When Guilt Goes Awry

I think about guilt a lot. Call it a workplace hazard.

It’s such a common theme in our world, and definitely is an overarching layer for so much of the work that gets done in (and out of) the therapy room.

And sometimes, I wonder if the way I talk about it seems like it lacks nuance. Like I’m saying that guilt is never helpful, never necessary, never reflective of a person’s truth.

(Of course, this is my own anxiety to contend with—because if my clients know anything about me, it’s the way I value nuance and softening the black-and-white binary.)

But the thing is, the kind of guilt I’m talking about isn’t the kind that comes from causing harm. There actually is purpose to guilt sometimes, and when we’ve caused harmed, guilt can come in and be a signal to help us realign, be accountable, make amends.

That’s not the guilt I’m talking about. That’s not the guilt I usually find myself working with in the therapy room.

Instead, it’s the kind that we feel when we’ve said no to someone because it honored our boundaries, but they feel upset about the “no.”

It’s the kind that we feel when we reclaim our need for rest, in a capitalist hellscape that berates us for not being a certain kind of “productive.”

It’s what we can often feel when we’re burnt out but still have that pressure to keep giving, doing, being, even when we’re completely out of steam.

It’s the guilt that comes up when we’ve had big emotions, when we feel we haven’t performed well enough, when we prioritize ourselves or when we do benign things we wish we’d done differently.

This emotion can be so informative…but in so many circumstances, it goes into overdrive, informed by things like low self-esteem or structural inequities or unhelpful lessons we were taught at an age too young to know they weren’t good for us.

That, I find, is when guilt goes awry.

Yes, sometimes guilt is warranted, and necessary. But some of my first questions when it shows up are: In whose voice is the guilt? Where did I learn I should feel guilty about this? Who does it serve for me to feel guilt? Is the guilt telling me I’m wrong for something that might not actually be wrong?

These are the times when it’s not about leaning into learning lessons from mistakes…it’s about listening to what’s underneath the guilt. It’s about getting a better understanding of what the guilt is trying to accomplish, and finding ways we might meet those same needs in more nurturing, guilt-free ways.

If you’ve found that guilt is more present than you’d like, or that it feels painful or restrictive to feel guilty so often, therapy can help! Click here to go to the Contact Me section and request a free consult to get started! I’d love to support you in this powerful work.