Feelings of guilt - 20 real tips to help you cope with it

Useful tips

Guilt is a powerful, destructive feeling that can poison your entire life

, spoil your health, make a normal existence in this world simply unbearable.

Do you rarely call your parents? Not paying enough attention to your children? Missing gym sessions
? Can't go on a diet? It doesn't matter what you feel guilty about.

It is important to make sure that this unconstructive feeling leaves you. Spend just a little time

Read this article to learn how to get rid of guilt.

Stop looking for a scapegoat

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When something in our life goes wrong, we completely involuntarily (and sometimes purposefully!) begin to look for a person in our environment who could be held responsible

for your troubles. Alas, as practice shows, most often such a person is ourselves. Awareness of this fact adds fuel to the fire, inflating the feeling of guilt to unimaginable proportions.

At the same time, many are well aware that the feeling of guilt in itself has no effect on correcting the situation. But it is important not only to realize that it is essentially meaningless. It is important to understand that the world around us is multifaceted

, not linear; a situation that didn’t go the way you would like is influenced not only by you - there are a lot of external factors for which you cannot be responsible.

Analyze the reasons for your feelings of guilt

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Alas, this is a very unpleasant, but inevitable procedure, since it will require from you not only deep introspection, but also, possibly, a reassessment of the situation that has occurred. But only revaluation will allow us to understand

, why exactly do you feel guilty? Understanding why you oppress yourself or simply feeling guilty is not the same thing.

For example, if you realize that you are not paying enough attention to your parents, ask yourself a question - for what reason are you not doing this?

What gave you
such an idea ?
Perhaps your brother or your sister reproaches you for this, or your parents themselves? And now a very important thought - are you really devoting little time to them and what can be done in this situation?

It is clear that you are an adult who knows better what is more important for your family (if you have a family). It is clear that you have passed the age when it made sense, say, every five minutes
, devoting her in detail to the circumstances of your life. It is clear that you are not ready, as before, to bring your personal life up for discussion at family councils. But you don't have to do this at all!

It is enough to at least sometimes call your family, inquire about their health, drop by for tea, and be more interested in THEIR problems than talking about your own. Believe and verify

- it works and does not require much effort from you (and it relieves guilt very effectively). So it is extremely important to understand what exactly causes you to feel guilty.

Groundless guilt: what to do with it?

They told you something and you are ready to fall into the ground? Or maybe you are unhappy with the behavior of another, but are afraid to tell him so as not to offend? If these stories are about you, then you are our person. Because today we are talking about guilt. It can be divided into two categories:

Superficial guilt

This is a situational feeling of guilt. For example, you did something that upset, upset, angered, or offended someone else. And when a partner (friend, colleague, relative, etc.) informs us that we did not do it properly, next time we still act in our own way, while experiencing a feeling of guilt. Or, on the contrary, we sharply correct our behavior, do what is required of us, but at the same time we experience irritation: “It’s because of you that I have to do this!”, or “So he picked on me, and I had to do this ! For example, a son enters the institute chosen by his parents. At the same time, he experiences a feeling of anger towards his relatives. Or a girl chooses the profession she has always dreamed of, ignoring the opinions of her parents. At the same time, she also experiences negative emotions - a feeling of guilt. As you understand, both options are ineffective and energy-consuming for the body.

How does guilt feel? Some people’s throats constrict, some find it difficult to breathe, a state of “just a little more and I’ll cry” arises, while others feel as if they’ve been drowned. And this unpleasant feeling prompts us to act, most often mistakenly. It is our natural survival mechanism to act under the influence of guilt or manipulation in order to avoid being kicked out of the pack. But now the laws of the “pack” are somewhat different, and the survival mechanism remains as a rudiment. And therefore, when emotions subside and thinking turns on, we think: “Well, why did I do this? Now I have to suffer,” “Well, I’ve done a lot of things, who’s going to clean up this mess?”

Deep sense of guilt

This is a subtle feeling; a person with this condition can live his whole life without realizing that he has it. The deep merges strongly with our essence - so much so that it practically becomes our way of life.

How do you understand that you are captive to a deep sense of guilt?

It’s hard for you to ask other people for anything; you’re ashamed to strain them. For example, a child is making noise in the room, it interferes with your work, but you are embarrassed to ask the tomboy to stop making noise. Or your husband, leaving early in the morning for work, always leaves a mess on the kitchen table. Later you go to the kitchen and have breakfast with the sauce of resentment “My work is not appreciated.” It’s difficult for you to ask your husband to clean up after himself, and if you decide to make such a “bold attempt,” there won’t be much of a conversation: you won’t be heard.

When someone does something good to you or praises you, you feel awkward and show inadequate gratitude to the person who praised you.

