guilt

today's post is co-written by my friend LES. i almost feel like she wrote the bulk of the post. and i think it is an important post, so i am going to publish it. 

"Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_(emotion)

guilt is something that we all feel at some point. whether warranted or not. i feel like we are always already guilty. born with guilt built in as a mechanism of reacting and interacting with our world. the trick is to know how to use guilt as a teacher. 

LES says that there are 3 types of guilt:

1. you have no part to play but feel guilty.
2. you have some part but don't own it all
3. you are to blame and own all the guilt. 

how we deal with these situations is related to our resilience. 

"Guilt and its associated causes, merits, and demerits are common themes in psychologyand psychiatry. Both in specialized and in ordinary language, guilt is an affective state in which one experiences conflict at having done something that one believes one should not have done (or conversely, having not done something one believes one should have done). It gives rise to a feeling which does not go away easily, driven by 'conscience'.Sigmund Freud described this as the result of a struggle between the ego and the superego – parental imprinting. Freud rejected the role of God as punisher in times of illness or rewarder in time of wellness. While removing one source of guilt from patients, he described another. This was the unconscious force within the individual that contributed to illness, Freud in fact coming to consider "the obstacle of an unconscious sense of guilt...as the most powerful of all obstacles to recovery." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_(emotion)

guilt as an obstacle. we get stuck in our guilt and find it hard to move forward. LES talked about full guilt and partial guilt:

with partial guilt, you can look at what is your part, but then look at how it isn't, who else was involved, how you are part of a bigger picture.
and with full guilt- you did do it - how you can learn from it and make sure you dont do it again. how you can understand why you did what you did in the moment and how this can help you release some of the shame /guilt and move forward and learn.

learning from our actions and our behaviour is the most important thing that we can do in life. 

so what? how do we deal with guilt?

1. identify what kind of guilt you are experiencing.
2. identify the purpose of the guilt in your life?
3. make amends. 
4. recognize what you did, and move on.
5. learn from your behaviours/actions

and how is guilt connected to resilience? 

resilience is our ability to bounce back from our guilt, from things that have happened to us, from things that we think are our fault, whether or not they are. 

LES has been exploring resilience, how she can relate to other people's stories and how resilience can hold strength and weakness in one definition.

so what is resilience and how is it helpful?

resilience is the ability to adapt to stress and adversity. it is the ability to get knocked down and get back up again. 

i want to talk about ferns ... yes, that's right ... ferns ... the plant. 

ferns are really cool for a number of reasons. and they are a symbol of resilience. 

ferns have been around for about 360 million years. they grow in various climates and ecosystems, from dry lands to oceans. ferns don't have seeds. they contain everything within themselves to reproduce. ferns grow in adverse conditions. and when conditions are adverse, ferns curl up to protect themselves until after the storm. 

ferns are also used as a spiritual symbol. 

"The tightly curled fronds of young ferns are deceptive and it would be impossible to guess what a full grown fern would look like at this stage of development. Human kind is the same. Our consciousness must be awakened through life experience, learning, and awareness. Like the fern, we grow and flourish if we unfurl toward light or truth. The more we unfurl, the more the tendrils of our true nature begin to show as we loosen, surrender and soften, releasing and opening as we let go of old stories and rigidly constructed belief systems which contribute to negative patterns of behavior." http://www.fernlifecenter.com/about-fern-life/why-the-fern/

LES said: 

the fern has such strength and yet equal vulnerability. It has the ability to let itself be vulnerable and be beatiful in its vulnerability. I love that they also have the strength in their core to keep them going when things get tough and that they are able to curl themselve up and weather the storm - protecting their vulneralble branchy bits… still there, still holding on, just able to keep all the bits safe with the strength of the core. its a resourceful little bugger… i love that about it. it is often overlooked becuase it isn't shiny and pretty on the outside but it holds much depth and strength and intensity…. i like that. I identify with that.

what does resilience mean to you? what images come to mind? what symbols? 

i look forward to your responses. 

be kind to yourself, 

xoxo

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guilt

guilt. 

we all have it. we all claim that it's not worth having. we all want to be rid of it. and we all have it anyway. 

“Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.” 
― Veronica Roth

guilt can be used as a means to get yourself to do something that you don't want to be do. it can be used to remind us of what we can improve upon. there is always something that could be better - something that could have been done better. 

"There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” 
― Bill Watterson

today nosy nora absolved me of my guilt over something small and huge that i did. it doesn't matter what i did or didn't do. the point is that it took someone else telling me that it's okay. it took someone else to forgive me before i could forgive myself. maybe that's why confession is so important. maybe we need to have someone forgive us so that we can do the work required to forgive ourselves. 

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.” 
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

guilt can eat you up. in an attempt to prevent the world from knowing what you feel guilty about, you often show your cards. we can't keep secrets forever. we have to tell someone. no matter how guilty we feel. no matter how shameful the secret is. 

there is a difference between shame and guilt. 

shame is a deep feeling of unworthiness, whereas guilt is a regret for something we have done. they are not the same thing. yet, you can feel both guilt and shame about the same event. 

“Sometimes I just want to paint the words "It's my fault" across my forehead to save people the time of being pissed off at me.” 
― Christina Westover

sometimes we have so much guilt that it is easier to just walk around apologizing for everything despite whose fault it is. there are times i feel so guilty for something that someone else did that it crushes me. 

“Guilt isn't always a rational thing, Clio realized. Guilt is a weight that will crush you whether you deserve it or not.” 
― Maureen Johnson

guilt is crushing. it just is. 

“I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.” 
― Rosamund Lupton

we can't walk away from our guilt. it follows us throughout life and throughout time. and the only way to get out from under guilt is to forgive. i don't mean rationalize, i mean truly forgive. 

when i was 18, i was working at the school library. on the last day before the christmas holidays, a grade 9 boy found a wallet and turned it in to me. i then turned it in to the office. it had over $2000 in it. the gentleman who had lost the wallet, right before christmas, was so impressed and grateful, that i was given a monetary reward. my friend gigi said that i shouldn't keep the money because it was the young boy who found the wallet and turned it in. 

i kept the money. 

it has been 18 years and i still think about that. i still wish that i could find that man, and give him the money and apologize for keeping it. 

i had to forgive myself, however. i didn't know who the boy was. i wouldn't have recognized him. and i was so overcome with grief at gigi's death that it didn't occur to me that i could have made an announcement to find him. 

i forgive myself. 

but i don't forget. 

“When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself.” 
― Anthony de Mello

guilt causes shame gremlins to shout at you that you are unworthy, undeserving, useless, and a loser. guilt makes you hate yourself. which is why it is so important to forgive yourself and move on. learn from your mistakes. and don't repeat them. 

“It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.” 
― Criss Jami

guilt is the fear of being judged. by others, and by yourself. the fear of being judged makes me choose to do things that i don't want to do because i feel guilty saying no. i feel guilty standing up for myself. i feel guilty not doing what i feel obligated to do. 

“I would forget it fain,
But oh, it presses to my memory,
Like damnèd guilty deeds to sinners' minds.
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I would love to forget my guilt, but it is ingrained in my memory. so how do we move on? how do we forgive ourselves? what do we have to DO?

“Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion” 
― Lynn Crilly

we simply have to forgive. there are no steps. there is no magic wand. there is only forgiveness and knowledge that you have learned a lesson. life is about learning. life is one giant classroom. without mistakes, the world would be boring. without mistakes, there would be no creativity, no inventions, no inspiration, no adventure. guilt is what keeps our morals in check. 

be kind to yourself, and forgive yourself. 

xoxo

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