The key to unlock guilt - what are you really feeling?

Do you feel guilt on a regular basis?

Does it control and manipulate you?

Does it paralyse and stop you doing things you want to do?

Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion. - Lynn Crilly

One day when I was at my acupuncturist, I mentioned feelings of guilt, and he told me that guilt wasn’t a real emotion; it was an emotion that covered other emotions and asked me what I was really feeling. I thought about it, and that day it was fear and sadness.

It made me think about all the times I had felt guilt – which was quite a lot in my life as my mother used it as a tool to get her way through my entire childhood. She was a master manipulator in making me feel bad about myself so I would do what she wanted. This developed into me becoming a people pleaser, always sacrificing my own feelings for others, and feeling guilty if I didn’t.

It was revolutionary for me to realise that guilt wasn’t really an emotion, that every time I felt it I was really suppressing another emotion. With my mother it was mostly shame and fear. Shame being: what made me so important to put myself first? How could I think so highly of myself? Doing so was shameful, so I had to relent to others, meaning her. And fear: what would she do if I didn’t? What words or actions would she take to hurt me?

With my husband it was fear too, and sadness; fear that I would lose him if I didn’t act differently or do what he wanted - not that he was asking or forcing me to do anything because by then it had become an automatic response. And sadness that I wasn’t able to connect in our relationship as much as I wanted and needed.

Guilt is always hungry, don't let it consume you. - Terri Guillemets

​In deciphering guilt I was able to decipher my true feelings and release the paralysis that guilt often brings. I was able to take action and go about resolving the feelings, whether just by thinking through them, or by being able to do something about the real emotion I was feeling. It was the key to unlocking my guilt.

My feelings of guilt had also led to suppressed anger, anger which had been destructive in my life and relationships, stopping me from being able to connect properly and engage in ways that were healthy and constructive. So in understanding the truth behind my feelings of guilt, I was also able to resolve a great deal of my anger, which was mostly directed at myself for giving in to others all the time.   

So next time you find yourself feeling guilty about something, ask yourself, what am I really feeling? And try and name those feelings. If you can identify your true feelings you can take action to respond to them differently.

The guilt you feel finally comes to an end when you fully express how it came into your consciousness. - Luke Garne

Comparison - how to stop it, and live the life you want

Do you wonder how others do things? 

Do you see it as a failure on your part if you aren't doing things the way others are?

Comparison can be positive when it is in analysis of statistics to gain more information, or in decision making. But when used to compare ourselves to others, or comparing someone else’s life to our own can often lead to negative feelings like regret, frustration, sadness, depression, even anxiety.

We all get stuck in the trap of comparing ourselves to others from time to time, whether materialistic things or not. We've all coveted a neighbour’s garden, car, or holiday. We’ve all looked at someone’s success and compared it to our own, and been left disappointed with what we’ve achieved.

“The reason we struggle so much with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlights reel.”- Steve Furtick

Those are clear cut examples of comparison, but there is a more insidious kind that is almost unconscious. It lies in conditioning within our society and culture, and is when we don’t do what the herd does, or matches what the herd does, and we are ousted and excluded, or ridiculed.

The pressure to stand true to ourselves is hard. If we think differently, take different actions, or desire different things, from tiny things to how you live your day to day life, run your household, do your job, raise your children, to how you respond to people, how open you are, how you see things from another perspective. It can be difficult. 

But the truth is we are not all the same, and not just in likes and dislikes and preferences, but in how we receive information, how we process things, how we respond or react to things. And this can make it so much harder, and cause us to be harder on ourselves.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Teddy Roosevelt

A recent chat with a friend was a prime example of this. They felt they could not meditate, because they weren’t doing it ‘right’, because they were unable to follow online meditations due to struggling with visualisation.

Not everyone sees in pictures, some people see in words. My friend is an incredible poet, but felt limited because she couldn't conjure up the images the person narrating the meditation suggested. She felt she was wrong, or there was something wrong with her that she wasn't able to do this. But I told her that that is not the case; everyone has their own way, and not everyone can visualise and that’s normal. I could the relief in her face.

