If Guilt Threatens To Strangle Us

Most of us go through life with feelings of guilt in some form or another. We can let our guilt, like a boa constrictor, strangle the life out of us or we can make practical and realistic efforts to discover the causes of our guilt and determine what we can do about it.

Do we feel guilty because of something wrong or immoral that we have done; something that we didn’t do and should’ve done; have we let other people down, or have we not met others expectations? Worse still is not meeting our own expectations. Are we our own worst critic; have we not met our own personal standards, or have we magnified out of proportion what we think we have done? If so, it may be that our personal expectations of ourselves are unrealistically high.

Our consciousness and our values are what bring about our feelings of guilt. These feelings are normal. Extreme feelings of guilt are another story and can exasperate feelings of depression, low self-esteem and low self-confidence.

Some of my own feelings of guilt are because I went to work while my youngest was still young. I had stayed home with his three older brothers and his sister. I felt the loss more than he so I carry the guilt for not having been home to look after him as well. He, when asked, said he does not feel deprived and has grown up to be a very well-adjusted and social person.

Another guilt I am feeling is the necessity of having to set boundaries with my aging mother. Boundaries in our lives are necessary for our own emotional health and well-being but when our parents become elderly, setting boundaries is a difficult thing to do. Do setting personal boundaries become selfish when it involves the elderly and the ill? Our inner critic may tell us they are. Do others expect more from us than what we are doing? Or are the expectations we think others have of us really of our own making about what we think we should be doing? Are our feelings of guilt always logical or realistic? Only we can make that decision.

None of us is perfect and not one of us can be expected to be. Once we can accept that, we can stop beating ourselves up.