Letting Go of Guilt - Giant Step to Freedom

Ok. Letting go of guilt? How? Thinking differently, forgiving and accepting yourself as you are, sound great, but remain a top source of stress for many. (1) From people-pleasing to full out martyrdom, there is entirely too much hanging on to the damaging effects of guilt.

Women and Guilt

Though guilt is an obstacle to joy and success for both sexes, many would agree, and research now points to the fact that women suffer from this issue more than men.(2) Feelings commonly experienced include: sensing a lack of balance, loss, responsibility for problems of others, heightened pain in seeing suffer, feeling you need to fix things. The terms, hyper-responsible, hyper-conscientious, hyper-sensitive often hit home. You may also feel or be immobilized, and have difficulty making decisions. The syndrome is mired in negative beliefs about the self. These are irrational, and sometimes require the help of professional counselors to fully reverse.

Sound Familiar? The following are common thought patterns where letting go of guilt remains an issue:

• Negative or positive situations that affect my husband and children, are largely my responsibility.

• I must keep secret, what happened to me in the past.

• The bad things that happened to me when I was a child are my own doing

• My children deserve to have more toys, experiences and other things than I had.

• Others are judging me. I place high value on their judgment.

• One of the highest goals I operate under, is to 'save face' with other people.

• I can never relax. Something I am doing may be wrong or cause harm.

• I am responsible for my husband's (wife, partner or spouse) happiness.

To top off this irrational thinking, others may take advantage of your feelings of shame and guilt! Some of this may be virtually unconscious, habitual or/and seemingly harmless, and some of this may be more serious. They may:

• Fake illness, incompetence, seem unhappy, or other behaviors to trigger your guilt. You follow by taking over. The next thing you know, you are responsible for the tasks they should have been taking care of. Yikes!

• Play upon your irrational guilt to get you to meet their needs, even if it violates your rights.

• Heighten your feeling of low self esteem. Result? More shame and guilt.

Start Letting Go of Guilt. For those of you who have serious issues with guilt, one article is only the beginning. However, an ongoing and determined approach to healthy positive thinking will get you to let go in time. Follow these Steps to get you started:

1: Spend some time, perhaps over a period of a few days, pondering what you know deep down, are the root causes of your guilt. Jot them down in a notebook, as part of your Stuff I want to let go of list. Some of the issues which will come up could be past hurts, fear of rejection, basic survival issues from the past, mistakes you made re-playing in your mind, victim syndrome, past or current issues with anger, addictions and depression, experiences of having been manipulated by others. NOTE: You will feel quite miserable going through all this. Keep the introspection short, and get on to the next steps. (this is part 1 of a 3 part series)

(1) I pulled out some of my Psychology 101 teaching notes for this article, and compared the theory we were teaching at the college level in the 80's and 90's. Not much has changed, except that more and more professionals are using positive thinking phrases, the Sedona method and terms like law of attraction. For further examples of the application of the principle of letting go of guilt, I recommend the Canadian Mental Health Association's article: Click here for Letting go of Guilt strategies for Children and Family Breakup.

(2) See "The Spanish Journal of Psychology" Dr. I. Extebarria, Unversity of the Basque Country, Spain.

http://www.womens-law-of-attraction-solutions.com/letting-go-of-guilt.html

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