How to free yourself from the feeling of guilt: 4 tips

Several tips to apply to your day-to-day life so as not to let the feeling of guilt hold you back.

Throughout my professional life, both as a psychologist and in Talent management, I have not ceased to meet people with different profiles, personality traits and education, who coincide in being affected by a feeling that causes them great discomfort, which becomes very limiting, to the point that it affects their decisions, relationships and experiences.

This discomfort is called "feeling of guilt". In addition, on many occasions it comes through a tendency to be cruel to oneself.

Did you know that we are born free of guilt?

It is important to note that guilt is a learned feeling. It is something we learn by imitation, and also by learning through the comparisons, demands and failures we experience. that we experience. It begins to develop from childhood to become fully entrenched in adulthood.

Guilt, like other feelings and emotions, is an adaptive psychological mechanism. Its function is to recognize our mistakes and act accordingly.It is a mechanism for adaptive and reparative behavior to avoid harm. In this case, guilt helps us to comply with the norms and ethical codes necessary for our society. Therefore, it prevents us from making mistakes that could have serious consequences.

The problem arises when guilt becomes maladaptive.

What is maladaptive guilt?

We can say that guilt becomes maladaptive when it becomes a frequent and intense emotion, limiting our thinking. (becoming a recurrent thought) and distorting our self-concept.

This guilt is born and enlarged by the "moral" norms that we create with our children, partner, friends, work.... In such a way that it can greatly affect all areas of our life, while at the same time it is joined by a feeling of frustration when we see how things affect us that do not affect others, or at least, it does not seem so.

Do you want to learn how to manage guilt and free yourself from it?

In the feeling of guilt, it is key to be aware that the protagonism is ours. Thoughts and value judgments are ideas, not absolute truths..

The degree of flexibility and tolerance towards the mistakes we make or could make, our capacity to accept them and learn from them, our empathy towards ourselves and others, are factors that affect our interpretations and evaluations, and that can help us to free ourselves from that guilt in imbalance.

For this, it is very important that you self-analyze yourself and decide if you want to free yourself from constant guilt as a driving force in your life..

If you have reached this point, where guilt is the first feeling that comes to you every time you do not do something as you would like (or that you have labeled as "wrong" done), here I provide a series of guidelines that will help you to work on it so that you can balance it, without the emotional exhaustion it generates:

1. Make notes

Every time you feel guilty about something, write it down along with the reason for it. Writing is a therapeutic action that will help you become conscious of the way you think and talk to yourself.

2. Learn from your emotions

Observe well what events and/or aspects are the ones that hurt and affect you the most.. You will realize which are the events that most provoke this feeling of constant guilt (personal relationships, your children, your work, etc).

3. Learn to adopt an equanimous point of view.

Analyze if the judgment you make of yourself is balanced or if you are judging yourself excessively.. To do this, an exercise that helps a lot is to imagine that what you are blaming yourself for has happened to a person you love very much. Would you judge them with the same harshness? What would you say to them?

4. Identify the origins of the problem

Analyze in depth the following: How did you come to blame yourself in this way? Have you ever asked yourself this question? Understanding why we do what we do helps to free us from unnecessary emotions and self-punishment..

Think about those things you failed to do, or have felt you did wrong throughout your life, and how they affected you to the point of becoming the person you are. It's not about forgetting everything. It's about being fair to yourself. Sure you could have done things better, but surely there are also facts and events for which you blame yourself excessively.

Understanding maladaptive guilt

Being fair and sensible in our value judgments helps us to be coherent and balanced people. It is not about avoiding responsibilities, but about taking responsibility in the exact measure, evaluating those aspects that are in our control zone, making an effort for what we can do, and making an effort for what we can do.We should strive for what we can do, and forgive ourselves when we do not achieve everything as we would like to.

Living "hooked" to this type of negative emotions only makes you lose the possibility of living your life enjoying each day with intensity. Have you ever wondered what you're missing out on while only living with guilt?

Maladaptive guilt is a direct attack on your self-esteem.. It minimizes your capabilities and qualities, maximizing your weaknesses and generating negative automatic thoughts that only lead to your own self-abuse and the constant loss of being able to experience what you do with joy and peace of mind.

The only reality is that not everything is your fault. And to do that, let's start by changing the concept, change guilt to responsibility.. Responsibility is a powerful word. Take responsibility for your life, your problems and your happiness. Do not give that responsibility to others.

Free yourself also from the value judgments of others: How do you feel? Think about whether you are perhaps committing an injustice to yourself because of what you have been learning during your childhood, because of the norms and/or opinions of others or because of self-demands that you carry on your shoulders.

Maladaptive guilt is often generated by those "backpacks" that we carry with biased ideas and perceptions. However, there are many psychological strategies that generate new habits that help us to reconcile with ourselves, to live with fullness and freedom for the full enjoyment of our life. We encourage you to follow the guidelines indicated, and contact me or another psychotherapy professional if you want to continue deepening or working on it.