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!

GE6: Is Anger clouding your judgement?

Hi Friends, 

Anger is is one of  the strongest feelings of annoyance and loss of pleasure. Behaviour displayed is either, aggressive, threatening verbal and non- verbal communication, or else cold unending silence.  

How does a person reach this stage?

Well this happens, by ignoring frustration for a considerably long period of time, could be a number of days, sometimes it can be even hidden for years. Repeated suppression of this feeling leads to anger.

There is, however, a misconception about anger. Not all anger, is bad or wrong. There are times when we need to get angry, this is rightful anger. 

Then what is the problem?

The problem is, disproportionate misplaced anger.

Most of us don’t know how to, channelise and express anger, in a constructive way. 

I am sure..most of us have been in situations where we have done something in anger, that we still regret, and will for a long time to come. 

So, how do we handle this strong feeling?

Here are a few simple day to day things we can do:

1. Look carefully at the situation, and all the different aspects of it.

2. Check if you are unjustly blaming others.

3. Be honest and pinpoint your role in the situation.

4. Once you have gone through these steps above, purposely delay your response.

5. If your anger doesn't subside inspite of all the above, take a pen and paper and write a letter to the person or the situation about which you are so angry. Read it again. It will definitely calm you down and make you look at things with a different perspective.

6. Watch videos or read books that talk about how people were frustrated and angry and how they channelised it in a constructive way.

Hope these points help you, tide over the wave of anger. Especially, that time in your life when you're anger is clouding your judgement.

This is a powerful emotion/feeling which is a two edged sword, so be careful how you use it.  If however, you are unable to deal with this feeling(you must not delay in seeking professional help) or you try to suppress it or express it destructively, it will lead you to the next most hidden and dangerous feeling of guilt. I will share the ways to handle feelings of guilt.