How to Have a Life Free from Constant Guilt

Guilt is often an unhappy reminder of a punishment you experienced as a child. Children learn to feel guilty when they’re told that they are bad or wrong or what they did has hurt someone they care about. This makes guilt a conditioned reaction, rather than a real emotion.

While guilt can teach you right from wrong, it can be a weighty burden to carry throughout life. Pleasing everyone is not, after all, possible all the time, and mistakes are not always worth feeling guilty about.

Is It Really Guilt?

Guilt can leave you feeling anxious and unhappy. It can make you skip a party that you wanted to attend or forgo travel that took months to plan, in order to please a friend or relative. It can make you feel worthless and frustrated. It can lower your self-esteem and make you indecisive, apprehensive, afraid, or shy.

However, such feelings can also mask deeper emotions that you mistake for guilt each time you think you have done something wrong or bad. They could be feelings of disappointment or helplessness at failing to do something, sadness at letting people down, or anger about saying yes when you should have said no.

Being Constantly Beleaguered by Guilt

No one wants excessive guilt as a companion for life. It is a negative feeling that can stop you from pursuing and achieving your life aspirations. It can deter you from building fulfilling relationships, and it can stand in the way of being yourself and having a happy life.

If you are constantly beleaguered by guilt, you may not find the courage to focus on your own life and family. It is an emotional warning you learned as a child; if you don’t extricate yourself from it, it can haunt you for life.

Break Free from Constant Guilt

Guilt may help you be a good person, but an overdose of it in your life can be counterproductive. You can be a good person without being saddled by guilt. If you hurt someone, go ahead and apologize, but don’t let that single event haunt you day and night. If you are having a hard time breaking free from constant guilt and moving on, call Carolina Counseling Services – Fuquay-Varina, NC, for an appointment.

Carolina Counseling Services – Fuquay-Varina, NC has independently contracted therapists who can help you break free from constant guilt and the negative thoughts and feelings that it stirs up. By working with them, you may be able to shed the load you have been carrying on your back since you were a child.

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