Guilt’s an unpleasant sensation. It’s a nagging voice in your gut, telling you that you’ve done something wrong. And when it comes to owning up to bad behaviour, acknowledged guilt means you take responsibility for that. It’s an important and necessary emotion.
The time you snaffled a packet of biscuits as a kid might have led to guilty feelings. And if it stopped you doing it the next time, or got you to own up to the crime, it’s done its work.
But there’s another type of guilty feeling that, as an adult, often inhabits the same space. It wears the same clothes as regular guilt, but underneath it has a twisted form. It’s a sensation that hovers around you like a crowd of flies – that something wrong, maybe everything wrong, is your fault. And as horrible as it is, it feels exquisite in its lacerations, and it’s as addictive as sugar.
That guilt might be around your own mental health, physical health, appearance, finances, or domestic life. It might be connected to your children, or others in your family. Guilty feelings have long tentacles. From climate change to last night’s dinner, there’s no limit to the terribleness you can feel over what you didn’t do, what you should have done, and how you ought to fix it now.
It's easy to find advice telling you that feeling guilty is pointless. You know that already. Yet there the badness comes again, waking you up in the middle of the night, all the things that could be your fault circulating your brain like a demented carousel.
There’s a deeper truth at work here, and the reason why this type of guilt is exquisite in its awfulness: it’s better than the alternative. Blaming yourself makes you believe that change is under your control. But it also removes responsibility for effecting that change. Guilt is the penance you carry that enables you to continue the same broken path.
Eaten ten cream cakes in a row? If you feel guilty, you can do the same next week. If you refuse to feel bad, but know it wasn’t helpful, then there’s only one answer: stop.
It’s the same with more serious problems. That doesn’t mean they have a neat solution – it’s because many issues contain tricky, uncomfortable answers that you turn instead to the easy route of feeling bad. To tackle change, there’s often a web of childhood messaging, current challenges, societal norms, and much more to untangle first.
There’s also a nuanced dialogue that’s needed between what’s your appropriate responsibility, how much you can do, and why you want to do it. Is it a negative impetus, so you no longer feel guilty, or a positive one? Either way, it’s good to acknowledge. And if you decide that you’re not ready for a transformational shift, that’s OK too – sometimes, cream cakes are the only way through.
If you’re a normal human, you’ve been guilty of feeling guilty – I know I certainly have. But if you can think of the sensation as a signpost – disguised as a cloud of flies you can’t shake off – then work out what it’s trying to tell you. Its message may be deeper than you think.
© Stephanie Lam 2024 Stephanie Lam is a writer and coach, based in the UK. She writes for Breathe magazine and Gather magazine, and works with people and businesses who value wellbeing and open-heartedness. Find out more on her website stephanielam.co.uk, follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stephanie_lam_1/, or connect on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanielam-uk
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