Learning how to manage guilt is a key tool in emotional regulation and emotional intelligence. Guilt is a commonly experienced—and often misunderstood—emotion.
Whether it arises from a specific event or an ongoing sense that you haven’t done enough, guilt can weigh heavily on your mind and heart. And, while it can serve as a helpful signal when we’ve hurt someone, the feeling can often linger, becoming heavy and confusing as we try to resolve.
I’m going to clarify the true purpose of guilt and some practical strategies in how to manage guilt so you can move forward with clarity and confidence.
How To Manage Guilt
Guilt is one of the core primary emotions agreed upon by most psychologists. We have all felt it at one point or another. Still, guilt is an emotion that is often uncomfortable to experience and confusing to manage.
Like all emotions, the sensation of guilt is the nervous system sending us a signal. In the case of guilt, the signal is usually that we have acted outside of our own values—whether by hurting someone, taking a short-cut, or some other misaligned action.
Unlike shame, which is a feeling that we are bad, guilt is a signal that we did something bad (i.e. outside of our value system). Guilt is more about a response to a behavior or decision, where shame is a sense of how we feel about or see ourselves. Yet, many people have difficulty distinguishing between the two feelings.
Guilt can be useful at times. Its true purpose is to generate a remorse that leads us into action to repair with others or take corrective action in line with our values.
Ways To Manage Guilt
Overcoming guilt can take time, a lot of focused attention, and practice in self-regulation. Here are tips to overcome guilt.
Identify the Source
The first step in how to manage guilt is to get clear on where it’s coming from. Here are some ways to begin this exploration:
- Is the guilt tied to a specific event, relationship, or unmet expectation?
- Did I make a choice that is hurting myself or someone else?
- Do I feel remorse?
- When did I start feeling this way?
- What thoughts accompany this feeling?
- Do I notice any body sensations correlated to the felt sense of guilt (e.g. stomach tension or nausea)? What happens when I mentally tune into these sensations?
Journaling through these prompts can lead you to valuable information. By uncovering your guilt’s source, you can start to explore the deeper needs or fears and the reason you are experiencing it.
Acknowledge Without Judging
Acknowledgement is an important step in how to deal with guilt and how to get over guilt.
Instead of pushing guilt away or feeling ashamed for feeling it, allow it to be present. Say to yourself, “I notice that I’m feeling guilty,” without labeling the feeling as “good” or “bad.”
Labeling the emotion can create acknowledgement in your nervous system which helps it loosen its physiological grip. Acceptance can help soften the emotional charge, making it easier to move through the feeling.
Practice Self-Compassion
Guilt often comes with harsh self-criticism and negative self-talk. Create awareness around the way you are thinking about yourself in your mind as you experience guilt.
Ask yourself: “What would I say to a friend in this situation?” Turn that same kindness and grace inward as you explore this feeling.
Recognize that feeling guilty doesn’t make you a bad person, and you’re worthy of understanding and care, even when you’ve made mistakes.
Differentiate The Type Of Guilt
As mentioned above, guilt occurs when we’ve done something that conflicts with our values. It is our limbic mind’s attempt to move us into repair, make amends, and set us back into alignment with our values.
However, there are two different ways guilt can surface and two resulting types of guilt:
- Helpful Guilt: Helps you to identify where you stepped out of line with your value system. Equipped with this knowledge, you can now explore how to move into an appropriate repair plan.
- Unhelpful Guilt: Can occur even when we do not believe we are acting outside of our own values. Most typically this occurs because the unconscious mind is operating on an out-of-date value system (I.e. from family of origin).
Typically, unhelpful guilt arises when we breach someone else’s expectation of how we should act, if we are letting someone else down, or if we were taught an action was bad in our upbringing, even if we do not believe that anymore.
Ultimately, guilt is your body’s and brain’s way of trying to keep you safe by holding you in line with your values. Yet, holding you in line with someone else’s values is not helpful or effective. Instead, we need to consciously clarify our own value system.
Clarify Your Values
To differentiate unhelpful and helpful guilt, start by clarifying your own values. Unlike goals, which can be completed and crossed off a list, values are guiding principles that reflect what one finds meaningful and purposeful in life.
When you have feelings of guilt, you can then ask yourself whether the guilt represents a misalignment with your own values. If so, you can use that guilt as a motivator to take action and reset. If not, such as if the guilt you feel is about others’ expectations, you can consciously challenge this guilt.
A common example occurs after setting boundaries with family members. While we may feel guilty for taking more emotional space from family, this guilt is often unhelpful, as it is a response to the expectations from others rather than from our own updated value system.
Take Accountability
As we have discussed, guilt can be useful in revealing to us where we have acted in ways that we regret, have hurt others, or hurt ourselves.
Where appropriate, take accountability for the actions that have led to the sensations of guilt. However, be sure to differentiate from the behavior and your sense of who you are.
Taking healthy accountability means owning your actions without absorbing an all together shameful and negative view of yourself.
Repair If Needed
If you did something that hurt someone, guilt can serve as a signal that you have acted outside of your values or in a way that does not align with who you are.
Take action to make amends with others as necessary and appropriate. Repair is how we align with our values and move forward.
Remember to state what happened, acknowledge the impact of your actions, and express what you would do differently next time.
Practice Self-Forgiveness
Just as we forgive others for mistakes, it’s crucial to extend that same forgiveness to ourselves. Remember that guilt is a feeling. All emotions ebb and flow—they are not meant to last forever.
To practice self compassion and forgiveness, validate yourself for how difficult it is to feel guilt. Practice acknowledging the mistake, making amends if needed, and consciously choosing to release the guilt. Consider how you can punish yourself less for the guilt you feel.
Remember you are human. Part of being human is making mistakes. It’s how we learn and grow, as long as we handle these situations effectively.
Engage In Meaningful Action
Acceptance and commitment therapy emphasizes the importance of committing to actions that align with your values.
Rather than staying stuck in guilt, ask yourself, “What small action can I take right now to move forward?”
Whether it’s reaching out to someone, setting a boundary, or practicing self-care, moving forward with intention helps you break free from guilt’s grip.
Work With A Therapist
Guilt is a difficult emotion. Learning how to manage guilt takes time and self awareness.
Often, working with a therapist or mental health professional to honestly explore our values, clarify whether those values are inherited or true to us, and uncover the function of guilt can help us to fully regulate these emotions.
In addition to supporting you through various mental health conditions, a therapist can also support you in developing the self compassion needed to stay regulated and take accountability for our actions.
Further, they can support you in defining the boundaries that will support you in taking actions aligned with your own values for your life.
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