Dad's Learning Volume 23: Good Guilt
There is guilt that is appropriate. It is brought on by ignoring what we know is right.
No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Guilty Verdict
What an odd concept. Guilt, often defined as being shown to have done something wrong, normally applied to an individual. Guilt is blameworthiness. As an emotion it is acid, much like anger and unforgiveness. It is self-consciousness at a level that is dangerous to our mental health due to the distress it levies on us who hold on too long.
But guilt is not without use. There is good guilt, which should be referred to as appropriate guilt, and there is bad guilt or inappropriate guilt. When you are gaslit or guilt tripped, that’s inappropriate guilt. It should be self-evident but when you’re torn by guilt it is difficult to see. Guilt you hold onto, despite making amends including accepting responsibility for causing the event which caused you to incur the guilt debt and remedying whatever gap in understanding or character deficit led to it, that’s also inappropriate.
But until a time comes where the learning from your mistake has occurred or until you have recognized the appropriate guilt is from something YOU did, it will stay and it should stay. We need to recognize our mistakes if for no other reason than to learn from them and avoid them later.
I was under the impression I should never release my grip on guilt for fear of repeating my mistakes. That’s not the way this works. Of course, that’s a possibility. There are always many possibilities. But if you learn, truly learn and understand what led to what may have caused your guilt, you must let it go. You must let it go before it turns back on you. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Which is awful. But it’s a call for redemption as well. Allow yourself grace so you may live. It’s as simple as that. You are human like everyone else. Anybody that expects you to be perfect is imperfect for doing so. Do your thing, make mistakes, atone and learn, then do your thing again but better.
If you want help releasing guilt, look around you. Look at everything, big and small. Notice your breathing and your heart pumping. Notice your visual faculties, considering you’re reading this, and notice you exist. Be thankful for that, practice gratitude. It may be possible to overcome burdensome guilt some other way but it wasn’t for me. The gratitude I practice now has filled the vacuum guilt had previously been used to fill. There was a gap in my being and I allowed self-loathing to be the plaster. Now it is replaced with a feeling of thankfulness for all that I have and it is a far lighter plaster, let me tell you.
Gratitude allowed me to see my mistakes as lessons, not regretful events I should feel guilty about.
Love,
Dad
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Dad
This is very similar to a lesson I gave to the young men at church a few years ago, about how sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Too many hold onto mistakes they made, well after it has stopped being productive to do so.
I find it helpful to ask myself something along the lines of, "If the roles were reversed, and someone else made the effort I made to make it right, make amends, apologize, etc, would I feel justified still being angry with them?" If the answer is a clear no, why am I still angry or upset with myself?
Always easier said than done.