I see it in books I read on self-help, too, especially those that have a spiritual basis. Some of them define ways you should see/feel/process things. They are written as though it is only that way. But every person has their own way; they process things in their own way. They imagine things and relate to things differently; symbols mean different things to each individual.

These are external small pressures we as individuals often feel, and they can mount up. Small ways we feel we don’t fit into the crowd and are failing somehow.

With some people it can make them angry, and resentful, even causing them to reject an entire community, topic, or convention; wasting time and energy being hateful towards it or complaining about it. Others might view this behaviour as bitter or jealous, yet really it is a reaction to feeling insecure. They might like to be a part of it, but they don’t fit with the expected behaviour/method/thought process. They struggle to adjust to what is required. They haven’t worked out how they can encompass it in a way that works for them. This can lead to isolation, depression, or feeling ostracised.

“Don’t compare your life to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and moon. They shine when it’s their time.” – Abhishek Chauhan

So how do we stop feeling this way? How do we stop comparing ourselves?

We start by recognising when we are making those comparisons, and the negative or limiting impact they have on us. Identifying the areas they show up in and assessing how we feel about them.

When you look at others and what they are doing, and maybe feel anxious that you are not where they are, tell yourself, I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m okay with where I am at. I don’t need to be there, or doing that. Reaffirm your own goals, and your own steps, as well as acknowledging the achievements you have made.

Only compare in a positive way, in a way that inspires you to better yourself. If you look at what someone is doing, you might think, ‘I want to do that too.’ But rather than then look at it as a failure that you are not,  look at how they are doing whatever it is you want to be doing, ask questions, get informed about how to go about - decide if it really is what you want to be doing, and then make your own way there. Use them as a positive role model.

Don’t let external pressures dictate who you want to be and how you want to show up. Take pride in your uniqueness.

Find your own way. Cherry pick if you like. Find what suits you.

Remind yourself there is no right or wrong way - only the way that works for you.

This your journey, your path, not theirs. 

You deserve to be seen. You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be known for the real deal that you are. The best place in life is where you’re already okay. Come home to you. It’s where you belong.” - Anne Bechard

Are you really listening? How to actively listen

Do you ever walk away from a conversation and can’t remember what the other person has said?

Do you ever leave a social gathering & realise you didn’t ask the questions you wanted?

Have you ever had a friend say they told you something important but you don’t remember?

I have. 

I’ve had this happen multiple times. And every time I realised I wasn’t listening properly. I was so busy forming my responses, or telling them about myself, I totally missed what they actually said. And although they might have thought otherwise, it was not intentional.

If people keep asking me questions about me, it doesn’t occur to me that they might just be being polite, I get lost in talking about whatever they are asking me. And when they are talking about something, I find myself searching for a situation in my life that I can relate to it and respond with.

But when a friend said she had told me something personal and I had no recollection of it, I started to worry about this. And then when I walked away from social gatherings a few times and realised I hadn’t asked about someone about something that was going on with them, I realised I needed to make a change. 

I needed to learn how to Actively Listen.

“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” - Bryant H. McGill

I am a big talker; I can talk on any given topic for ages, and I have to be careful not to interrupt others or talk over them. It is something I have had to train myself into. 

And what triggered my understanding of why I incessantly talk — especially in situations where I am nervous — was when someone said ‘you weren’t listened to as a child, were you?’ It stopped me in my tracks, because it was true.

My childhood was not an easy one. I am a child of domestic violence and for the latter part of my childhood we moved around constantly. I had one parent interacting with me on a daily basis, in neither a positive or nurturing way. They weren’t really interested in me, they were very focused on themselves and their situation. They certainly had no interest in anything I had to say (and that hasn’t change into adulthood).

