“Oh guilt oh guilt wherefore thou art be
thou be bent at destroying cells of me
lain lifeless tired bare bereft of soul
for a past long gone still renders too fearful
me to be”
We are tired. We ache. We pain. We make amends. We try. We cry. We learn. We renew. We take classes. We self improve. We self care. We journal. We write. We heal. BUT,
We still feel a guilt that won’t shift, it nudges till we start to behave and act guilty. We know not the reason we feel this way. We either shut down, say no to any “help”, lest it intrude on the space so it seems, but really, we hide behind the guilt we feel and are too scared someone will find out, someone will tell on us, unveil our skeletons. Or, we over explain ourselves, we talk too much, listen less, speak before the other person gets a chance to cop us out on anything, so we cover all possible points of entry into what we really conceal – a guilt.
We feel the guilt. Yet nothing at all seems to make that feeling warranted. We have certainly not hurt anyone deliberately or done anything to feel this way. So, why then does this feeling come about? And mostly we don’t even know that we feel guilty. We are simply on automatic mode either:
Talking too much
Over explaining
Shutting down
Overwhelmed
Needing space
Shying away from any intimacy
Being too open
Overly extending oneself
Giving more than receiving
Receiving more than giving
Keeping all at arms length
The list above is not exhaustive but a taster of what the symptoms of a “guilt” syndrome might look like.
You search your life and still find no answers about why you either run away and hide or chase to and flaunt.
Did your caregivers ever give you ultimatums? Perhaps they chided admonished or scolded even beat you? Did you understand why? Were you always scared of being found out? Did you always “obey”? Did you rebel or did you get worried even when you acted within the rules and framework of the care setting?
Here is where the seeds of guilt are planted. If you are a parent now, and have a child under three years of age, notice whether they have a look of “oh oh mama I think you won’t like this” or “oh oh I did a booboo”. If this happens, go back into your self and check in to see when you might have planted a seed of shame and guilt. We want our children to explore without feeling guilt but have a sense of healthy shame as their compass to what’s appropriate safe and within bounds that say you can be yourself as long as we are safe and healthy. Again this is subjective and you decide.
It is the toxic guilt and shame that starts to shape our adult lives and one that we need to get to the root of to heal. For now, focus on rewiring your brain and giving it a new map of you, including a new measure of guilt and shame. There is no real need to judge or blame your caregivers. You just need to shift the focus away from you having done anything wrong because you have not. Nobody has. It’s just you taking control of your brain mapping and resetting it. The emotion of blame and getting angry helps in bringing some motion to this process. For the brain to rewrite it needs a feeling. You can work with the feeling alone and meditate on this.
The problem with suffering from a guilt syndrome is that your mind will create situations in which you feel a past guilt, so you are getting guilty on purpose to mirror the past, to heal. Stop the cycle now.
Heal your timelines.
Guilt comes from a survival instinct. As soon as we are born human, that’s the first feat of survival. We have survived the animal in us and become human. The animal needs to feel safe and in that safety comes the human. Once you are human, you can then think about divinity. Till then it’s an academic exercise akin to doing all that learning in school revision and gaining no real learning just memorising.
It is because of the survival instinct that it is vital a child to the age of 7 is the focus of the caregiver and given all the space they need to explore and fundamentally feel safe to be. This safety to be will allow the adult child to thrive without any guilt.
Please leave any feedback or get in touch here or at www.whollyparents.com for more in-depth analysis.
Till then, sending you lots of detached concern.