If you are a mother, if you plan to be one in the future or if you are not, surely at some point in your life you have felt guilty. Guilty because you have yelled at your children. Guilty because you have not been able to carry out everything that you had proposed throughout the day. Guilty because you made a mistake at work. It is difficult to find a single woman on the face of the earth who has not experienced guilt. Your friends, your sisters, your co-workers, your own mother, yourself!
Where does the guilt come from?
The blame comes from the impossible expectations that have been imposed on women. Today we have to be good mothers, good housewives, good workers, good lovers, daughters, wives, friends… Good at everything! And with a tremendous workload that makes us tired and, in many cases, in a bad mood. It’s not fair!
When we feel that we do not reach everything, when we realize that we do not do ” perfect” things, we feel that we do not reach those expectations and we feel horrible. Guilt has arrived!
How does guilt make us feel and why is it not good?
Guilt makes us feel small, powerless, incapable. We believe that we are not good enough, that we are doing tremendous harm to others. When the feeling of guilt assails us, our reaction is to punish ourselves, treat ourselves badly and feel miserable. We become a bad enemy.
Worst of all, guilt doesn’t allow you to act. On the contrary: it paralyzes you. And you stay like that, feeling bad, waiting for the situation to repeat itself and you to act in the same way again.
Guilt tags you
When we feel guilty, we label ourselves: “I always yell at my kids.” “I’m a bad mother, I spend little time with them.” “I am incapable of treating my parents well.” “I always argue with my husband.” “I’m a mess, I’ll never be able to keep the house tidy.”
Those labels are burned into our brain. So when the situation repeats itself, we act as we have taught our brain. We have convinced him that we are like that, and that there is nothing to do! You can always do something. There is always a solution and room for improvement.
Change the backpack blame
I mentor women who carry backpacks full of guilt. If it happens to you too, you need a new backpack: the responsibility backpack. Dump all your guilty feelings into this new backpack. You will feel much lighter and, in addition, you will be able to improve the situation!
What is responsibility
- Responsibility is taking charge of the problem. Because when you are responsible for something, you make decisions. You don’t stand paralyzed thinking that things will always be this way, as if you were a victim of your own ineptitude. When you are responsible, you reflect and resolve, you change what doesn’t work, you act. Responsibility requires working in several phases to solve what does not work:
- Listen to the voice of guilt, but don’t let it make you feel bad. That voice is your intuition, it tells you that there is something that is not working well, something that bothers you and you don’t like it. Something you want to change.
- Observe the situation. Why have I reacted this way? Why do I act like this? What is difficult for me in that situation?
- Think of alternatives. Imagine how you might react next time. Maybe you need to anticipate the problem, and thus avoid it? Do you need to change routines, or your expectations? Do you need to learn strategies to better handle these types of situations? Do you need to ask for help because you are too overwhelmed?
- Make up for the shortcomings. If there is no solution, accept reality and try to make up for it when you can. If, for example, you feel guilty because you work a lot and spend little time with your children, try to make up for your absence on weekends, or try asking your partner to reduce the hours, or make sure that the person you are with children is as loving and respectful as you would like.
- Treat yourself well, always. Don’t beat yourself up Imagine that you are your best friend. Understand yourself, understand your circumstances and support yourself.
- Remember that you are imperfect, that there are things that you do better and others that you do worse. And that makes you more human! Don’t look for perfection because it doesn’t exist, and if it did, the world would be a horrible place.
- From now on, whenever guilt visits you, listen to it. But don’t let him beat you! Trade it for responsibility. Don’t let guilt make you feel like the worst woman in the world. Because you are not. You are, like the others, like our mothers and grandmothers were, good enough. And with that, enough.