I began to realise I was always talking, trying to either impart my opinion and/or receive some kind of response to it. I used talking as a way to try and make a connection, be accepted and approved of and also gauge if my thoughts and opinions were ‘normal’, because my isolated childhood meant I had no gauge. 

My inability to listen was because no one had listened to me. Fortunately this was something I could change.

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” - Ralph Nichols

There are four main ways we show we are actively listening to someone. They are:

Eye contact

Looking at the person who is speaking to you in the eye, keeps your mind focused on what they are saying, rather than looking away at people around you, or at the clock. Looking at everything other than the person indicates you are not interested in what they have to say and are just waiting for them to finish. 

Body language

Much like the eyes, body language denotes engagement: facing the person, legs crossed towards them, staying still and not fidgeting. 

Verbal response

In person, but especially when on the phone with them, making sounds is important, it shows you are listening and paying attention to their words. It can be just a simple acknowledging sound, like ‘uh huh’ or it can be a word relating to what they are saying, or to prompt them to say more, like ‘and?’ or ‘and what happened then?’

Asking open questions that refer to what they said and waiting

Asking questions about what they have told you is a definitive acknowledgement of what they are telling you. But waiting for a response to your question, rather than using it to lead into something you want to talk about, is also paramount. You get to hear what they have said and hold onto it in your mind. 

“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” - Larry King

Learning to actively listen has also helped me be a better parent and make sure my children feel heard too, as my own experience has shown that it’s a necessary part of parenting. Whenever I found myself modeling my own parent’s behaviour I would remind myself of three things to help me: 

·         Put down or stop what you are doing 

·         Bend or crouch down if they are small children, so you are on their level 

·         Keep the tone of your voice low when asking them what they want to tell you

When going through this process I also maintain eye contact and repeat back to them what they had told me to confirm that they have been heard.

The payoff is that now my children are older, they feel they can approach me when they have something they want to tell me or speak to me about.

“Listening shows kids they matter, we love them, and their words are important.”

For more information about learning to actively listen, here’s an article by Tony Robbins on the power of deep listening that I found useful.

Mindset - Growth vs Fixed: How to literally change your mind

Do you believe you can only do things one way?

Do you believe that there’s a limit to what you can learn?

Do you believe you are only capable of doing certain things?

A common term these days is ‘Growth Mindset’. It's the new thing to be and to have, but what exactly is it? 

Mindset simply means the way you think or view things. Your mind is set a certain way; you think about things a certain way, or see them from a certain perspective, and your actions are dictated by what you think.

A ‘Growth Mindset’ means you are able to change your perception or view point and expand it to take on new ideas, concepts, and ways of doing things.

“If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” - Jesse Jackson

In contrast the term ‘Fixed Mindset’ means you are limited by what you believe you are capable of achieving or thinking - you are fixed in your thinking.

If you believe in certain ways of doing things or there is a limit to what you can learn, and are rigid in how you do them, and/or don’t believe there is another way for you, then you have a fixed mindset and you find it difficult to conceive that you could change that. This fixed thinking means you can’t grow or expand in what you can achieve or learn - or at least you don’t think you can.

“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations our possibilities become limitless.” - Jamie Paolinetti

In life this can either help or hinder, and it shows up in different ways.

You might have a dream about something you want to do, but if you don’t believe it is actually possible for you to achieve it, you won't take action to make that dream happen. It restricts you, and this can leave you unhappy, depressed, even anxious. You might even think there is no point in your life, leading to even darker thinking.

How we think about what we can and can’t do is affected by what others say and tell us, whether it’s parents, teachers or peers. It’s also by what we experience and what meaning we attach to that experience - whether it is something positive or negative – and this in turn can change the decisions when we make future choices.

“Growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.” - Carol Dweck

A mindset is a dialogue in our heads. We create this dialogue through our experiences and our feelings, and through what we hear and see externally; through how people treat us and respond to us.

If enough people tell us there is something wrong with us we might then believe it to be true, restricting and treating ourselves accordingly. If they tell us we can’t do something enough times, we might believe it.

