas cards. From past experience, I know that I need to start dinner by 5:00 in order to get through clean-up, baths, dinner and our bed-time routines in order to get the kids to bed on time. I saw the clock passing 5:00, 5:30 and even 6:00 and I felt guilty because I knew I was pushing our bed-time back. I rationalized that the kids were happy and I was really enjoying getting my Christmas cards addressed so I kept working on my project. The result was that we were all rushed, dinner was slapdash, I was stressed and the kids got to bed late. I felt guilty.
As I reflected on the two things I valued: time to get my cards done in peace and quiet and having a calm enjoyable evening with the family and getting the kids to bed, I realized that next time I wanted to change my behavior. I actually wanted to stop my project at 5:00 so I could honor the later. I knew I could make time for Christmas cards the next day.
In this case guilt alerted me that I did want to make a change. I noticed the conflict of my own values and decided I wanted to change course so my actions and values would be more fully aligned.
When Guilt Becomes Unhelpful
Guilt becomes unhelpful when we turn it into shame. Guilt simply lets us know we have two things that are in conflict. Shame takes that information and makes it mean there is something wrong with us. Brene Brown describes it this way. Guilt says, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “I am a mistake.”
It is when we allow guilt over our behavior or our conflicting values to meant that we are a bad person that we exacerbate our problems.
In the past, I might have beat myself up after a choice like I explained above–I would have said things to myself like, “That was so selfish!” “You never follow through with what you say you will do.” I would have made my choice to keep doing Christmas cards and getting my kids late to bed mean something dramatic and unnecessary about myself. Instead, I noticed the discrepancy and decided to do it differently next time. In fact, I made it mean that I was a good mom to recognize the pattern and change it up.
Guilt can be motivating to cause us to consider our choices. Shame paralyzes us. It make us want to hide. It is shame that causes us to spiral into depression (believing we are not good enough or worthy enough), anxiety (doubting our ability to handle things), addiction (constantly trying to escape our shame through external substances or behaviors), or blame (trying to transfer our pain outward to others so we don’t have to feel it ourselves).
Shame is Always a Lie
There is nothing useful about shame. It lies to us. Shame tells us there is something wrong with us.
Our value is unchangeable. We are valuable and worthy just by nature of being a human. I believe we are children of God and our divine heritage gives us innate value. We cannot change, improve or take away from that value by our actions in any way.
Guilt Tells the Truth
Guilt tells the truth. It tells us that we are amazing humans who value important things. We have desires to be good. When we notice guilt, we can use it as more proof of this. We can use it to make a decision to keep our behavior or change it. Then we can own that decision instead of continuing to living in guilt or instead of letting it spiral into shame. When we allow guilt to motivate and alert us instead of immobilize us, we become a better version of us.
The more I think of guilt as a helpful companion instead of a plague, I have begun to feel like a better mom, a better friend, a better housekeeper, a better neighbor and the list goes on. The more I feel confident in my worth and abilities the better I show up for myself and all these people in my life.
The more we live from empowerment from choosing instead of spinning with guilt the better our lives, relationships and even holiday seasons will be!
How to Make Guilt Useful
What do you feel guilty about? Notice what information guilt is offering you…what two things do you value that feel like they are in conflict?
Make a choice to continue or change your behavior. Then own it and let the guilt go.