Once, I went to a reading party organized by a senior sister and was accidentally late. Later, I felt very guilty about being late. I fell into deep self-blame and felt like I was wasting someone else's life.
I admit, I am not confident enough. people’s inferiority and anxiety are likely to be caused by guilt. If you live with guilt all the time, it will definitely be very uncomfortable. The book "Guilty Cleaning Exercise: Writing to You who often blame yourself" provides some tools and exercises to help us learn to let go of guilt and stop living for others.
01 What is guilt?
Guilt is an emotion that makes you feel uneasy because you have done something wrong.
When you play games all day and don’t spend your time studying, you will feel guilty; when you decide to lose weight, you eat an ice cream, you will feel guilty; when your child’s academic performance drops, you feel guilty, maybe because you are too busy with work and have no time to take care of it...
Guilt is not shame. The ancients said, "Knowing shame is almost courageous", and the "shame" here means shame. At least in the eyes of the ancients, shame is good.
02 Reasons for guilt
No matter how we can observe our words and expressions, we cannot make everyone happy. Even if you can please everyone, are you happy?
The author of the book "Guilty Cleanup Exercise: Writing to You who often blames yourself" believes that Guilt often comes from excessive expectations. 's expectations of yourself are too high, which can easily lead to guilt.
If you want everyone to be happy or everyone praises you, but you can't do it. So, you look for reasons that you can't do it, but in the end you point the finger at yourself. However, guilt is also divided into rationality and irrationality. Different guilt, different ways to deal with it.
Relatively speaking, irrational guilt is even worse.
03 Ways to clean up guilt
If your life is controlled by guilt for a long time, it will become a mess. So how should we deal with the feeling of guilt?
"Guilty Cleaning Exercise: Written to you who often blame yourself" This book mentions 15 kinds of guilty cleaning exercises:
1. Make up for the things you did wrong
2. Correct your life rules...
I will not list them one by one. The corresponding situations of these 15 types of exercises are not the same, so we can make choices when practicing. only needs to practice a situation similar to yourself.
If you pursue perfection and have too high expectations for yourself, you can practice the second type. It’s like I’m afraid to speak in public because I’m not confident enough.
My friend asked me: What are you afraid of? When I thought about this question carefully, I suddenly realized. Yes, what's there to be afraid of? What's worth fearing for?
Once, I asked my psychology teacher: I am too introverted, how can I change it? She asked me back: What's wrong with being introverted? Yes, there is nothing wrong with it, why do you have to become extrovert?
If you don’t have a friend or teacher asking questions, it doesn’t matter. You can ask yourself: Why do I do this in ? What if I don't do that?
If you are often troubled by guilty emotions, please open the book "Guilty Cleanup Exercise: Written to You who often blame yourself". I believe that after deliberate practice, you will definitely learn to look at yourself with a friendly eye and regain the vitality and freedom of your life!