But we can stop believing it by literally changing our minds. It’s all down to our internal dialogue. Nothing externally can change that, only we can.

“Change your thoughts, change your life.” - Wayne Dyer

A lot of the ways we limit ourselves are based in fear and comes from low self-esteem and self-doubt. If we are strong in our sense of self and who we are, and trust ourselves and listen to our hearts, we can be more open to change how we think.

We can start this by remembering these three things:

1.) You are not your thoughts

Thoughts are your minds way of processing your day, you don’t need to let them dictate how you feel. You can choose which thoughts to engage with and which ones to discard. But the thoughts you think the most in your conscious mind will feed what your subconscious repeats and delivers into the conscious mind, so the more you interrupt negative thoughts by challenging and replacing them with accurate, ‘true’ thoughts, the more you will train your subconscious into only throwing up helpful, supportive thoughts that will help you open up to what you really want to achieve.

2) You always have a choice

You can not change or control anyone or anything outside yourself. You can only control how you choose to react, and that is always a choice, whether you are aware of it or not (often we are not). You also don’t have to justify any of your life choices or actions either – a common misconception in our society. Only you need to be sure about what you are doing, and leading from the heart. If you are confident in your choices, those around you will be confident too.

3.) What you believe is how you live

The word 'believe' has two other words in it: 'be' and 'live' so what we believe is what we be and how we live. The world is open to you if you believe it is. You can achieve anything you want if you believe you can achieve it. You are only limited by what you believe is possible, and that is fed by your mind and thoughts.

Our internal dialogue can limit us if it is negative: we won’t believe we can do all the things we want to do, no matter how much someone else says we can, or what we witness others doing. Only if we believe it ourselves will we be able to achieve it.

We can feel restricted or we can feel limitless, the choice is ours.

Thus our minds are either fixed or growing - the choice is ours.

Whether you believe you can, or believe you can't, your right. - Henry Ford

Personally I like to believe we can change the stars!

Are you respecting yourself? How to appreciate YOU!

Do you feel people ignore you or don’t listen to what you say?

Do you feel unsupported and as though you’re not appreciated?

Do you get upset and frustrated by these feelings?

Do you dream of being valued and admired?

I do. I feel unappreciated and undervalued regularly. I feel unsupported by those around me and ignored generally. But what I’ve realised is that I’m the one who is ignoring me; I don’t appreciate or support myself emotionally, and I definitely struggle with valuing myself.

“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price”. – Unknown

Recently my husband did something minor that upset me and I thought to myself ‘he doesn’t respect me!’ But then I stopped and asked myself, is that true? And I realised it wasn’t. Then I thought about why I felt that way and asked myself, it’s you who isn’t respecting youself, isn’t it? I was reflecting how I felt about myself onto my husband.

You see, I’ve been working toward self-trust by feeling and listening to my feelings, setting boundaries and limits as a way to create self-confidence and self-assurance. I’ve been working on self-care and self-love to build myself up, but I hadn’t stopped to ask myself if I was proud of how far I’d come and earnt some self-respect through this process.

It hasn’t been easy. I’ve been angry at myself for a long time, especially about moving overseas for someone who I felt let down and unsupported by. And that anger has led to behavior that has damaged my marriage and affected my ability to parent effectively, frustrating my desire to be a calm interactive mum. And I’ve had a lot of feelings from my abusive childhood to confront and work through before I could begin on the current stuff. It’s been hard. 

So I ask myself: do I respect the effort I've made to repair the damage in my marriage and the commitment to being a better mum? And I realise I struggle with being proud of myself about anything.

So how do I change this and earn some self-respect? What do I need to do to change my thinking to achieve that?

“Self-respect, self-worth and self-love all start with self. Stop looking outside yourself for value.” - Rob Liano

I start by looking at how I approach the things I want to do. My expectations of myself are low. I accept that I am not disciplined or have no will-power to follow through as quickly as I would like. I avoid committing myself to anything - including my dreams. I delay and make excuses and procrastinate – a procrastination that’s based in fear.

