Guilt: Why it’s hard to forgive yourself?
Do you ever feel like you've done something wrong, and no matter what you do, you can’t break the emotional pain of your mistake?
Guilt is one of the most common emotions that people experience (but rarely talk about.) So if you're ready to begin to heal your pain, let's explore this often-overlooked emotion.
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What is guilt?
Guilt is a painful emotional response to regret, dislike, or embarrassment for an action you have performed or failed to perform.
The feelings are hard to get rid of because they involve a lack of trust in yourself (this can be a hard pill to swallow.) Your lack of trust in yourself leads to you questioning your decisions and judgments. It does not feel good to not know whether you made a good decision or not (or to secretly feel like you messed up.)
Your mind will keep replaying your past actions, focusing on what you have done wrong and criticizing you for it.
What is the cycle of guilt?
Guilt sends painful shocks throughout your body (like any injury) your body and mind will protect themselves.
When negative thoughts of guilt flood your mind, you begin to experience physical discomfort: muscle tightness, headache, nausea, crying, feeling faint ect... You will try to get rid of these uncomfortable sensations. Your protective actions lead to you suppressing, denying, and avoiding the feelings you are experiencing.
The cycle of guilt is based upon the actions your take once the painful emotions arise, these behaviors fuel the cycle.
How does guilt affect the brain?
When you feel guilty, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is activated.
This is the body's stress response system. The HPA axis is responsible for the release of cortisol which is often referred to as the "stress hormone." Your body will respond by activating the fight/flight or freeze behavioral response.
Cortisol will drive the actions that lead to you protecting yourself when feelings of guilt arise.
What are the types of guilt responses?
Guilt leads to physical and emotional discomfort which motivates a person to want to relieve their suffering.
Your response to guilt is based upon two things.
To whom do you assign blame (yourself or others) regarding the hurtful actions that lead to you feeling guilty?
What is your expected response from others to your negative emotions?
Based upon the work of Melanie Klein a person's response to guilt falls into two categories: mature guilt response and immature guilt response.
Immature Guilt:
Immature guilt responses develop early in childhood.
They emerge when a person feels unsupported following the occurrence of a negative experience. It results in the belief that you are to blame. At the core are two beliefs. “I have done something wrong” and “When I am punished or treated badly it is because I have done something wrong.” This leads to the development of self-blame.
As an adult, you may continue to struggle with immature beliefs of self-blame.
When you believe you have done something wrong. You will blame yourself and feel like a bad person who can never do things correctly. You will begin to emotionally feel bad and your response will be to protect yourself from these feelings. Your protective behavioral response may be to become angry, avoid your thoughts, or avoid people.
Your response will be actions that pull you away from others but protect you from your deep-seated beliefs of shame.
Mature Guilt:
Mature guilt is based on feelings of responsibility and compassion.
Mature guilt is something that is cultivated and develops over time in a supportive environment. If you receive acceptance and kindness after negative experiences it will allow you to feel safe and acknowledge your shame. This will allow you to take responsibility for your actions and share them with others.
One big sign of mature guilt is being able to reach out to others for support when you feel shame.
Shame becomes a signal that you have made a mistake that needs to be remedied. You then seek support and guidance from others due to believing they will respond in a calm, supportive manner to your negative feelings. You are able to use this support to mend relations or fix mistakes you have made.
Your response to shame leads to actions that improve your relationship with yourself and others.
How do you express feelings of guilt in immature ways?
Guilt can be difficult to communicate.
You may avoid talking about the things you feel guilty about. This can be based on your belief that others will judge you negatively. This leads to you feeling ashamed or embarrassed about your actions and not expressing your negative experiences.
One big way people avoid talking about guilty feelings is to deflect or change the subject.
Other times you keep perseverating about negative experiences.
Sometimes when you feel guilty you try to convince yourself and others that you have done nothing wrong. You may have an impulse to express what has happened by defending yourself and your actions. This is an attempt to clear your conscience and make yourself feel better.
Immature guilt responses are based upon an internal struggle of self-blame and believing that it is not acceptable to do things incorrectly.
Where do feelings of guilt come from?
Guilt originates from your interpretation of negative experiences.
Step One: Interpretation
How do you interpret the causes of negative experiences? Do you blame yourself for the negative experience happening? Do others blame you for them happening?
Step Two: Responsibility
Do you take responsibility for the occurrence of the negative experience? How do you make sense of your feelings and what is occurring around you?
Step Three: Proof
When a challenging situation arises in your life, do you begin to recall your past mistakes? Does this provide evidence as to why you make poor decisions?
In the past, if you felt unsupported after a negative experience this may have led to you living a life where mistakes are unacceptable and unforgivable.
How to let go of guilt?
Step one: Identify your emotions.
Are you feeling depressed or anxious? If you are, spend time journaling about experiences that are leading to your negative emotions. Allow yourself to write with as much detail as possible.
Step two: Identify why you may be feeling the way you are feeling.
Review your writing and identify times when you had guilty feelings. Begin exploring your thoughts surrounding your feelings of guilt. Why do you feel bad? What negative thoughts are going through your mind?
Step three: Identify a supportive person in your life.
It is important to have a supportive person to share your experiences with. This can be a friend, family member, or mental health professional. Your recovery is based on having a person to support you in your journey.
Why is it hard to forgive yourself?
It is hard to forgive yourself if you are caught in a cycle of guilt.
You may feel that your mistakes are unforgivable and you may be flooded with physical pain and discomfort that make you want to get rid of these bad sensations. You use the experience of present discomfort and past negative memories as proof that your mistakes are unforgivable.
Begin to explore your inner world.
You can break the cycle of guilt.
Are you suffering from Anxiety?
Get this tool to help !!!
Citation:
Bastin, C., Harrison, B. J., Davey, C. G., Moll, J., & Whittle, S. (2016). Feelings of shame, embarrassment and guilt and their neural correlates: A systematic review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 71, 455–471. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.09.019
Michl, P., Meindl, T., Meister, F., Born, C., Engel, R. R., Reiser, M., & Hennig-Fast, K. (2014). Neurobiological underpinnings of shame and guilt: A pilot fMRI study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(2), 150–157. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss114
Robertson, T. E., Sznycer, D., Delton, A. W., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2018). The true trigger of shame: Social devaluation is sufficient, wrongdoing is unnecessary. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(5), 566–573. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.05.010
Sznycer, D., Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., Porat, R., Shalvi, S., & Halperin, E. (2016). Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201514699. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1514699113
Sznycer, D. (2019). Forms and Functions of the Self-Conscious Emotions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 143–157. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.11.007
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