Guilt: A Useful or Toxic Emotion?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about guilt and how it can be both a positive and negative emotion. That guilty feeling we get in the pit of our stomachs is there to let us know when our actions are not aligned with what we perceive to be right.

It’s a feeling of emotional distress designed to help keep us on the straight and narrow in life; to recognise when we’ve made a mistake and when a shift in behaviour needs to occur.

On the whole, guilt can be a very useful emotion when coupled with the ability to apologise for our actions and make the changes we need to make to redeem ourselves. It’s a helpful tool in this rich tapestry we call life.

However, it does seem to have some pitfalls:

Firstly, feeling guilty about something is an extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant feeling. It gets you right in the guts and is a feeling that just really doesn’t belong. It can be excruciatingly painful at times. It's something that I personally can't live with.

It serves a purpose to a degree but it’s nice when it disappears.

But, sometimes, it doesn’t disappear. It lingers on, strangling us from the inside. Twisting and squirming about inside of us, gnawing away at us like a cancer. That’s when a useful emotion can turn into a toxic one.

When guilt hangs around, it festers and can lead to very unhealthy things. It overstays it’s welcome, like an overbearing friend that just doesn’t know when it’s time to leave the party. It’s important for us to recognise when guilt is eating us up and not serving us anymore.

Guilt is such a frequent visitor in my life. Every time I’ve broken the promise to myself not to drink alcohol until the weekend; when I haven’t managed to get the early night I promised myself; when I let my kids eat crap after saying I wouldn’t.

And then there's 'mum guilt.' The guilt that comes with the job of being a mum. No one tells you about this before you have kids. That basically, once you have a child/children, you will feel this perpetual sense of guilt FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!! For all the times you failed as a mother, all the bad decisions; the times you raised your voice; the times you had to miss a school event because you had to work. The list is endless. There’s always something to feel guilty about. But is it helpful? What’s the point?

Far too easily, guilt can become the tool we use to punish ourselves. I know all about this.

I suffered massive feelings of guilt when my marriage came to an end. I wondered for a very long time if I’d tried hard enough to save the marriage. Did I do enough? Maybe I could have done more... if I’d just done X,Y,Z things would have been different. For a long time, guilt kicked my ass. But guilt can sometimes be misplaced. We feel guilty about things we really shouldn’t. It’s clear to everyone else but ourselves. Guilt can sometimes skew our perspective and make it hard to see the wood for the trees.

Hours of therapy has taught me that I couldn’t have tried any harder than I did and it’s time now to stop punishing myself for things that were out of my control.

Feeling guilty won’t change the past. There comes a time when you have to let it all go and just move on with life. Easier said than done sometimes, I realise. But guilt should be a temporary emotion to help us assess when we've not acted in accordance with our morals; not a torture device that we strap on forever more to punish ourselves. There's too much guilt-tripping and shaming in the world as it is. How about we start being a bit kinder to ourselves and realising that we are only human and we all are capable of making mistakes sometimes. The important thing is that we learn from them and move on.