But the fear is not about failure, it’s about success. If I succeed then I have to sustain that success and hold myself to a higher standard and have an expectation of myself. But what if I let myself down? What if I’m not good enough?

When I back-track the feeling of not being good enough, I arrive at my parents. As a child I wasn’t enough to get their attention or their interest, or hold it for more than a few minutes. Most of the time I felt like a burden – and they often told me I was. The wounds from that live on in my current life, showing up in the form of not feeling good enough in my present relationships or friendships. I feel undervalued and as though it is my fault in some way and that I’m doing something wrong. 

I am doing something wrong – I’m not respecting myself. 

I’m busy looking for validation or approval from them, rather than from myself. I’m waiting for other people to tell me I’m ok before I let myself feel ok. I’m forgetting that the only approval I need is mine; that the only person’s permission I need to feel good about myself is my own.

 “Respect yourself and others will respect you.” - Confusius

The next thing to do to start valuing myself is look at all the things I’ve achieved that I can be proud of, like giving up smoking, finishing my novel, and self-publishing a collection of my writing. But I need to also look at my day to day and all the things I do on a daily basis too.

A few years ago I worked through a book called ‘Have The Relationship You Want’ by Rori Raye. One of the chapters is called ‘Overfunctioning’, which offers an exercise where you write a list of all the things you do day to day and prioritise them from 1-4: 

1 = ‘must do’

2 = ‘can do but can let it slide’

3 = ‘not sure if that is for me to be doing’

4 = ‘it’s not my job’

When I first did this I was shocked at how much I did and how many things weren’t really my responsibility, as well as how many I could let go, or pass over to my husband. Doing this exercise again I see that I’m still doing a great deal.

So I need to acknowledge that and appreciate and value how much I am doing. Take a moment to feel good about that.

But is that all I need to do? Write a list and pat myself on the back and maybe do some positive affirmations and I’ll respect myself? No.

It goes deeper than that. I need to believe that my dreams and goals are inevitable and not a 'maybe or a ‘one day’ – that with persistent continuous action they WILL happen. I need to believe I have the determination and self-discipline to see them through.

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.” - Clint Eastwood

It’s only through action that I can earn my self-respect. I need to show myself that I take myself seriously. I need to value everything I do as well as acknowledge how much I do.

And not only the big achievements either; it can be small things too. Not just the publication of my book, but creating the schedule that I followed to keep writing regularly to complete that book.

This, coupled with a commitment to self-care, nurturing and loving myself, and not judging or critcising myself, can build a foundation of self-respect.

If I see what I can achieve and how capable I am, it will spark me to do more, rather than make excuses.

Self-confidence is the most attractive quality a person can have. How can anyone see how great you are, if you don’t see it yourself? - Unknown.

What is Integrity? How to Create Limits & Boundaries

Do you give in to what others want to keep the peace?

Do you compromise your feelings on a topic to avoid confrontation?

Does this make you lose respect for yourself?

Do you get angry with yourself afterwards?

Integrity is a word that gets used a great deal when talking about personal issues. People with integrity are considered people to aspire to and respect. But what is integrity, and how do we obtain it?

Integrity meaning: 1) the quality of being honest & morally upright; 2) the state of being whole or unified. (Oxford English Dictionary)

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I get so angry with myself, and mostly it’s because I’ve said yes to something I don’t really want to do. I say yes because I feel guilty if I say no. Maybe the other person wants to do it and I feel like I am stopping them if I don’t; maybe I feel like I am disappointing them if I don’t. Either way I’ll agree to things to keep the peace, to try and please someone, but I end up annoyed with myself.

I’ve spent a lot of time working out how to start listening to myself and my feelings, and learning to trust myself and put myself first, but I have struggled to do that when it comes to interacting with other people. On my own I am quite firm, but with other people, especially those close to me like my husband and my children, I will let their wishes override mine because otherwise I feel like I’m being mean or selfish. But it hasn’t helped me – or them. I have ended up becoming frustrated with myself, and angry with them. And then no one has a good time.