You are a workhorse, a workaholic, a perfectionist , and you take on a lot of responsibility.

You are experiencing difficulties in relationships. You either avoid them because you see yourself as a burden in advance, you think that you will make the person unhappy, and you don’t want to impose yourself. Or, if you are in a relationship, you gradually become obsequious in it, you give more than you receive, you become ashamed to ask.

At some point you realize that you overdid it. People sit on your neck, don’t thank you for the good things, don’t consider you, don’t respect you, don’t want to help. You, as an adequately thinking person, begin to see injustice and think: “Why is this so?” It is clear that the person himself creates this situation, pathologically striving to please everyone. Because any partner, no matter how good and decent he is, will be happy to sit on your neck. After all, they allow him to do this. And sitting on your neck is so comfortable.

You are extremely susceptible to criticism. It happens that they will slightly criticize you or simply describe a situation to which you have practically nothing to do with, and you are already worried.

Where does this painful condition come from?

I don’t want to seem banal, but it also comes from childhood. And by the way, the parents are not “to blame” in all cases. And it’s better not to blame anyone at all, then you’ll understand why.

Yes, there are straightforward parents, for example those who say: “Everything was fine until you were born,” “When you were not there, dad and I went everywhere, traveled, did not quarrel, but since you were born, we all quarrel,” “Before you were born, I was a happy person, but now I’m a drunkard.”

Only the matter is much more complicated. Children from about 3 years old can read non-verbal information. If your mom, dad, or other relatives got worse after you were born (and the reason could be political, social, economic, whatever), adults will show non-verbal dissatisfaction. And the child feels: “Something is wrong here.” But since he is very small, he can take all the blame on himself and add something to his thinking. And then come up with the missing information. As a result, he begins to feel guilty, then he gets used to thinking bad things about himself, gets used to being obsequious (“I won’t offend mommy, she raised me alone, it’s so hard for her with three jobs, I’ll only study for straight A’s, I shouldn’t upset her.” ").

What should be normal? If a person does not have a deep feeling of guilt (for example, he was a wanted child, both parents were with him, he received empathy, care), he will feel like a full member of the family, the main participant in everything that happens. If he meets people on his way who unfairly criticize him or humiliate him, he reacts like this: “Well, if you don’t like it, go through the forest.” And if they love him, accept him, want to communicate, he says: “Oh, cool, let’s be friends!”

How can you get rid of deep-seated feelings of guilt?

Realize that you have this deep-seated feeling of guilt. I described the parameters above. I want to warn you: there is no need to blame anyone. Neither parents, nor an evil teacher, nor society, and so on. Because accusation will give nothing but irritation. And also because you cannot change the people with whom you interacted, neither in the past nor in the present.

Understand why exactly you made your parents so unhappy? For example, you think that you were the reason for your parents’ divorce, or maybe you think that it was your fault that your mother was unable to get married / get the necessary education / develop her business.

Evaluate your real “contribution” as a percentage. In what ways did you make your parents unhappy and how unhappy? Here it is worth looking at the situation through the eyes of an adult, and not a small child who does not know the nuances of why the parent behaved this way and not otherwise.

And in this case, psychotherapy helps us. A number of factors influence a parent’s behavior.

Congenital factors : biological and genetic. For example, a person initially has few receptors for dopamine, which means he is more sensitive to anxiety and stress. It is difficult for him to balance himself, he constantly lives as if on a volcano: “What if what happens?” Or, for example, temperament, which is laid down by nature. Perhaps your parent is choleric (fast, active, unbalanced), and you are phlegmatic (strong, slow and balanced). And the parent just can’t understand how you can think/do so slowly, he constantly pokes you. But you cannot change yourself, because you cannot trample against nature. And here it’s no one’s fault, nature loves variety.

Contributing factors . Here it is important to find out how your parent was raised as a child: whether or not he was subjected to domestic violence, beaten or not; maybe he himself had alcoholic parents, or maybe it was customary in his family to communicate at the level of destructive criticism. Or, probably, your parent was very ill at the time of character formation, this also affects.

Provoking factors . Social reasons, stressful events that happened in the lives of our parents: the collapse of the USSR, lack of money, illness, a bad teacher at school, bullying by students or, conversely, annoying public recognition accompanied by hassle: “You are the best at reading poetry / dancing / singing / deciding tasks, urgently for the competition, don’t let me down!” – all this greatly influences the individual.

