Are you that guilty ?

How often are you being moved by a sense of guilt (a guilt that seems to haunt you and is not easy to sooth)? How often would you base your choices and actions upon a vague sense of guilt and being “not OK”?

How often do you fall into the trap of guilt in front of others, that blinds you to your own experience of the situation? a guilt that blurs your inner simple truth of what you want and what are the boundaries you would like to keep for yourself?

Guilt can be such a big trigger for us. When it gets overly activated, it makes us retreat inward and almost obsess about our wrong doings. We tend to carry a false responsibility in some situations and for some people.

Guilt as part of our human capacity is what keeps us aware and compassionate to the pain of others and to our unintended mistakes that may hurt others.

But as such, it is a delicate part in us.

If it is not balanced with a sense of being grounded in who we are, and if it was taken advantage of in times where our ability to set boundaries was incomplete, this sensitive part of ourselves becomes “inflamed” and over reactive.

Take a moment to think about times you feel blinded and in a way, or held captive by your own sense guilt. Maybe it is when you are on a “guilt- trip”. When you constantly thinking about what you have done wrong and cannot step out of that guilt.

Maybe think of when do you give your energy or time in a way that is trying to compensate for a guilty feeling. As if you are trying to “buy your way out”.

Maybe you find yourself often guilty when a person next to you is in pain, suffering or is frustrated.

(Our imbalanced guilt is often triggered by some aspects of a person that we unknowingly feel responsible for. It feels as if we are responsible for their lack, for their difficulty to contain and hold their experiences and true choices.)

When you look at that aspect of your life, being at times motivated by a sense of an imbalanced guilt, what can you discover?

Now take a moment to look at the opposite reaction; Try to recall those times you may be overly defensive or even aggressive in front of a possible guilt?

Sometimes, when our sense of guilt is shaken , is in an imbalance and is “inflamed”, we are not always able to meet guilty-moments with simplicity. Those moments can be experienced as a threat to who we are. As if when allowing guilt to touch us, we will be shamed or humiliated. We will be exposed as “bad” people.

The way we deal with guilt shows us where we are un/able to be who we are.

Where are we rejecting ourselves. Which aspects are touched by an old shame.

It shows us clearly when and how we are being uncomfortable in our own skin.

Guilt can offer us a away, if we agree to meet it, to acknowledge our weakness and at the same time feel confident and secure to take responsibility. Not only the responsibility of correcting a mistake we may have done, but also taking the responsibility for our wishes and desires that we might have been hiding.

Guilt can be the gap we have to grow into - the gap that shows us who we can be compared to who we dare to be.

Feel for a moment the fear or the resistance you might experience when thinking you could be found guilty of something.

Take a moment to be with that resistance. Feel how you become in your body. Feel the need to fight.

What seems to be the danger in being guilty?

What memory do you have when you are aware of that resistance?

What would happen is you just agree to let the guilt be felt?

If you want to truly free yourself from the inappropriate sense of guilt or an old need to fight an accusation you were a victim of, you need to allow the fear-of-guilt be felt for a moment.

You need to stop resisting. To breath and expand.

When you do so, you connect to your inner trust.

Try to breath in to the area of your ribcage. For a moment put your hands on your ribcage and breathe deeply. Feel the movement of the ribs. The way they are moving to the sides creating a larger opening in your chest and area of the stomach.

Try to connect also to the lower part of your body, especially your legs when you breathe in this way.

This state is enhancing your ability to sense what is, without dreading it.

Try to make sure that you let go of your forehead, eyes and neck. Try to use the energy that is waking up in your body to let go of any kind of pressure in your head or a need to find an explanation, an argument to excuse yourself.

Keep on breathing into the ribcage and connecting to your legs (if you want you can stand).

Now dare to be ready to “be guilty”. To feel the guilt.

When you let that guilt be felt, you turn the tables!

You are not anymore a victim of the guilt but rather the one who is able to master the situation as you are not dreading or fighting it.

Now just perceive what is the truth of what you want and what you do not want? What were you hiding of it in that guilt-trip/fight?

What are you able now to embrace within yourself and what are you able to see that was inconvenient for you to see before?

If it was connected to a person you can for a moment think of that person and declare:

“I am sorry I made you feel uncomfortable” “ I was uncomfortable myself with my ______” think what is it that you were uncomfortable with…

Take couple of deep breaths and with them take in and back that which you were uncomfortable with: your fear, your anger, your hurt, your dislike, your desire, not knowing what to do, seeing something the person was trying to hide….. whatever it was.

And just stay for a moment with that experience.

See in the next days if you can recognize moments of being driven by guilt.

Catch yourself. T

ake a moment to feel how you are carrying that guilt and then try to let go in your body with breath of that guilt. If a wave of anger comes as a result, breathe with it be clear what you want / do not want.

If you find yourself being defensive at some moments, try to stop yourself to breathe in and let go of the need to fight and the dread.

Connect to your legs and expand your ribcage.

Agree to listen and be open to a hurt you are confronted with. Be aware of what was the wish you were unable to truly and freely contain that was hidden in that situation. This will help you to better identify what is yours and what is not yours.

I hope that this can give you some new doors with which you can be free of an “inflamed sense of guilt”, as well as to be able to simply meet guilt as a path to embrace your true wishes.

Yours

Anna

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash