• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

PTSD - How Does One Deal With the Guilt?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I think guilt-tripping is very passive aggressive and when you have family that reinforce the harmful feelings of guilt in your behavior, it is excruciatingly difficult to just let go. It becomes a practice of changing the guilt into positive feelings about your self.

Guilt is very much an affect of the self esteem but it would be unfair to say that you make yourself feel guilty because you have some self doubt issues. More accurately, it starts like a seed, the first time someone you trusted hurt your feelings, and the negative affirmations (guilt tripping) and hurtful comments are reinforcing the guilty feelings.

It helps to draw a new perspective and practice viewing it more objectively. For instance, try to see that people who say hurtful things to you do not understand what you are experiencing or have experienced. They cannot relate...and/or chose not to...and if they do not show support by research or kindness then they behave, in a very literal sense, out of self-preserving ignorance. If this behavior seems to repeat itself most often within some of your family dynamic, it hurts more than if a friend or stranger said it. Why would your family not want to support you more positively, right? Likely, they might even feel guilty about some aspect of what has happened...maybe they feel guilty they can't understand more clearly...so they transfer the guilt to the "victim". It is not healthy behavior. But once you can see that some of that guilt is manipulative and hurting you, and not you hurting you, it will be easier to stand your ground, create healthier boundaries, and define your healing process.

Do take care...and take the time you need for yourself now. Being alive is about being you, not about pacifying others or even paying back emotional debts. (Those debts are the ruses of guilt.) ;-)
 
When you have set better boundaries...

Very often, when you have exorcised the guilt and are better able to set boundaries and define your healing process it will affect the people around you in a positive way. As you begin to feel healthier and more optimistic, this very much gives others around you the permission to stop feeling guilty as well (even though they hide their guilt inappropriately).

The mood will very, very gradually shift in those around you towards the positive. Old habits die hard...but be persistent with your boundaries and care and people will see you are not taking no for an answer because you are committed to your understanding of your health needs. Hopefully they will be proud of your initiative and ask you how they can now help.

We're proud of you...and everyone with the courage to to conquer this condition.:occasion:
 
This thread made me think of my own Great Wall of Guilt that I constructed years ago, a impenetrable barrier that holds the key to my life of pain.

Your words made me think that in every day life, I'm practically impervious to someone or something 'guilting me.' That is, most things in my daily life could never compare to the gargantuan guilt I carry with me every day; therefore, the small, daily items or occurrences that might spawn guilt rarely if ever do so.

I generally blow off the small 'guilts' of life, which, seemingly, are but a drop of water in a vast great lake of guilt in which I tread water every single day.
 
I'm not suggesting we are not responsible for some of our own guilt. Of course we know we can change. That is why we are here. Sometimes we feel guilty because we don't even though we know that our guilt is hurting us.

Perspective goes a long way. Does not guilt have more than one source? Does not the feeling of others judging compound the guilt? Do we not sometimes judge ourselves by the harsh standards of others, even though we know it's not healthy?

Good luck to all overburdened with many guilts.:Hug_emoticon:
 
Guilt for wrong reasons?

I was reading this thread on Guilt and many people suffer guilt as a result of their trauma, "survivor guilt". I personally didn't "survive" anything because I was never in direct danger and YET I suffer guilt.

I feel guilty when I go out and do anything because I am off work and I convince myself that I should be home "recovering" and "disordered".

I am told that recovery involves going out and learning how to have fun again - how can I have fun if fun creates guilt and guilt leads to depression? I hate being depressed, its a bit of a "downer", lol.

:smile: Aim for one smile a day and NO GUILT about it!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top