Supporting factors . The relationship with my husband deteriorated, my parents divorced, money became scarce - the amount of stress increased. Want a real example? I know a girl who spent her entire life reproaching herself for the fact that because of her, her mother and stepfather were unhappy. She decided that her stepfather didn’t love her because he didn’t talk to her much, didn’t ask how she was doing at school, didn’t share her emotions and hobbies. As a result, she came to the conclusion that her presence was annoying this innocent man. And that it would be better if it didn’t exist.

We analyze using our method.

Congenital factors. My stepfather is phlegmatic by temperament (balanced, slow-thinking). And the girl is sanguine (cheerful, emotional). It is difficult for a phlegmatic person to share the emotionality of a sanguine person, especially if there are no communication skills.

Contributing factors. We evaluate what kind of family the stepfather grew up in. If we consider that he literally lived with his parents before the wedding, then we must come to the conclusion that he is not independent, such a big child who needs to be looked after. Uncommunicative. He didn’t know how to communicate normally with women or children; he didn’t have that kind of experience. Accordingly, he did not find a common language with his stepdaughter. He didn’t say any nasty things to her, but he couldn’t connect with the girl because he didn’t have the skills to do so. And he was looking for a wife who was quiet, calm, undemanding, with a child. That is, one that definitely won’t refuse. And this girl’s mother was also looking for a compliant man, she just needed a husband, a father for her child. That is, it turns out that adults found in each other what they were missing. And the child was not a problem here at all.

There were no provoking factors in this situation. But the supporters turned out to be very interesting. Mom did not help at all in bringing her daughter and her new husband closer together. On the contrary, she emphasized that the girl looked like her dad and it was good that she kept his last name as a keepsake. She constantly praised her first husband, and told her second husband: “You are so mediocre and uncommunicative.” This infuriated both the girl and her stepfather, and as a result, they moved further and further away from each other.

And when you analyze your story in the same way, it will be easier for you to answer the question: “How guilty was I in this situation, taking into account absolutely all the factors?” And then you will understand that it is not your fault and never could be. These are all thinking errors. Which you and I can fix. With your mind.

Keep a Guilt Journal

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If you feel that your life is becoming unbearable due to guilt, start a journal immediately. Every time the sneaky worms called remorse

(and the feeling of guilt presupposes that you have this very conscience!), begin to undermine your thoughts and your soul, record the day, time and, most importantly, the reason for their activity (possibly circumstances).

Re-read your notes a couple of times a week. This is not self-examination at all: it is very important to identify the circumstances that cause a surge of such emotions, and then draw the appropriate conclusions

that will allow such circumstances to be avoided. Perhaps a feeling of guilt consumes you at the moment of communication with a certain person? Draw conclusions, stop meeting with such people (or, if this is not possible, organize a meeting under other circumstances and on your terms).

Learn to rest properly

It is extremely important to be able to rest properly. That's right - it's not about what exactly you do. That's right - it's about how much you can distract yourself from extraneous thoughts by immersing yourself in an atmosphere of relaxation

. Agree, the best vacation ceases to be such if you are constantly thinking about how productively you could spend your time instead of this vacation.

Christian Negroni

Yes, indeed, you cannot run away from yourself, just like from your thoughts. But the secret is to give yourself a proper break. In other words, whenever you start having guilt-ridden thoughts, remind yourself that you are not running away from the problem.

. You just took a time out, a break. Believe me, proper rest will not only relieve accumulated fatigue, but may also suggest a solution to the problem that led to feelings of guilt.

Put your interests above other people's interests

You are the only person in the whole world who can take care of yourself better and more sincerely than everyone else. And if this line of behavior makes you feel guilty

, draw the following analogy: you are rescuing people who are stuck in water, somewhere at a depth. You have only one oxygen mask. What will you do?

You can, of course, give the opportunity to breathe first to those who need salvation. But who will feel better if you go down on your own, depriving yourself of a saving breath of air

? You will not save others, and you will destroy yourself. This advice looks very selfish, but... However, there is no “but” - it is what it is.

Change your priorities and stop putting your interests above all else

Foxy Dolphin

This advice is exactly the opposite of the previous one. But this does not mean that you should suffer from contradictions. The purpose of these tips is to relieve YOU of guilt. We do not undertake to discuss the moral side.
And if the feeling of guilt leaves you when you put your interests above the interests of others, then this method is more acceptable for you. If altruism saves you, go for it. It's up to you to decide.

Nobody is saying that looking out for your own interests is bad. There is nothing shameful in this, unless this line of behavior turns into your only position in life

. And this is a completely justified position if, in fact, you have no one else to care about. But what to do if things are different?

What to do if your feeling of guilt is caused precisely by the fact that you devote too much time to yourself, while such behavior turns into trouble for your loved ones?