What I realised I needed to do was set personal limits and boundaries. And on the face of it, that seemed quite simple. But it is not just setting up rules for yourself, saying, ‘I’ll accept this, but not that’, ‘I’m okay with this, but not that’ – although that can work - it goes deeper, it is about your sense of self and your personal identity. And I realised that was what people meant when they talked about ‘integrity’. 

“Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity.” – Erich Fromm

It wasn’t just about setting some rules and teaching people those rules, as in ‘okay, this is what I will and won’t tolerate from you’, it was about listening to myself inside and knowing who I was and what I stood for within the relationship to myself as well as to those outside of me.

It wasn’t just about what things I wanted to do, what places I wanted to go, or what my politics were or what I believed in, it was about my very sense of self, my right to BE. It was about my self-worth.

“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.” – Brene Brown

Only once I realised I was valuable as a person, that I was worthy of everything in life, was I able to think clearly in terms of my personal limits and boundaries. And I could only hold those limits and boundaries once I was sure that I wouldn’t violate them myself, that I wouldn’t try and second guess and persuade myself to do something I didn’t really want to do, for the desire to please another. (A desire they were oblivious to, I might add, as in most cases they were unaware it wasn’t something I wanted to do – until I got angry after the fact!)

Once I was true to my heart and able to trust myself to care about my own feelings, could I say I had integrity. And then those limits and boundaries weren’t rules I had to set and make sure I followed and keep a tight hold on, like a referee making sure no one goes over the line, they became the standard, the foundation of who I was and the basis I made decisions from. 

“Your personal boundaries protect the inner core of your identity and your right to choices.” - Gerard Manly Hopkins

It took me several years to understand this and several steps:

1. First I had to listen to my feelings and be a friend to myself. Realise that the inner me was as important as the outer me, and that I was worth giving my own time and attention to. 
2. Then I had to trust my feelings and show them respect, not belittle them or overrule them all the time, or second guess them. I had to stand up for them – I had to stand up for me.
3. I then had to care about those feelings, and nurture them, consider myself someone I wanted to love and care about. (NB: caring about the thoughts I have about myself is as important as caring about my physical body. If I want my body to be well and pain-free I need to feed it healthy food and exercise it, so if I want my mind to think clearly and be able to make good decisions I have to feed it positive thoughts that are supportive of me as a person and constructive to what I want).
4. Once that had been achieved, the limits and boundaries came naturally. I could think more clearly about what I was and wasn’t prepared to do to please others. I started automatically considering myself in all my decisions: factoring in my own wishes and desires.

From there on out I factored myself into everything I did – something that people who have integrity don’t even have to consciously do.

“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.”- Doreen Virtue

It’s not easy to work all this out. We all have to find our own routes into this. I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of integrity until I understood what limits and boundaries were (and that I had none) and how to set them. It took active action.

I would look up information about how to set limits and boundaries and write out what I wanted mine to be and focus on them. I had to stop myself and ask myself whether I was going along with something to please someone or if I genuinely wanted to do it, especially whether it would be a decision that I would regret later on down the line.

I would also ask myself, what would happen if I said no here? Often the result of saying no to something was a lot easier than my guilt had led me to believe.

Learning to say no is part of building self-esteem and self-worth, thus coming full circle. Integrity is knowing your worth and not compromising it.

“Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.” - Barbara De Angelis

The Four Agreements We All Need to Be in Agreement With

I came across these four agreement, which were written by Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book The Four Agreements. They help clarify the ideals we should all strive for, in our own thinking as much as in our actions. It is one of six books in The Toltect Wisdom Series, and there is a website dedicated to them.

The Four Agreements

Be Impeccable With Your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

 

Don’t Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

 

Don’t Make Assumptions: Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

 

Always Do Your Best: Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.