"Before You Put the Cuffs On...."

I want you to ask yourself, "Did I actually do anything wrong?" This is often the counsel I give to clients who are struggling with guilt. The definition of guilt as written in  Webster's Dictionary: "the fact of having committed a legal offense // the fact of having transgressed the moral law // a feeling of culpability." In my "Dictionary of Emotions by Patrick Michael Ryan," he lists guilt as: "remorse caused by feeling responsible for some offense."  In either example, there is the element of having made some form of a transgression that elicited the feeling of guilt as a direct consequence of the mistake. Seems pretty straight forward, right? And yet many of us struggle deeply with this emotion. Guilt is actually one of our healthy emotions because it allows us to repair. But we also learn a lot about guilt growing up; from our caregivers, our communities such as school or church, our extended family and so forth. If one of the people in our life used guilt as a way to elicit compliance, then it can sometimes become a default setting for us. So before you put the cuffs on, ask yourself "Is this guilt warranted?" "Did I do something wrong?" "Did I hurt someone's feelings by my words or my actions?" And if you did, fix it. Say you're sorry, ask for understanding, reflect on how you can change that behaviour in the future. If the answer; however, brings you to the conclusion that you, in fact, did not do anything wrong but rather have slid into default guilt, then acknowledge that too. Take a deep breath and remind yourself, "I didn't do anything wrong in this situation. It is what it is, I am going to move on" and let Officer Guilt know on the way out the door that he had the wrong suspect. :) Photo by niu niu on Unsplash