Then you face a difficult, but necessary (and, most importantly, not impossible!) task - you need to change your life priorities. We will not now analyze the reasons why you did not do this earlier
. But the sooner you understand and feel that taking care of other people (especially if we are talking about your loved ones) is not only necessary, but also capable of bringing satisfaction, the better for you.

Work on bugs

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Self-flagellation is not only an extremely unpleasant and useless task, but also an activity that takes up a lot of valuable time. Stop wasting your energy wallowing in your remorse and feeling sorry for yourself. Your time will become much more productive

, if you start working on mistakes. However, this requires a very serious action (if you have not already done it!). It involves admitting your own mistakes.

There can be many examples of such behavior. For example, you planned to spend time with your child, but instead got bogged down in work, forgetting about your promise. Work is of course very important.

. But it is important to set your priorities correctly and learn to keep your promises. Admit your mistake, draw the right conclusions and create a “window” in your work in order to fulfill your promise. The feeling of guilt will go away.

Become your own friend and learn to forgive yourself

Learn to look at yourself from the outside, as if abstracting from your own personality. This is very useful so that when you see your mistakes, you learn to forgive yourself. Imagine that you are not you, but your very good friend

(it is not necessary to represent a specific existing friend) who wishes only the best for you. Will your imaginary friend judge you for your mistakes?

Another good way is to imagine that the mistakes you made were made by a real friend whom you value and respect.

. Would you like to experience the same pangs of guilt that he experiences? Are you ready to take on his experiences, or is this too much for you?

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The truth is that when it comes to guilt, we treat ourselves harsher than we would expect from those around us. In other words, we give the other person more room to make a mistake.

than to yourself. Perhaps the time has come to become your own friend, forgiving some of the weaknesses that you are ready to forgive your friends?

After all, situations often arise when we have done everything possible and impossible, but have not achieved success. And the feeling of guilt does not go away... This means that it is time to forgive yourself, as if you had forgiven your friend

. Of course, it will be much easier to do this if you begin to take positive steps towards correcting the situation - asking for forgiveness from those you offended; pay more attention to loved ones; start setting your priorities correctly.

Louise Hay: never, under any circumstances, criticize yourself

According to Louise Hay, you can get rid of guilt through total self-acceptance and forgiveness. Only a positive attitude towards yourself and the absence of self-criticism will allow you to find harmony with yourself and the world. It also relieves psychosomatic symptoms. Louise tested this personally: she got rid of internal grievances and defeated cancer forever.

The feeling of guilt forces a person to look for more and more new sources of pain and punishment. And after failures comes another portion of reproach. A vicious circle that spoils physical and mental health.

Louise Hay in her work “Never, under any circumstances, criticize yourself” has prepared some simple tips for every day. They will help you change your attitude towards yourself and the world. Here are just a few of them that are relevant to our topic:

The people who caused you suffering were just as scared as you are now.
Our beliefs are formed in childhood. Later, we move through life and create situations that confirm our beliefs.
How stupid it is to punish ourselves in the present because someone offended us in the past.
Forgiving or continuing to be offended is a personal choice. We choose what to experience. It's time to forgive everyone, including yourself.
As soon as a person gets sick, he needs to look for someone to forgive.
Self-approval and self-acceptance are the key to positive changes in our lives.
There is a three-year-old child inside each of us who is still scared and still needs a little love.
Loving yourself means appreciating the very fact of your existence and being grateful for it.
All the events that have taken place in your life up to now were the result of your thoughts and beliefs that came from the past.
People who don't love themselves don't know how to forgive.
Loving yourself means determining the purpose of your life, finding your favorite activity.
Guilt has nothing to do with the events that actually happened.

These attitudes are so obvious, but they are so difficult to root in your mind. However, this must be done to maintain health.

Don't leave the situation that caused you to feel guilty unresolved.

Unfortunately, this advice is not always easy to implement. However, it is better to try to do this than to put off solving the problem indefinitely. And a way can almost always be found if you analyze

current situation. Otherwise, you will constantly live in an atmosphere of understatement, incompleteness, which is very fertile ground for cultivating feelings of guilt.

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But let's give a concrete example.

Let's say you feel guilty because you behaved wrongly towards a certain person (or even a group of people). It could be your friends, parents or someone from a more distant environment - it doesn’t matter at all

. It is important not to keep your feelings to yourself. If you want to apologize, apologize, it won’t hurt you. Your goal is not to save face in this situation, but to get rid of the destructive feeling of guilt.

What does guilt mean in psychology?

For a person with an anal vector, it is of great importance that everything is equal, in the broadest sense. If he is looking for someone to blame, then both are to blame. If he chooses a winner, then friendship wins. If you made a gift, then now he must make an equivalent return gift. So that everything is equal, so as not to offend anyone.

