Feeling guilty
In one of my workshops recently, I heard one participant say at the end:
“I know this stuff about [boundaries] in my head, but what I need now is consistency.”
I love hearing this because it signals an awareness and a readiness to show up for yourself.
The more you practice living out your inner wisdom, the more you continue to recharge your batteries and get out of overing.
But we need to talk about some big emotions - guilt and shame (within us and from others) that get triggered when we start to make shifts in our lives.
Early on, “I feel guilty” is a common refrain when my clients are:
Setting boundaries from overworking
Saying ‘no’ to someone at work
Delegating things off the to do list (psst, because they usually aren’t your job)
Scheduling self-care time over more work time.
Shifting out of people pleasing.
And yes, feeling guilty at first is common–but it’s also more complex than that.
Two key things that are critical to get perspective on:
Sometimes it’s guilt. And sometimes it’s shame. (More on shame next week.)
It can be something you feel internally from your own lived experiences or behavior. It can be something other’s try to make you feel.
All of these can be true at the same time.
Knowing these parts can help you handle these feelings, learn how to sit with them in kind observation, and then move forward in healthy ways that rewire your neural pathways and programmed behaviors.
Feeling guilt for establishing boundaries can come from a conflict of values. Your values may be conflicting with the person who is trying to guilt-trip you – though I know people who guilt trip themselves before anyone else can do it to them.
Valuing your own time by, let’s say, not checking work email on the weekend but feeling guilty about it is a value conflict. On one hand you’re saying, I value my time away from work. On the other hand, you believe that your workplace values having full 24/7 access to you.
When you want to make choices that prioritize your needs, do you feel guilty?
I see folks using self-imposed guilt to avoid making decisions that center themselves in their own lives. I hear this one so often in this conversation about getting out of overing.
Guilt in the context of boundaries and self-prioritization rears its greedy little head in a couple situations:
When we have taken on responsibility for other people’s well being rather than our own. This is the overfunctioning role of rescuing.
When our sense of worthiness is lower than the worthiness we place on or give to others. This is the low self-esteem, imposterism myth, or unworthy wounds.
The guilt voice can be a trauma response from our past where it overly developed in order to protect us. For some of us, childhoods full of people pleasing or walking on eggshells or taking care of parents' emotions (and other versions of these) taught us to override our own emotional, physical, and mental needs and wants. I feel this guilt less and less as I practice tools to increase awareness and to calm anxiety.
Or it can be a socialized response from capitalistic, exploitive work systems. Being guilt tripped by others is really normalized, sadly. It shows up when we don’t want to play into the 24/7 system or don’t want to be ‘work friends’ with someone or continue to cater to toxic relationships.
All of this pretty damn common. My friend Leah used to tell me, “guilt is kinda your thing.” They were pointing to how guilt was the first response I would have to anything that smelled or looked like I might make a choice that prioritized me. In my own worthiness healing journey, I’ve come so far in shifting out of guilt patterns so I know you can too!
Embodying our wisdom connects back to how we make choices. You can choose to address guilt tripping head on - either calling yourself out or others.
Apathy, avoidance, and denial are all choices but they lack empowerment, confidence, and worthiness. So let’s be clear. Not making choices is playing the victim and abdicating your own life to the wants, demands, and whims of others. Instead, stand up for yourself and your own values. You’ll be glad you did in the end.
P.S. One of my favorite things to do with folks is working 1:1 with you to bust through guilt triggers so that you can create boundaries with supportive routines and calendar hacks. If this sounds good to you, let’s set up a call.