Guilt and Forgiveness

Are you looking for a therapist in the Greensboro area to help with the grief and trauma you may have experienced that has left you feeling powerless to forgive?

Forgiveness for Others

Forgiveness is a tricky word. For some, even the mention of the word can make your body shudder – especially if you feel that you are being coerced to forgive someone who has wronged you.

What is forgiveness? According to the dictionary, to forgive means that you release your resentment toward someone who offended you. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a tall order when you are talking about traumatic experiences and offenses that someone committed against you.

Forgiveness for Self

And then there is the forgiveness of God (for those who are people of faith) that many are not able to feel for themselves. Many will say they believe God forgives them, but they simply cannot feel it. The problem is not trying harder to believe if you already believe it. So, where does knowing the truth come from? It comes from living out what God says to do.

Let’s talk about what it means to accept forgiveness and to give it to yourself. Otherwise, you get stuck in a looping cycle that leaves you going nowhere.

Guilt

When we continue to feel guilt for things we do that we do not want to do – like overeating or acting out sexually – guilt becomes an endless cycle that leaves us feeling hopeless. When we feel hopeless, we can experience symptoms of depression which lead us to isolate from others. When we are separated from God and others, we become separated from “life that is truly life” (I Tim. 6:19).  We can turn against ourselves and live in blame and shame and begin to strive for perfection which leads to more guilt because we cannot sustain perfection because we are human.

What To Do

So, what do we do? We connect with God and others. We turn away from trying to be the ‘good self’ and lean into being a ‘loved self’. We have to explore what keeps us from feeling loved and what leads us to reject parts of ourselves. When we abandon ourselves, it leads to a story of aloneness which leads to dysregulation in the body. Research shows that we are hard-wired for connection. As mammals, connection and safety with others is how we thrive. We have to reconnect to feel safe again.

Get into a community where failure is seen as normal. A place where you do not feel judged or condemned for being human. We are all fellow strugglers. When you can see that failure is normal, guilt feelings are experienced less.

Guilt Versus Sorrow

There is a difference between feeling guilt and feeling sorrow. Guilt is focused on the self and says, “I am bad.” Sorrow focuses on others and the impact we have on them. When we feel sorrow for how we have impacted someone negatively, it leads to self-correction and change. The inner critic messages that are harsh and accusatory lead to more guilt and keep you stuck in the guilt cycle.

Sorrow comes from a place of love. But to experience love toward ourselves, we must receive it from people outside of us. We cannot give ourselves what we do not possess. Connecting with God and others allows us to receive love from the outside and give it to ourselves.

Ideal Versus Real

This takes us from trying to live an ideal life and to living a real life. A life that is filled with good and bad, beautiful and ugly, smart and not-so-smart, and everything in between. We are all package deals. No one is all good or all bad. Even criminals may walk an older person across the street as a kind gesture. And some of the sweetest people can have secrets of their own behaviors.

Take it In

Get into a community where you can take in the voices of those who are loving, kind, and clear. Internalize them so that when you are faced with a choice that usually leads to guilt and shame, you hear what those people might say to you, and you feel their care for you. Understand the impact of your choices. Take inventory of your life. This means you must take time to pause, notice, and choose your next steps.

You must understand the impact, feel your feelings, do some grief work, change your internal messages, and choose new ways of being in the world that help you move toward the you, you want to be. When you do, you will begin to take in forgiveness and walk in freedom as the ‘loved self’.

Help is Available

But sometimes, you need help to understand your patterns and change your internal messages. There is no shame in reaching out for help to process life. Life is hard, and you don’t have to do it alone. If you live in North Carolina and are looking for assistance to process life, feel free to reach out here.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, you can check out the book, How People Grow by Drs. John Townsend and Henry Cloud.

Cloud, H. & Townsend, J. (2001). How people grow. Zondervan.