If he has done something good and useful, he expects to be appreciated, praised, and recognized as an authority. And no awards are needed, give honor and respect - these, as the system-vector psychology of Yuri Buran shows, are key moments for his psyche.

Touchiness, by the way, is also characteristic of the anal vector and appears at the moment when a person feels that he has given more than was returned to him. He perceives this as injustice, “because it’s not equal.” This is a very difficult, mentally paralyzing condition, and how to overcome it is a separate topic.

But in fact, feelings of resentment and guilt often go hand in hand and have similar causes, only of different directions. So, from the point of view of system-vector psychology, if resentment is when I position myself as a victim of circumstances and the unfair attitude of others, then guilt is when I did not give to someone how much I should have, how much was expected of me. Or was generally wrong towards the other.

Look forward, stop looking back

Usually the feeling of guilt appears for some action that we did (or did not do) in the past. It’s hard to imagine a situation where you would be tormented by a feeling of guilt for something you should do in the future (although it happens!)

. A necessary and effective way to overcome such feelings is to focus on what you want from your life in the future.

It is useful to do the following: set your priorities correctly, focus on short-term and long-term goals. Then make a strategic plan

achieving these goals that will help you achieve what is truly important to you, based on your priorities. Move only forward - this is the only way that allows you not to get bogged down in the past.

Important!
In order to move forward, you need to stop feeling guilty about past
. That is why it is important to follow the previous advice - not to leave unresolved the situation that led to feelings of guilt.

Jacob Lund

But what to do if you really committed an unseemly act for which you are ashamed, but which cannot be corrected? Yes, and apologizing will not help anything - perhaps there is no one to apologize to

!
In this case, even more so, you should stop telling yourself something like “If only I had acted / acted differently
,” and you should focus on what you are doing now so that something similar does not happen in the future.

Psychology of guilt: who is susceptible to this feeling

Learning ability, love and the ability to learn are all innate properties of the owner of the anal vector. For this they are given perseverance, obedience, diligence, and accuracy. For good academic success - an excellent memory. Better than most at remembering large amounts of information.

It is natural that the entire volume of the human psyche with the anal vector is directed back to the past. Knowledge, books, history are the desire to adopt the experience of previous generations and master it well in order to pass it on to the next generation.

Potentially, the owners of the anal vector are the best teachers, masters of their craft, professionals, because only those who have succeeded in teaching themselves can teach. The psyche of such people is somewhat rigid; they take a long time to get used to new things, to changes, but the information or skill recorded in memory remains forever.

Those with the anal vector are homebodies; something new always causes a lot of stress. Therefore, they strive not to violate the usual boundaries of their habitat.

The highest value for people with the anal vector is family, children, comfort, and traditions. These are people who strive to repeat the experience of their fathers and grandfathers, to live according to old ways and customs, elevating them in advance to value, because this is something from the past, tested and mastered for centuries, which means it is good.

Don't let guilt devalue your achievements

You are gnawing at a feeling of guilt - this means that you are an emotional person who can be influenced by external circumstances. But circumstances are just a background in your life, and guilt arises in your brain

. Simply put, you formulated it, nurtured it and now nurture it day by day. In this case, it is in your power to formulate postulates that will destroy this hateful feeling of guilt.

It looks like self-hypnosis, auto-training. Essentially, it's him and the network. If, for example, you have achieved success, but you feel like you don’t deserve it, formulate the opposite thought and repeat it like a mantra

:
“I deserve it!”
. If feelings of guilt devalue your success, your achievements (even if they are small), repeat these words even more often, not forgetting the difficulties that you have overcome along the way. Don't let guilt devalue your achievements!

Impact on the human psyche

People with mental illness are often unfamiliar with feelings of guilt. They simply cannot experience this emotion. Therefore, its presence is characteristic of individuals with a healthy psyche.

When shame and guilt occur, a person usually experiences:

fear;
irritation towards oneself;
cardiopalmus;
muscle tension;
desire to hide.

From a constant feeling of guilt, a person develops a negative attitude towards himself, and the following happens:

A person believes that he is to blame for everything, and therefore allows others to freely invade his personal space.
The individual unconsciously strives for punishment. The consequence of this may be the loss of money or expensive things, he may “accidentally” get into an accident or be seriously injured. Such a person subconsciously plays the role of a victim and easily succumbs to the manipulation of others. Manipulators can easily control it.
The person is completely inactive, not trying to defend his point of view. He believes that he is worthy only of negative attitude.
A person constantly compares himself with the people around him.
He cannot build meaningful relationships and become happy.
A person loses self-confidence and becomes apathetic.

