The Thriver’s Life Series – Guilt … Why You Feel It And How To Release It
Guilt can feel confusing and I used to struggle with it terribly.
But I came to realise the ultimate truth – guilt does not allow you to be true to yourself, or authentically true to others either.
Guilt also causes many blocks in your healing, and keeps other people stuck in pain, suffering and stunted growth as well.
Come with me to this Thriver’s Life episode, where I go deeply into how releasing lingering guilt will accelerate your healing. As well as offer others the highest level of opportunity to also heal.
Video Transcript
Welcome to this Thriver’s Life episode, which is all about the next stages of expansion after narcissistic abuse.
Today I want to talk to you about guilt.
Guilt is a big thing.
It can really hold you back.
And even after dedicating yourself to your recovery from narcissistic abuse, it could still be lingering around. Maybe you haven’t realised how important it is to address it. And, how once you release it, there is such an acceleration in your healing.
In today’s episode, we are going to look at why you may still feel guilty, what the guilt is really about, and how to release yourself from it.
But before we get started, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for supporting the Thriver Mission and for sharing the truth that we can empower ourselves against narcissistic abuse and heal completely from it.
Okay so now let’s get started on today’s episode.
What Is Guilt?
Feeling guilty means that you are experiencing emotional distress regarding what you may or may not have done to another person.
We can also feel guilty regarding what we may or may not have done to ourselves.
Guilt in many ways is considered a healthy feeling. It means you have a conscience. It means that you care about other people. Usually, people who experience feelings of guilt are lovely people.
However, if it is such a great quality to have, why does it feel so crappy, and why does it keep us embroiled in situations that are not healthy for us?
There is a really good reason for this.
When you feel guilty, it means that there is confusion about what your own values and truths are and where your boundaries with somebody else do or don’t lie.
It can also be a sign of over responsibility and care to the detriment of your own responsibility and care for yourself.
The ultimate truth is that guilt is not allowing you to be true to yourself. Which means that you are not able to be authentically true to others.
Guilt also makes it exceedingly difficult for you to make mistakes, which all humans do, and be able to quickly be kind and honest to yourself and others about these mistakes.
Guilt often brings on attacks of shame, which means that it’s difficult to be open and honest about things and confront the sometimes messy and uncomfortable human interactions that we all must have, in order to be a part of true relationships.
Let me explain more about this …
Feeling Wrong When Valuing Yourself
Let’s imagine that you have somebody in your life who is disrespectful and even nasty. You know what they are saying is unhealthy for you. It feels like rubbish in your body every time you hear their damaging words.
If healed up enough, you can have the difficult conversations. You can honestly tell this person what it feels like when they speak to you like this, and how you would like for them to converse with you instead.
If you are really healed up and being true to your soul, you know how powerful it is to offer people an opportunity to rise up into a healthier relationship with you. You also know that, after asking for what you need, if they don’t have the resources or the desire to do this, that you are willing to set them free so that you can honour your soul’s sovereign right to be healthy.
For most of us, before the deep inner work, the thought of being this honest and/or ultimately walking away brings up a terror of being criticised, rejected, abandoned or punished for speaking up.
I have talked about these often as the fears of C.R.A.P.
Yet, as Thrivers, we start to understand that unless we can start to show up honestly with people in our life, there is a continuation of having to experience conversations and situations that are disrespectful.
This is not necessarily because other people are terrible, rather the deeper purpose of this is because we are undergoing the soul necessity of learning self-respect.
This is a deeper Quantum understanding that people treat us identically to the way that we treat and feel about ourselves, and that respectful empowered relationships can only be co-generated if we respect ourselves first.
And, we also understand that the evolutionary reason that we are experiencing disrespectful relationships is because we are carrying unresolved previous traumas from being disrespected in our past. Until these are cleaned up, we will receive “more of the same”. And this will go on until we heal these parts of ourselves and can show up in a way that inspires and generates a change to “respect”.
Now, I promise you that all of this is leading somewhere in regard to guilt.
Let’s just say that you started backing away from this person. All of a sudden you were too busy, you make yourself scarce. You may even decide that you are unavailable or not home. Or maybe even get to a point where you just say, “I don’t want to see you anymore”.
Or maybe you just start getting all passive-aggressive around them. You don’t engage in conversations much. You go quiet.
Then guilt sets in. Were you too hard on this person? Do you have a right to wipe people out of your life, start ignoring them or barely have a word to say to them?
When we have entered the arena of “guilt” many questions and obsessions can arise.
It may be difficult for you to get resolution and peace around what happened or is still happening with this person.
What is this about?
What this is really about, is about you not being healed or comfortable enough to show up as being solid within your own body, being truthful about what it is that you need in order to feel respected.
I promise you this because I used to be one of these people. The people who don’t speak up with the truth about what they are really feeling and experiencing, are the people who struggle and suffer with the most guilt.
This is all about unfinished business. The reason why your choices now don’t land solidly and calmly in your body is that there are wounds and traumas within to release and resolve and heal from.
I Don’t Want to Hurt This Person
In regard to anyone that you need to say “no” to, tell the truth about how they’re treating you, or potentially pull away from, it may feel like you don’t want to hurt them.
