Guilt is really fear of honoring your true self.

Written By Lacey C Sonnier

Guilt is FEAR.

Guilt is often defined as surfacing when “you have done something bad.” When I have read about it in the past it is  talked about with shame, shame being the perception that “you are bad.” 

There is a lot of debate about feelings and emotions, trust me I have looked at the research. With guilt in particular, some professionals don't think guilt is a feeling at all but a judgement of wrong doing, either you are guilty or you are not. 

The debates sparked an interest in me to do my own investigating. When I say I feel guilty I am definitely feeling something and other people are too because it affects their behavior and choices. 

The first thing I did was sit with what we call “guilt” to really see what it felt like, where I felt it, and in what context I felt it in. I wanted to see if I could also distinguish it from shame. 

Right away I noticed I could. When I focused in on shame, I noticed I feel shame in my throat, upper back and shoulders, chest, and it kind of goes down towards my stomach. The flow or movement of it causes me to want to curl  inward, pull my head down, slouch forward. Sometimes it feels like a burning, on fire feeling, sometimes it feels just uncomfortable. 

When I switched to the last situation I felt ‘guilt’ in, I noticed right away I felt it in my stomach and it kind of just emanated from that area. It was a very tense feeling and recognizable. The longer I sat with it the more it became clear to me that it felt exactly like fear. I thought this isn’t “guilt” it is FEAR! But fear of what? I’ll get to that in a second

Thoughts attached to guilt.  

I also was able to recognize that there were particular thoughts attached to the feeling of guilt. Most of the thoughts that arose with guilt were should statements. This was true for me and my clients. 

Should statements, in CBT, are a distorted way of thinking that causes us to place unrealistic rules on ourselves or others. When you feel ‘guilt’ you might hear yourself saying things like,

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I should have said yes.” 

“I shouldn’t have said no.” 

“I should just do what they are asking.” 

“I should have been there.” 

“I should’ve done better, etc.” 

These are examples of thoughts that show up after you have made a choice that you feel guilty about. And if we are looking at guilt as a judgement, usually the feeling shows up when the actual choice was not “bad” per se, only in your mind is it bad.

You can also feel guilt arise before you make a decision too and have shoulds like,

“I should go.”

“I should call.”

“I should do this.”

“I should be there,etc.”


When we look at guilt that arises after a decision and slow the  interaction down further, it seems to surface after you have honored your true feelings. When you honor your true self and feelings you may say no to something, stand up for yourself, or feel compelled to set a boundary. 

Guilt may surface after you have made your choice to honor how you feel in the moment but the response you receive is negative and sometimes neutral. If the other person responds negatively, you may then forget why you made your decision in the first place and the other person's feelings then trump your true feelings and you feel guilty.  

You question your own actions because you were not affirmed in your decision.

If you feel guilty before you act, should statements are still present. Guilt may drive your behavior with shoulds like, “I should just go,” “I should just do this.” 

In most cases when a person's actions were not ‘bad.’ And if you know for a fact that you have done something bad and detrimental to society and your relationships then it may be remorse or shame that you are feeling. 

What is causing the shoulds?

Why are we shoulding ourselves in these moments? I said that the feeling we are calling guilt feels like fear to me. When we have a lot of should statements in our head, we are fearful of something happening but what?

If we break it down a little bit, if I am saying I should do this or should not have done that, why would that be important. Usually we say these things because we care. We care about being a good friend, sister, daughter, mother, son, husband, boyfriend, partner, counselor, teacher, and on and on. We care about being a good person, or perceived as being a good person. 

We care about not being rejected, disappointing others, or causing conflict. We are fearful of those things. A lot of us FEAR these things.

For some of us, we have gotten into the habit of honoring others' feelings before our own. Maybe when we have honored our own feelings in the past we have gotten push back, or negative responses that were painful. When we really get deep about it, maybe we have come to associate honoring our true self with punishment, and it being a bad thing, even though our true self pushes forward all the time to be honored and recognized. 

We back peddle, doubt ourselves, and go back to the safe zone of honoring the other person’s feelings and dishonoring our own. On a subtle level somehow by wallowing in these guilt/fear feelings we can justify to ourselves that we are a good person. 

Guilt is fear of honoring our true self. What will it mean if you do that, how will you be perceived. 

Why is it a good thing to know all of this?

When I realized what guilt really was, it kind of felt like a relief. There felt like a disconnect with what people said about guilt and what I was in fact experiencing. All of the back and forth and disagreements with other professionals, my own personal discovery (which is not a new discovery) helped to really put things in perspective in a felt sense.

Think about it, if I know that when I am feeling guilty, it is actually fear, fear of being a bad person, rejected, causing conflict, disappointing others, then I can really hone in on that fear and challenge and reframe it to feel less guilt. This is because the thoughts supporting the feeling are distorted. 

If ‘guilt’ comes up I can ask myself questions like, what am I fearful of? Is it based in reality? At this moment, my true self is pushing me towards saying no, maybe I should honor that despite what happens after. Just because I am honoring my true self does not make me a bad person. Just because a person responds negatively does not mean I did anything wrong. People honor their true self all the time. 

If someone wanted to honor their true self and that meant setting a boundary with me or saying no to me would I want that for them? Yes I would, even if I didn’t like it.

With this new knowledge you can begin to start a new dialogue with yourself that is more based in reality and help you to begin practicing (emphasis on the practice part) making better decisions that are not based in fear.

Why do some people feel less guilty when honoring their true self. 

It depends on your early experiences. I notice that people who are driven by guilt (fear) or experience guilt are usually individuals who are people pleasers, sensitive and highly sensitive people, empaths, people who like to avoid conflict and disappointing others, people who care deeply about what other people think. People who may have felt rejected at an early age in some way especially when they were acting from their true self. 

And I am all of the above, so this is not meant to shame any of these characteristics if you embody them because I know what it is like. It can also be linked to religious upbringing and deeply held morals, which is a whole can of worms in itself. 

In this case knowledge is power. The more you know why you function the way you do, the more power you have to circumvent some of the old behaviors. 

It seems there may be a correlation between the degree to which a person cares and the degree to which they experience guilt (fear). I don’t believe the goal is to stop caring, it is to get clearer on situations where it’s important to honor your true self and begin to practice that. And to learn to be ok with whatever response you receive when you do it. 

We will probably have to continue to call it guilt because of the disagreement about what it really is, and that is ok. I may call it guilt but I recognize what it truly is. 

And if you don't believe me, by all means investigate the feeling for yourself. 

Conclusion

There is disagreement over if guilt is a feeling. It seems that what we are calling guilt is really fear. Along with these guilty feelings you may notice a lot of should statements. Should statements are distorted thoughts and unrealistic rules we place on ourselves. When we engage in should statements we may be fearful of how we will be perceived and even though we are being nudged to act by our true self we become fearful and call it guilt. This guilt or fear, leads us to dishonor our true self and allow others' feelings to trump our own. If we can really see what is going on we can have the power to challenge it. We can then practice operating from a more realistic perspective which may be, just because I am honoring my true self does not make me a bad person.


 
Lacey C Sonnier

Hi! I am Lacey. I am just a regular person who happens to work as a mental health counselor. I’m here to share with you stories, ways to cope, or a different perspective to maybe help change the way you think.

https://laceycsonnier.com
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