All this devastates a person, takes away his strength and energy. In addition to negative emotions and self-deprecation, a constant feeling of guilt is harmful to health, provoking the development of cancer, chronic fatigue, and back pain.

Nevertheless, the feeling of guilt teaches a person to distinguish bad from good and to empathize with others. Having committed an offense, he understands that he has neglected moral values. The feeling of guilt helps him not to repeat such bad actions in the future and apologize to people for what he has done, offering them help.

Don't keep everything to yourself

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We are rather strange creatures, often expecting from our environment certain actions and actions that seem most appropriate to us. We don't give other people a chance to do differently.

. This is why many of us look at this or that situation rather one-sidedly, not noticing all the facets, all the nuances (or, conversely, exaggerating them).

Let's imagine the following picture: you, while in a company, did something that personally causes you a feeling of strong and deep guilt. Try talking to someone from this company; with someone you trust

, if there is such a person or just with an outside observer. And you may be very surprised when you find out that no one but you thinks about your action!

Perhaps you misunderstood the situation, imagining who knows what. Perhaps you simply incorrectly interpreted someone’s accidentally dropped phrase, someone’s gesture, or look. Discuss it with someone who could see more

. Perhaps it will turn out that all your worries and pangs of conscience are not worth a damn! This is why it is very important not to keep everything to yourself.

The concept of guilt and its difference between annoyance and shame

Guilt is a negative feeling caused by a person’s misdeed, which seems to him to be the cause of negative consequences for others. Despite the fact that we sometimes admire people who are overly susceptible to feelings of guilt (great writers and people of art in general), you cannot call them happy. Whereas there are many immoral people for whom this feeling is completely unusual, and they look completely happy (psychopaths, for example, have no feeling of guilt). So where is the line?

First, let's understand the concept of guilt and its difference from others. When a person feels annoyed, he is not ashamed of anyone. He missed the finish line first by half a meter, decided to postpone the purchase of the phone until tomorrow, and the next day it went up in price. Annoyance is anger at oneself for making a mistake; it occurs even when a person knows that he did everything right. Guilt arises when there is another person present to whom our hero has caused pain or some kind of inconvenience.

Shame is a little more complicated. Shame occurs only when there are witnesses, while guilt is a purely personal experience. Perhaps no one in the whole world knows about this man’s offense, but it is enough for him that he himself knows about it. Guilt arises from a person's conscience, while shame is a product of public condemnation. Often, shame also sits within the feeling of guilt, and shame can quite easily turn into a feeling of guilt. A person could have committed an act and not realized that he had done something negative, but after public condemnation he realized his act and begins to suffer from guilt.

Don't let others make you feel guilty

The only person who can control you in this life is yourself. Unfortunately, we often forget about this, allowing ourselves to fall under the manipulative actions of the people around us.

. We are manipulated by friends, our life and business partners, parents, bosses, children. The hardest thing is when you find yourself in the center of such a manipulative web that surrounds you from all sides at once.

Recognizing such manipulation can sometimes be very difficult. But even if you managed to figure out your opponent, it is even more difficult to get out of his influence. The main thing in this matter is not to make a mistake

who exactly is manipulating you. Don't rush to ruin your relationship with your boss or partner by deliberately aggravating the situation. Take a break, give yourself a break, think about everything in a calm environment; If necessary, apologize.

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It's not about whether you're right or wrong! Of course, we often make mistakes, and therefore accusations from those around us can be absolutely justified. But our task is to save you from feeling guilty.
. So try to become the only person who has the right to blame himself for his own mistakes.

Feeling guilty does not mean being guilty

If you get hit, fight back. If you have offended, and the offender does not think to come with an apology, the only way to level the situation is with revenge. This is how a person with an anal vector feels it. What if he himself turned out to be the “offender”? Yes, the owner of the anal vector will eat himself in this case. In every sense of the word.

“I reproach myself, putting myself in the position of a guilty person, an offender in relation to someone who is infinitely dear to me.” How to cope and level out this imbalance? Punish the offender. Often “punish” for a person with an anal vector is equal to “destroy”.

This self-eating and full justification for the deservedness of this process, originating inside the psyche and fitting into the picture of the world, can over time be transferred to the body. In this regard, one can look for the causes of some autoimmune diseases that are psychosomatic in nature. The reason for difficult experiences and psychosomatic consequences is the inadequate realization of the properties of our psyche.

To implement means, according to the definition of system-vector psychology, to use it for the benefit of other people. Don’t look back, living in the past and replaying the past hundreds of times in your head, but use your full potential for the sake of other people, for the benefit of society. Use your memory for its intended purpose - for studying and learning, and not for chewing on what you should have done and didn’t do.

