Letting Go of Guilt

Before children you might remember a time you forgot your friend’s birthday or messed something up at work. You may well have berated yourself for it and felt guilty. That guilt drove you to make amends or drink an extra glass of wine or you just decided to get over it, but no doubt it was a fairly temporary feeling. After becoming a parent, however, guilt takes on a whole new intensity. Both mums and dads feel it, but it seems to latch onto mums. As the guilt is about the same person – your child – every single time, it has the capacity to grow exponentially, but there are ways to halt guilt’s march so read on…

The overwhelming responsibility of keeping your little baby alive with no previous experience is more than enough to start the circle of self-doubt. When we doubt we have the ability to get it right, all too often we then assume we must be getting it wrong. Our children’s welfare is so incredibly important to us and it starts to feel that getting it wrong will have dire consequences. We start to feel guilty for more things than we can list.

There is also a huge amount of information at our fingertips these days so when we don’t know what we’re doing, we automatically look for someone else’s answer to our problems. Books, blogs, social media posts, and advice from anyone we confide in can leave us with utterly unreasonable expectations.  When we fail to meet those expectations guilt again creeps in.

Guilt has repercussions not only for how we are with our child but for our health and wellbeing. We replay the offending incidents over and over, focussing on all the things we did wrong or failed to do. We imagine what the ‘perfect’ parent would do and put ourselves under enormous pressure to be that ‘perfect’ parent, setting ourselves up to fail in the process. It sounds like a joy-sucking vortex, but don’t despair - there is hope if you are caught in the negative spiral of guilt!

Firstly, it’s important to know that guilt is going to happen from time to time no matter what you do differently. The question then is not how do we make it go away, but what do we do with it when it pops up? I think it helps to look at guilt as something to be curious about. If we pay attention to it, it will reveal things we might like to change or priorities we might like to shift in order to get the best results for ourselves and our family. See it as a handy warning light flicking on and get interested rather than ignoring it and hoping it will go away.

Notice your feelings and identify what feelings you have. Is it just guilt or is it a feeling of fear or sadness or anxiety or failure? We are designed to feel and survive all emotions so try not to worry if your feelings seem overwhelming or if you have a hard time identifying them, getting a general sense of them is a good starting point. Don’t try to get rid of any and resist the urge to label them good or bad or to replace them with other jollier emotions, just look at them as one might look at something of interest. Identifying emotions helps create a bit of space in our heads and detach ourselves from them enough to try and understand them.

Then be curious about those feelings. What might have caused them? I find it helps to ask a few more questions. ‘What actually happened and can I view it from another perspective?’ ‘What am I assuming that makes me feel guilty?’ Chances are you yelled at your child because you found their behaviour difficult or triggering, not because you are a bad mum and should have your children brought up by someone else.

Try to think of the incident in truthful terms rather than the terms we often use to beat ourselves up with. Rather than saying ‘I never spend enough time with my child.’ Say ‘I’m feeling guilty because yesterday I didn’t spend enough time with my child.’ Ask yourself ‘When did I spend time with my child?’ When we look at specifics rather than the disaster our mind has imagined there is often quite a disparity. In my experience, the reality is generally less of a car crash!

It may also seem surprising, but your mind is able to believe two opposing things at once so there is no need to try and get rid of unhelpful thoughts (it’s impossible anyway – try not thinking about bears, I’m guessing you just thought about bears.) You can have the thought ‘I’m a rubbish mum.’ at the same time as ‘I must be a good mum, my kids really love me.’ Getting into the habit of finding the guilt-inducing thought and then finding one to counterbalance it is very helpful to diminish the power of the guilt-inducing thought. It helps to halt the thought loop. We’re often told to ‘let go’ of unhelpful thoughts but the reality is that it is much easier to diminish their hold than let them go. Allowing the mind to play with the possibility of a true and liberating alternative thought frees us from the grip of guilt without the pressure to get rid of certain thoughts.

We are also very good at finding proof for our thoughts. If we think ‘I’m a rubbish mum.’ Our mind will happily skip off to find all the evidence we can to support this thought. If instead, we notice that thought, label it as a guilt-inducing one, pop another alongside it like ‘My kids seem to really love me.’ Our mind will instead go off to find the evidence to support this new thought.

So next time you feel guilty, pause take a few breaths and observe what is going on inside you. How is your body responding to the guilt (bodies give clues to our emotions), what other feelings are you having, what thoughts can you find? Are those thoughts true and what opposing thought could you also think that will dimish that guilt? Guilt simply helps us to identify things that need to change – that change may well be how you talk to yourself. If you knew you are already the best mother your child could have, what would change for you?

Letting go of guilt is possible on your own, but sometimes it’s a bit like getting instructions to do a handstand, step by step it sounds simple enough, but actually having a yoga teacher by your side helping you make small adjustments and giving you courage and support makes it much more fun and a whole lot easier. If you find getting clarity is anything but clear, please get in touch. I can give you the attention, courage and support you need.