how can you turn guilt into a more productive emotion?

There is a lot of talk about guilt. A lot of people feel guilty when they are not at fault because of patterns that have been started during their childhood.

We all want to heal those people pleaser tendencies that make us take emotional blame for things that happen to others.

Or put other people before us when it is clear that our needs should’ve come first because we would feel guilty.

But what happens when you are at fault?

What happens when you DID do something wrong? When you DID hurt someone else’s feelings even though it wasn’t intentional? Or when you did say stuff that you knew would hurt because you were angry?

How is guilt different?

Do you go on google and search: how to not be angry anymore? Maybe yes, but guilt huts different. It is vibrationally lower than anger or sadness and therefore it can feel horrific.

The biggest difference is that with anger and sadness things happen to us. I feel angry because THEY screamed at me. I feel sad because THEY cheated on me.

They are emotions that reflect on what others did to us or things that happened to us. While guilt is an emotion that reflects on what WE did to others.

What happens when we feel guilty?

It is important to remember that guilt like any other emotion is meant to be felt.

This guilt might cause us to apologize, make it up to someone or fix what we did. But sometimes that won’t be enough, the damage was done and the only thing left to do is sit with our guilt.

And how do we do that, what are we even supposed to do? Literally that. Sit with the guilt, you don’t have to do anything, just exist and feel it.

Feel where it is in your body, how it moves, its texture and its colour. Picture it. This will be hard to do as it is a very tough emotion but it is necessary because the more you avoid it the more it will eat your brain.

Another thing that works is journaling. This can help you let go of this feeling of guilt with still feeling sorry or regretful. Because let’s be honest, when we do something bad we feel like we deserve that feeling of guilt.

We use it as a punishment for what we have done and we dwell on it as we stick it deeper into us.

But it is not about deserving it or not, it’s about dealing with the whole situation healthily. Because who does guilt help? No one.

So let’s go through that guilt, feel it and see if we can transform it into something more healthy and productive.

I’m going to give you a few prompts to explore this guilt when you are at fault:

1. Write about what has caused you to feel guilty.
2. How did you feel at that moment? When did you start feeling the guilt?
3. Have you done something to mend the situation you feel guilty about? (i.e. apologize, gifts e.t.c.)
4. What is the script/movie constantly going on in your head that keeps you in that emotion?
5. How can I transfer the power that I’m giving to guilt to another emotion? (Sadness, regret?)
6. Create a script/movie that shows you how you have done everything in your power and that getting forgiveness from someone is out of your control

Sometimes what keeps us in that feeling of guilt is someone refusing to forgive us. And that is okay, people don’t need to forgive us. That is outside of our control. We don’t know how the other person is dealing with their emotions and that is their business, not ours.

So let everything flow, handle what you can out of the situation and what you can’t try to process it. If you want to show the person that you are sorry start by making amends, don’t say, do things.

Create boundaries and rules that you both can follow so that a situation like the one that happened doesn’t happen again. Do this when you have transformed your emotion into feeling sorry or regretful. Don’t do it from guilt.