Make a list of your positive qualities

By nurturing feelings of guilt, we lower our own self-esteem. Of course, there is no point in attributing to yourself positive qualities that you do not possess. However, it is extremely important to realize that the world is not divided only into black and white

. And even if you have committed some unseemly act (or continue to do it constantly), this does not make you a truly bad person.

Believe me, by mercilessly criticizing yourself day after day, you artificially ignore your positive traits and qualities, focusing on the negative ones. A person who is completely satisfied with himself

(if you want, a person who feels happy) is unlikely to cultivate feelings of guilt. And if it does arise, then a happy person copes with it without making much effort.

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Even if you are far from feeling inner happiness, it is recommended to resort to the old proven method: take a piece of paper and write down all the positive aspects that are characteristic of your nature

. Moreover: every time you feel another attack of guilt, take a piece of paper and write down those features of yourself that you personally like. You can repeat yourself and not be modest!

Psychosomatics of unforgiveness

The feeling of guilt results in perfectionism, the desire for the ideal. A person puts forward strict demands on himself and forbids making mistakes. And if this happens, he severely punishes himself and experiences extreme stress. Essentially, people with constant guilt live in stress all the time. And this slowly but surely unbalances all body systems and disrupts hormonal balance.

At the other end of guilt there is always resentment. In psychosomatics, unforgiveness is associated with the development of oncology. Low self-esteem, self-pity, the inability to forgive yourself and others - all these are prerequisites for cancer. Until a person lets go of the past and gets rid of grievances, he will live in memories. And his body will devour itself.

Attention! Psychosomatic diseases are real disorders in the functioning of organs caused by stress. To completely get rid of the disease, you need to undergo complex therapy: taking medications and consulting a psychologist.

Know your strengths and weaknesses

This point quite logically follows the previous one, since only after realizing your positive qualities can you realize your strengths and weaknesses. Why is this necessary?

No matter how hard we try to ensure that no one declares us guilty, in real life conditions this is difficult to achieve. Moreover: these accusations may be completely justified, which is fertile ground for the emergence of feelings of guilt.

In order not to give feelings of guilt a single chance, you need to clearly understand which things you can do better, and which ones you are not so good at or can’t do at all. Perhaps there won’t be many qualities

that evoke positive emotions in you personally. But they certainly exist. Perhaps not everything you do can be called right, which is why, in fact, the feeling of guilt arises. But you can't do everything badly!

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For example, you blame yourself for not following healthy eating rules for yourself. But you probably prepare healthy and tasty food for your child! You're not romantic enough

and therefore do not give your partner the gestures of attention that he/she expects? But you provide her/him with maximum support in housekeeping, which is difficult to overestimate.

There are many such examples. It is important to be clearly aware of your strengths and weaknesses, if only so that every time you feel guilty about doing something wrong

, you could give yourself even more evidence from a list of things you regularly do right.

Don't deny yourself little weaknesses

The constant daily struggle with guilt is a battle for life and death. This means that life in such a regime is damn exhausting even for the healthiest organism.

. Often we ourselves become opponents of our own personality, fighting with our own “I”, punishing ourselves for our actions, which plays into the hands of our feelings of guilt.

We forget that we are just people, prone to making certain mistakes, having our own little weaknesses. So don't be too hard on yourself. War is war

, and you can afford a glass of red wine during this period (especially since it will relieve stress and improve your heart rate). You can eat a bar of chocolate, which will make you feel a little happier.

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You can just buy popcorn, lock yourself in your apartment and watch some good movie. Don't deny yourself these little pleasures! Even if you are self-flagellating because you are obese

, you can sometimes please yourself with small excesses without worrying at least at this moment about excess weight. Understand: there is only one life, it flows quickly, so there is less and less time for small joys.

Do good deeds

If there is no room for good deeds in your life, then is it worth complaining that you are being eaten up by your own feelings of guilt? But once you think about the fact that you need to do something further with this destructive feeling

, then you are ready to take action, right? And the only way to act in this case is to start doing plausible actions.

You shouldn’t think too much about motivation, compare your bad and good deeds, or count the number of both. Just do good deeds and remember them when you feel guilty

. Believe me, there are a huge number of people in this world who need your good deeds. And they don't care about your motives - they just need help and will be grateful for it.

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The easiest way is to engage in charity. And even if you are not a rich person at all, there are probably few things at home that can be donated to a nursing home or orphanage; yes, just help a lonely neighbor of retirement age

! Start helping, realizing the fact that there are people who will find it extremely difficult to survive in this world without you personally; people who struggle not with guilt, but with hunger, cold, and disease.

How to get rid of obsessive feelings of guilt

To get rid of guilt you need to break the victim mentality. That is, you need to learn healthy responsibility and self-love.

