A woman cared for her brother after his stroke while her parents didn't, and guilt consumed her until she got sick. A therapist traced it back to stealing cookies as a child, a shame that had shaped her entire life. Rewriting that story helped her finally let the guilt go.
Chapters
A huge problem with guilt. I have a big brother. He's 10 years older than me, and at age 37, he had a massive stroke and became very, very disabled. My parents stuck their head in the sand, couldn't deal with it, so little sis stepped in to look after big brother. And for years, I felt a debilitating amount of guilt that I wasn't doing enough for him. Even though I had 2 young kids, working, I always felt I should be doing more for Mark, I should be doing more for Mark, and it got to the point where I ended up in hospital because I drained my energy so much in running away from this guilt. Do more, do more, you're not good enough. I ended up being seriously ill. On the recovery path from that, I was helped to look at this story. Why are you feeling so guilty? My husband, all my friends were saying, Caroline, you're doing loads. But no, my story was like, you're not good enough, you're not doing enough, be guilty, bad person. And the story that came up for me was this memory that popped up. My mum was a real baker, and she used to make all these cookies, and she'd bake these cookies, put them on the windowsill in the kitchen, and said, Caroline, don't touch, they're for tea. She left the kitchen, Cookie Monster grabbed a handful, ran up the top of the garden, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, yeah? But then felt really guilty because I'd been a naughty girl. I hadn't done what I knew I should be doing. And that guilt was still living with me 30 years later because the story was still running. So what I was helped to do was change the story.
