GE7: Is Guilt gnawing at your conscience?

GE7: Is Guilt gnawing at your conscience?

The feeling of having committed a specified or implied offence or crime.

Behaviour: Blaming someone else for your decisions/actions.

A deep seething anger over time leads you to either do, say or even think of something that you may feel guilty for. You may feel great when you “get back” however, later when you are by yourself and think about how things went. You may actually realize you have burned the bridges or overreacted.

So, how do we tackle this?

Let's start...

1. Retrospect:
Think of the time/incident that first caused you to experience this feeling. List out more such incidents in your life that triggered this feeling. Look for the common factors in all these incidents and narrow in on what about that incident/s made you feel guilty. Ask yourself how relevant is this feeling today and address it accordingly. 

2. Introspect: The feeling of guilt is a watchman of our soul, it warns us when we are about to do or have done something wrong. However, check if you are feeling guilty for something you did or were you made to feel guilty for someone else' wrong action or response.

3. Plan of Action: Once you are sure that it was your response/decision/action that is causing guilt, then find out how you can set right, if possible, the wrong that has has been done or at try to lessen the damage it can cause.

4. Accept and Learn: There are times when things are beyond your power, you cannot go back and change the situation, in that case, you need to forgive yourself and learn from your mistakes.

5. Be Strong but seek Professional help: You will, of course, pay the price for your response/action/decision. This will hopefully make you realize that you need to be more careful about your anger. If you have a nagging feeling of guilt, it would most probably be a carry over from your childhood or earlier days. Pinpoint it and deal with it either by yourself if you can, or else with some guidance from a professional.  

  

Hope these points help you, tide over your feeling of guilt. Especially, at that time in your life, when your guilt is gnawing mercilessly at your conscience. This is a powerful emotion/feeling which is very disturbing.  If however, you are unable to deal with this feeling or you try to suppress it or express it destructively, please consider seeking professional help. 

That's all for now, my next post will be on the feelings that slowly lead to Shame and how to deal with these..till then take care!