But really, if you are truthful, you really fear getting hurt yourself.
Yet, now you already are, because you’re out of congruence.
These thoughts may be persistent, “Will this person start thinking that I am a bad person?”, “Will other people start believing I’m a bad person?”
You may tell yourself you don’t care, yet if you are honest with yourself you know that you do, and it’s not for the right reasons.
These are all the confusing and insidious feelings of guilt.
These unresolved feelings arise from the unmet, unhealed previous traumas of handing your power away in order to try to keep other people happy. These are deep wounds in the human consciousness of trying to appease others in order to be loved or safe.
These are often our unresolved beliefs from childhood, “If I keep you happy maybe you will love me” and “If I try to assert my own rights and truth you will hurt me” and so on and so forth.
This is not even to say that these people were narcissistic, because almost all of us came from the programming of, “children are seen and not heard” and are supposed to obey, rather than be able to express their own individuality, feelings and rights.
We have been programmed to “do the right thing”, often not realising that “the right thing” can be somebody else’s “right thing” and be completely wrong for us.
This is the conflict.
This is where guilt comes in. Guilt really goes like this, “I really don’t want to do this, but I feel guilty if I don’t do it”.
Or, “I really shouldn’t feel like this, but I do”.
Can you relate to this confusion? Can you see now how much this may have held you back in your life?
So, what would it take to become congruent with what you do want, as your Soul Truth, and following and living truthfully with what you feel?
It would require you first being honest with yourself and then being honest with others, and then making the choices that align with that truth.
Let’s now take this deeper …
By Acting Out of Guilt You Hurt Others
You may think that giving in to your guilt, and going along with others is the kindest and nicest thing you can do.
You may think that you’re the only one who is suffering as a result of your guilt.
That is totally not the truth.
Imagine if you stayed in a relationship because you felt too guilty to leave this person. That would mean you are there on false pretences. You are not offering them or yourself the opportunity to align with someone who is genuinely in love and matched with either of you.
Imagine if you go along with someone’s demanding behaviour because you feel too guilty to speak up and tell them that they are crossing your boundaries.
Not only are you engaging with them from resentment and lack of connection, but you also aren’t offering this person the opportunity to have reflected back to them their behaviour and become more self-actualised.
That’s not to say everybody can grow or change, but if you don’t honour the truth of yourself in your exchange with them, then you are never offering them the opportunity to do so.
Many people, non-narcissistic people, absolutely want your feedback and to have the opportunity to meet you at a higher level of genuine relationships as a result of you being honest with them.
If you stay stuck in your guilt and keep playing out the insidious lower-level exchanges with them, whilst refusing to step up to the plate (which is truly how we should be with the people who we love) then you deny them their possible evolution opportunity.
Neale Donald Walsch put it like this, “to allow an abuser to continue abusing is an act of abuse”.
I want you to really think about that.
Guilt Regarding Those We Have Hurt
I know we can feel terribly guilty about those we have hurt as a result of our own behaviour.
Personally, I suffered extreme guilt regarding what I put my son and other people through as a result of my own narcissistic abuse experience.
And, before I healed my guilt, I tried to make amends in really unhealthy ways. When I was trying to make up for what I had done, whilst hanging onto the horrific guilt inside of me, all I did was make matters worse.
I had to turn inwards to heal and release my own feelings of extreme guilt. Trying to fix other people to take away my guilt didn’t work. When I was still banging around in all the traumatisation of my victimisation guilt, I certainly wasn’t. I wasn’t even listened to. I wasn’t taken seriously.
The truth was I hadn’t taken myself seriously yet nor had I taken myself seriously inwards to do the real inner work.
This inner work was deeply between me and myself, and as a result of healing my feelings with Quanta Freedom Healing, and moving into emotional freedom, I was able to show up being genuinely, solidly and maturely remorseful.
Guilt had been replaced by acceptance. I deeply understood that all that had played out was not just for my evolution, it was for others as well. Rather than stay stuck in the trauma of the past, it was up to me to be a generative force leading by example.
I discovered, from this place, I was easily accepted and forgiven.
I also understood another phenomenon – that the deep healing on myself created a phenomenal shift in them as well. Such is the power of Quanta Freedom Healing.
How to Transform Guilt
The other side of guilt is absolutely glorious. The healing that occurs as a result of releasing our guilt is magnificent. It’s really magical.
We see so many people in the NARP community have unprecedented breakthroughs and acceleration in their healing when they focus on loading up, releasing and transforming the guilt with NARP Module work.
The best modules to use are Module One, the Source Healing and Resolution Module, and as always Module Six is powerful for guilt work, as well as releasing co-dependency and establishing healthy empowered boundaries.
I hope that I have inspired you to set yourself free from guilt. It’s one of the most important missions you will ever have.
And I’d love to help you get started on this. Please come into my free webinar where I explain to you more about this, as well as how NARP can transform your life, and I take you through a Quanta Freedom Healing where you can start releasing your guilt immediately.
To get this process started you can click the link at the top right of this video.
And as always, I look forward to answering your comments and questions below.