How Do We Get Rid of Guilt?

Over the years I’m sure you’ll all agree feelings come and go. The feelings that defined our 20s might not even warrant a mention in our 40s and 50s. There’s one emotion, however, that has stayed with me through thick and thin and that is guilt.

I have an unerring ability to feel guilty about anything and everything. From as far back as I can remember I’ve carried a burden of responsibility for everyone else’s happiness, always imagining that I have been cursed with an overdeveloped sense of duty and empathy. The other day though I found myself sharing a bus seat with an octogenarian who made me see things in a different way when she said, “Women are hardwired to feel guilty.” Until that moment it had never entered my head that guilt could be gender related but the more I thought about it the more I came around to the idea that my new friend may have been right. However, despite her assertion that women are doomed to be walking around riddled with guilt, I suspect it’s probably more conditioning than hardwiring.

I got the double whammy of being born the eldest child and a girl. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t made to feel responsible for my younger siblings. Paradoxically, I do remember my mother complaining about her own mother’s attempts to instil guilt. My mother was the youngest child and her mother was a widow so any signs of independence were probably viewed as potential loneliness and abandonment. As a child I would listen in horror to tales of my grandmother feigning serious illness and even throwing herself down the stairs in an attempt to get my mother to stay at home with her.

As so often is the case, my mother must have learned the dark art of manipulation at her own mother’s knee thus perpetuating a poisonous legacy of guilt. I never felt the freedom to enjoy a sense of achievement as my success would be met by a reminder that someone else hadn’t succeeded. My mother was big on encouraging empathy to a crippling degree – be thankful for your Christmas/birthday presents because other children are less fortunate blah blah blah. Even worse than this was the knack she had of informing me or my brother or sister how many hours she and my dad had had to work to pay for the said present. Neither of them slaved away in a Gulag but any joy would turn to guilt induced ash the second the words were uttered.

I did some research on this – well I asked my brother and sister about any residual feelings of guilt. My brother, in keeping with the gender theory, didn’t know what I was talking about and although my sister claimed not to suffer from guilt I could tell I’d touched a nerve from her explosive reaction. That leaves just me then and I feel guilt to such an extent that it overrides all other feelings. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer and subsequently died, more than sadness or anger, I felt guilt. I mean, it’s not like I gave him cancer or, given that I’m not an oncologist, could do anything about it and yet I felt the same level of responsibility  I would have if I’d held his fate in my hands.

It’s not even just the big things that have me fretting like a criminal. I love writing but can’t seem to find the balance between work and the written word. I have so many half-finished projects and ideas but rather than bringing me pleasure they are a tortuous reminder of all that I’ve not achieved. If I spend my weekends enjoying time with friends somewhere beneath the surface the accusation is festering that I’m not doing anything productive.

You would think all this sense of duty would work in my favour but in fact the opposite seems to be true. For example, my mother’s attempts to embed a sense of frugality spectacularly backfired because as soon as I was old enough to earn my own money I spent it the second it was in my pocket. If I’d worked all week to earn it then I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to enjoy it. To this day though I can’t accept a gift from my mother (even though she no longer works) without feeling sick with guilt.

If it is the case that as women we are carrying this heavy burden of guilt then surely it’s not simply our lot. I saw a poster the other day promoting mental health awareness which stated, “Thoughts are not facts” and this I think is the key to overcoming feelings of guilt or any other toxic emotion. We may feel as if we have a responsibility for other people’s well-being but in reality we have very little power over the lives of others. We may be able to offer practical help such as donating our time or funds to organisations that can make a difference but other than that maybe we just have to let it go.

The same applies to the pressure we put on ourselves to be ‘good enough’. I write when I can and perhaps that can be enough. I’ve heard other women castigating themselves for not being good enough mothers, thin enough, driven enough and the list goes on. We end up going around and around in a vortex of unrealistic expectations.

Guilt is a completely pointless emotion that brings nothing but misery so let’s stop being dictated to by a constructed idea of who we should be and just get on with living the best lives we can.