General recommendations

How to get rid of the constant feeling of guilt:

Learn to separate subjective factors from objective ones, your responsibility from someone else’s. It’s one thing if you’re late for work because you overslept, but it’s another thing if you’re late because the alarm clock broke and didn’t ring. In the second case, circumstances that you could not influence are to blame. You didn't even know about them.
Be able to say “no”, that is, develop healthy egoism and self-respect.
Know and accept your characteristics and needs.
Stop pleasing others (get rid of the “I shouldn’t upset…” attitude).
Allow yourself to make mistakes. Look on the Internet to see how many famous people have gotten into scandals, ridiculous or difficult situations. And nothing, they came out victorious. All people make mistakes. It's not scary, it's scary to ignore experience and repeat the same mistakes.
Learn to evaluate and criticize actions, circumstances, situations, but not yourself as a person. You are always gorgeous, but some actions and reactions may need correction.
Make a plan for self-development, find a goal for the future. It's time to stop wasting energy on things that can't be fixed. All that remains is to accept it and take care of the future.
Ask for forgiveness and forgive yourself. You can use the technique of an unsent letter: express everything you want, describe the situation as you see it, determine the share of responsibility of each party, ask for forgiveness for your actions, forgive the other person for his mistakes, then forgive yourself and thank yourself and him. The letter is not sent, but you can burn it. When writing, you should not choose expressions, monitor literacy and content. The main thing is to express your feelings, thoughts and emotions. And if you can talk to a person in person, then it is better to personally ask for forgiveness and talk about what is tormenting the soul.

An unsent letter will allow you to both get rid of feelings of guilt and get rid of feelings of resentment. The latter often goes hand in hand with the former. For example, a child’s feeling of guilt towards his mother is accompanied by resentment and love for her, and sometimes also anger (“yes, I was not the best child, but she could praise me more, support me, believe in me”). From such a contradiction of feelings, even more psychosomatic disorders are born.

Attention! Getting rid of childhood attitudes is not easy. This is a psychological trauma that lives in the subconscious. If you can’t cope on your own, then you should definitely visit a psychologist.

Affirmation

Psychosomatist Louise Hay suggests fighting guilt with the help of affirmations:

I love myself and value myself highly.
I love and approve of myself.
I look at myself with love.
I throw away all restrictions and find the freedom to be myself.
I accept myself.

Repeat these affirmations every day, but do not forget about regular work on yourself (general recommendations). Self-hypnosis alone will not be enough to change your life.

Another auxiliary measure is self-diagnosis. You can conduct a test to determine abnormal feelings of guilt right now and repeat it in the future to identify the dynamics of therapy.

Test therapy

We invite you to get acquainted with the “Perceived Guilt Index” technique. Authors: John R. Otterbacher, David S. Muntz. This technique can be used when analyzing situations that cause feelings of guilt. It will also help track the dynamics when correcting the condition.

You will have to determine the indicator on two scales: the feeling of guilt at the present moment (G-state scale) and the severity of this feeling as a component of personality (G-trait scale).

To determine the index of the first scale, select only one word or phrase that most accurately describes your state at the moment (the index of each answer is indicated in brackets):

depressed (4.3);
condemning (6.8);
innocent(1,1);
calm (2);
shameful (9.4);
unworthy (7,8);
disappointed (5.9);
irritable (5.3);
in a state of decline (8.6);
restrained (3,4);
not deserving of forgiveness (10.4).

To determine the second scale, select one word or phrase from the same list that most accurately describes how you usually experience guilt.

Compare the index of the first and second scales. The second scale is your personal norm, the first is deviation from it in response to a specific situation. Analysis of the situation and the index will help build a correction plan.

There is a second assessment method: comparing the index with a generally accepted norm in psychology. To determine it, subtract the index of the second from the value of the first scale and add ten to the result. If the final index is greater than 10, then the experienced feeling of guilt is higher than ordinary experiences. And if it’s less than 10, then it’s lower, which is also not the norm.

Realize there are things you can't control

Do you know how some experts assess the desire to keep everything and everyone under control? As a sign of severe neurosis caused by a variety of reasons. And unless you are a dictator in power

in some country, then controlling everything is just an obsessive thought, a utopia that feeds your feeling of guilt, perhaps caused precisely by the fact that it is simply impossible to control everything.

It is very important to realize as quickly as possible that you are just one person in a huge world who is not able to cope with all its difficulties and problems. It's not bad and it's not good - it's a given

. This does not mean at all that you should give up and stop fighting and resolving issues. Just do what you have to do, be yourself, while realizing that you physically cannot be responsible for every little problem and situation you encounter in your life.