How to stop guilt as a learned response?

Why do we feel guilt?

Guilt is a low vibrational emotion that comes from the feeling of causing a negative reaction in someone or taking part in an activity that goes against your morals. Some guilt can be justified, as we sometimes make mistakes in life.

The problem with guilt is that it sometimes shows up when something is not nearly close to being our fault. For example, you planned a date with your partner but in the end, you had to take your mother to the hospital. That is clearly not your fault and you can’t do anything about it but excuse yourself. Even if your partner sincerely tells you that it is not a big deal and they acknowledge that it was an emergency you might still feel extremely guilty. This may happen to some of us, but why? Guilt is the emotion we feel when we can’t justify our actions and when we put blame on ourselves. Why do we do this?

How is guilt a learned feeling?

I like to see guilt as a learned response. Through your childhood, your parents might have blamed you and punished you too much for accidents that were clearly not your fault or responsibility. This created a wound and taught you to feel guilty for things that you shouldn’t feel guilty for.

A common example is feeling guilty for the emotions of other people. We forget that we are not responsible for the emotions other people have, as they are the ones who choose how to react to situations. As a child, you might have misinterpreted a traumatic event that happened to a parent as your fault and you start carrying blame and guilt from a really young age.

When your guardians later then encourage this behavior it becomes a pattern in you. You start feeling guilty for people’s emotions, maybe they could have told you to tone down your intelligence, or your bright personality so that a sibling didn’t feel outshined. They teach you that you are responsible for how other people (your sibling in this case) feel about themselves. So later in life when someone isn’t confident with their body or they don’t feel intelligent enough we tend to feel guilty and sometimes even take the blame. 

How does it affect us?

Constantly feeling guilt not only lowers our vibration but can make us come off as a little bit egocentric. This is because we think that we influence everything around us and that we have a big effect on how people feel.

Guilt also brings us down constantly because we are shifting our energy and our attention to other people and other things rather than focusing it on ourselves.

It also takes a big toll on our mental health and eventually on our physical health. With this guilt, people become constant worriers and even codependents. They try to start healing and solving other people’s problems so they can feel worthy and eliminate that feeling of guilt. It can progress to consume our mind and daily thoughts. 

What can we do to avoid it?

Ultimately guilt is a way of limiting yourself from being happy. It is a response of the body when it feels that you are being too much or are doing too great that you start feeling guilty about how the people around you feel about your success or with your happiness. Your body subconsciously, with the learned childhood response is trying to limit your happiness or how well you do in life.

To avoid it we have to look at it as a trauma. Since it is an inner child wound it needs to be treated by healing and soothing our younger selves. This can be done with a therapist or by yourself with a journal. The following activity requires some introspection and honesty on your part to heal this wound. 

Here are some journal prompts you can use to further understand where your guilt comes from and how you can soothe your inner child (can also be used as shadow work):

1. When you feel your happiest do you find yourself asking yourself why do you deserve it?
2. As a child, were you ever compared with someone else (maybe a sibling) that made you feel uncomfortable? Why do you think you were feeling uncomfortable?
3. What abilities did you have as a child that others didn’t that made you feel different from the rest in any way? Did anyone show jealousy for these abilities?
4. Were you constantly judged by your peers as a child? Did this make you feel guilty about judging others or did it make you judge others?
5. Do you see yourself as a really empathetic person? Why is that? Can you pinpoint an early memory of this?
6. When you feel guilty what is your automatic response? Do you put yourself down or do you praise others? Maybe both?