Are there things in your past that you feel guilty about? Do you feel guilty when say no to others? Does your feelings of guilt stop you from feeling happy and confident? You certainly are not alone!

People exist at different spectrum of complex emotions. On one hand, there are those who may lead their lives free of any kind of sense of accountability or guilt. On the other hand, there are others who are constantly haunted by the “could haves” and “should haves”. As a result, they feel miserable and stuck so much so that they are unable to move forward in life.

Consequently, unfounded or excessive guilt destroys confidence, happiness and relationships. This makes one wonder:

• What purpose does guilt serve in our life?
•  Is guilty an entirely negative and useless emotion?

Why Do We Feel Guilty

We feel guilty when we don’t live up to a norm or expectation (our own or of others). For examples,

• You forgot your mom’s birthday or your marriage anniversary and you feel guilty subsequently.
• You cheated on your diet and feel bad about your lack of control.
• You bought yet another pair of shoes on your credit card and feel ashamed about your shopping binge.
• You forgot to pay the bill on time and are now beating yourself about the arrears.
• You had to say no to a coffee date with a friend at the last moment and are feeling ashamed consequently.
• You yelled on your noisy child and feel sad and inadequate as a parent as a result.
• You couldn’t make dinner last night and feel guilty around your spouse who works equally hard.
• You ended up binge watching your favorite show instead of studying and are now feeling guilty and panicky about your deadline.

The Purpose of Guilt in Life

Guilt is a positive and healthy emotion. Because if you have done something wrong then the feeling of guilt gives you the chance to rectify the mistake.

How Much Guilt is Normal or Healthy?

How intensely you feel guilty about something determines your peace of mind and your general outlook about life.

Do you feel too much of guilt, too little of it, or no guilt at all about things?

All these are extreme emotions. They either make you feel bad or they make others feel bad. But they don’t serve any constructive purpose in your life. In fact, they slowly eat away your happiness or peace of mind and even impact your physical health.

How to Stop Feeling Guilty and Reclaim Your Joy

It is up to us to take charge of your situation in life and our emotions, instead of it being the other way around. Instead of letting guilt corrode your peace of mind and emotional and physical well-being, use this emotion to improve your life. Here is how:

Assess

Determining the root cause behind your guilt will help you deal with it effectively.

• Understand why you are feeling guilty about something.
• Did you do something wrong actually, or you are feeling that you did something wrong? In fact, this feeling could be nothing but “false guilt”, i.e., you feel guilty even though you haven’t done anything wrong in life.

Guilt and “false guilt” are different: our feelings can be colored and misplaced because they are based on our perceptions or the expectations people have from us.

Our feelings of guilt can also be rooted in our familial, cultural and societal upbringing.

For instance,

• You should cook all the meals for your children.
• Your house should be speck and span all the time.
• Your weight should be this much.
• Your complexion and body shape should be of such type.
• You should get settled at this point in time.
• You should be there for everyone, all the time.

Every time you fail to meet a certain set rule, notions, and standards, you end up feeling guilty. Therefore, once you learn to unearth the source of your guilt, your specific triggers, you would be able to deal with them in a better way.

Make Amends

If you have done something wrong to someone, a family member, your friend, a coworker, even the random person driving ahead of you, try to apologize and make amends.

• Send your mom or spouse or fried an “I am sorry” card.
• Do a few extra push ups to make up for the cake slice you indulged in.
• Get rid of your card or donate a clothing item to make up for the shopping splurge.
• Save a reminder on your phone for due dates of utility bills and payments.
• Hug your child, say sorry and have a one to one mommy and me date with your child.
• Cook your spouse his favorite meal.
• Switch off your wifi, work late and finish the pending work.

Above all, try not to repeat the same mistakes again and again.

Adjust and Normalize Things and Feelings

Most of the times, we feel guilty because

• We set unrealistic goals.
• We erect impossible standards for ourselves.
• We want to be perfect.
• We want to be in everyone’s good books.
• We ignore our unique circumstances.

 This notion and quest for perfection brings us nothing but misery. So, try to set realistic standards and goals for yourself and expectations from yourself.

• Don’t be too hard on yourself.
• Forgive yourself like you need to forgive others.
• Do whatever you can manage within your power, energy and means and let the rest go!
• Have grace!

Communicate with Others (And Yourself)

Equally importantly, you should also communicate to others the reason behind an unmet expectation or unbecoming behavior. Firstly, tell them if you were busy, occupied elsewhere, worried about something else, tired, hungry, sleep-derived, stressed, etc. Secondly, assure them that you won’t repeat your behavior, you would be mindful and you would try to make amends.

Also, it is equally important to tell your guilt-prone self that you can’t do it all, you can’t have it all. And that your perfectionist self has to make do with doing a little bit lesser.

The Take-Away

Guilt is a complex and uncomfortable emotion that most of us feel. There are a lot of reasons why we feel guilty. When you separate real guilt from the perceived notions of guilt, you are able to use this powerful emotion to rectify your mistakes and take charge of your peace of mind.