Our Guilt and Shame Stories are Never True

Hi guys, Dave here again. If you're new to the channel, I am a psychotherapist, psychologist and fully licensed and I'm going to answer a question today and it's about guilt. It's about one of the most destructive emotions that we experience and the tragedy of this guilt that we often have. Well, first of all, it's usually very unconscious guilt. We're often not even aware of it, but we carry it with us and sometimes we can become aware of it. But I'm going to talk about really the fact that guilt is a narrative. It's a story about the past that we carry and it's one that if it isn't questioned, that's when it becomes destructive. As soon as we begin to question this guilt narrative, this story about the past, the guilt starts to fade away. Now, the question I have here, I'm going to read it and I'm going to answer this person's question, but this is an example of a person who is now beginning to become aware of the guilt that they're feeling in their life. So think about your own life and if there's any feelings of regret or feelings of shame or guilt from the past, the process of overcoming it and questioning this guilt narrative is kind of the same for all of us. So I'm going to read the question here. It starts I think about the failures of my life. I carry them with me. Mostly I think about the mistakes I've made with my children and how I failed them. After the breakup of my marriage, I was under massive financial strain. I spent all my time working two jobs that I never had time to see. I was also going through depression at the time and had started drinking excessively. I don't want to make excuses for myself, however. Now I feel the damage has been done and I will never be able to build a deep connection with my children. I want to be more involved in their lives but I feel they'll reject me now. I can only see us drifting apart more and more and this kills me emotionally. So there's this belief here. What we have there is that's the guilt story. You can see it as a paragraph really and what we want to do is really distill that down to a belief. So one of them here is if we distill that down to a belief it's the damage is done and there's no hope. That's really what that story fundamentally rests on. The damage is done and there's no hope. Now to question that narrative is really where the healing will take place here to let it go finally. People carry these guilt narratives for years sometimes. What will help with this is realizing that this guilt narrative, this story from the past is always a vast oversimplification of what actually took place. It's a one-sided assessment. It's that inner critic that thinks that being excessively harsh with us is somehow going to be useful to us. So we start to look at this belief and what we do is we start to take an assessment of maybe the nervous system, the inner critic thinks it's helping me with this guilt narrative so it'll make sure I never go down that path again. But when we really start to look at it we can start to question okay well what has this thought, this belief caused me in terms of my emotional well-being, has it influenced my behavior and my decision making and how has it been for me psychologically to carry this belief that the damage is done and there's no hope. So emotionally what happens when I carry and believe this? Well I feel despair, I feel shame, I feel guilt, I feel sadness, I feel disappointment, I feel frustration. Okay what we're just convincing our nervous system here of is look at the cost of this for me. You see if the nervous system is going to drop this, your nervous system and your inner critic is not trying to hurt you. But what we need to do is slow down and point out to it. Really take stock of the fact that if I can convince the nervous system that this belief is not helpful for me, it would be much more likely to let it go, believe it or not. Okay so you're pointing out to the nervous system look what this belief has actually caused me emotionally. All those negative emotions, my decision making, has it brought me closer to my family or further away from them? Have I tended to avoid them because of the feelings of guilt and move towards them? So I've been avoiding them maybe. Psychologically what's it done for me? Well I see all my errors from the past right, I see all the mistakes I made in the past and I see a future that looks bleak and I carry these images in my imagination around with me. The future is all imaginary and the past is fairly one-sided. It's all about the mistakes and there's no nuance in the reflection on the past of this. Okay you only see a kind of a horror show from the past. It doesn't show you any nuance, it doesn't show any positive things you would have done in the past. Okay again the nervous system doesn't really focus on the positive because it's looking for danger all the time and problems. So what we're doing is we're convincing it, this is the cause for me emotionally, behaviorally and psychologically. And then you're just trying to imagine what your life will be. Although your nervous system will be reluctant to do this and we're all reluctant to drop our guilt stories. Okay believe it or not because we really think they're actually helpful, they'll keep us on track. They don't and they're not even true but I'll talk about that in a moment. You try to imagine what would happen in your life if this story just somehow disappeared. Okay if this story were to just leave you, what would happen to you emotionally? Much more freedom for me emotionally. Behaviorally would you be more or less likely to try and reconcile in earnest with your family? Probably much more likely to do that. Psychologically I leave the past behind. I see a future that's much more bright and hopeful and optimistic. So it's almost as if we take the time to do a little assessment about the cause of this belief and what my life would be like without it. And now we're ready to really question it. Okay so again we're back to this the damage is done and there's no hope. I would consider the exact opposite of that. Can change that term the damage is done with maybe the healing is done. And there is hope. Now if you sit with that you will be able to see that that's true. Okay it's as true or more true than the original belief. The damage is not done and there's hope. There is ample evidence for that if you can sit with it. You have years left with your family. Okay so it'll take a bit of stillness to feel into those. It's much slower a process than what we're used to from our nervous system which comes in with this inner critic of showing us the horrors from the past and the bleak future which is all automatic. Okay intrusive compulsive thoughts. This is just to sit with this and what would that look like and how does that feel when I consider the fact the damage is not done. There is hope. The healing is done. There's been a lot of healing that took place with that. To start to question this narrative of the past have you been this bad guy who only ever made mistakes when I mean even in the message you talked about you were working two jobs. Okay there's a little bit of nuance in that already and I know you mentioned you're not trying to make excuses for yourself. I think the last thing you're doing here is making excuses for yourself. I think you've been very hard on yourself which is what happens with our guilt narrative. So what we're really trying to do is realize there is no enemy within us. The inner critic is not out to get us. It just needs to be convinced that I can finally let this go now because I don't need it anymore. In fact as soon as I do let it go I become much safer and my life becomes much better. So guys I hope that's helpful. It's one way to start thinking about guilt that needs to be challenged and it doesn't need to be seen as an enemy. It just needs to be seen as an excessive kind of helper that needs to be calmed down. Take care guys and I'll talk to you again soon. Bye for now.