8 Tips for Overcoming Toxic Guilt Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Self Help

Hey there everybody as promised this is eight tips to overcome toxic guilt i'm your host doctor donnellice snipes now just to recap for those of you who didn't see the video on signs that you may have toxic guilt healthy guilt motivates change and growth because you recognize that hey i did something wrong now it may have been by commission you did something wrong and you know you did it wrong or by omission you didn't do something that you should have done either way you know you made a mistake and it triggers this feeling of guilt in you which is anger at yourself you're like oh i did that and i made a mistake and i feel bad about it but anger and guilt are not meant to be nurtured they're not meant to be stewed on they're not meant to stand steep yourself in they're meant to give you energy to learn and move forward and make a change do what you need to do to make amends or to learn from the situation toxic guilt is guilt that we just hang on to we steep in it just like you steep a teabag toxic guilt is that water that you're steeping in and you just keep dunking that that teabag of guilt into the water it drains your energy and erodes your self esteem how do you overcome toxic guilt well we're going to go through each of the signs of toxic guilt and talk about a few different things that you can do to address them it's toxic guilt if you feel guilty about things that you have no control over so how do you address that write down the situation and in the last video i used the example of a tsunami in the pacific there is a tsunami in the pacific identify all of the aspects that contributed to this situation and the ones that you can and cannot control some things are for example your carbon footprint maybe you weren't recycling maybe you weren't doing everything you could do to reduce your carbon footprint okay well maybe you can motivate yourself maybe this will motivate you to make positive changes however just you reducing your carbon footprint wouldn't have made a difference in this whether the tsunami hit that small island in the pacific it had to do with you know the factories and other countries and you know millions and millions and millions of people it wasn't just you so the aspects that you can control your behaviors the aspects you cannot control the behaviors of other people and recognizing that yes there are things you can do to so you're not part of the problem but you did not cause the tsunami and then evaluate whether you've done what you actually can not what you should be able to do you may think you should be able to convince people to reduce their carbon footprint and change the world that's nice to think about but we've seen examples that even some of the most vocal people about climate change haven't been able to change all of the behaviors of all of the people in the world so evaluate whether you've done what you could do if you feel guilty about other people's feelings it's important to become mindfully aware that you have no control over their feelings you only have control over your behaviors and your feelings and what you do with those feelings when you have a feeling remember anger and anxiety those are natural reactions to the perception that there might be a threat notice i said perception and might when you feel anger or anxiety that's your brain smoke alarm saying okay based on past experience there might be a problem here so i'm going to dump a bunch of energy for you to go look around and see is there a problem it doesn't mean there is when you feel anxious or angry doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem it means your brain thinks there might be a problem it was important to recognize that you can have this feeling and then what you do with it is your responsibility other people have control over how they react to your behaviors they have control over whether they pay attention to the smoke alarm and check it out and take positive steps or they choose to sit and stew on anger and resentment and jealousy or whatever you're triggering in them that's on them they have to be allowed to have that responsibility other people's reactions are also based not only on you not only on what you did but on all of their prior experiences so if you did something that seemed very benign to you and they got angry or they got offended they are interpreting that through a lens that has been informed by all of their prior experiences so they're reacting based on what they expect to happen not necessarily based on the facts in the present context it is important to remember that you can empathize and support somebody but only they can change their feelings and if they choose to hold on to their anger or their hurt feelings that's their choice and feeling guilty about it being angry at yourself for this is going to drain your energy being angry at yourself that somebody else is making a choice it can be toxic guilt if you feel guilty about things that you've already made amends for or can't make amends for but you learn from when i was in graduate school i had a cat named monkey and he was an indoor outdoor cat he would you know slept inside but for a couple hours a day he would go out so he could climb trees and do his thing and one day when he was out he got hit by a car and i was devastated i i felt so guilty that that happened and i was very upset about it i felt like i was a bad kiddie mommy it's important it was important for me to come to this place that i recognized that continuing to be angry with myself drained my energy that i could use to move forward i can't change that i couldn't fix him i couldn't bring him back and i had to grieve that loss and come to terms with what happened and i learned from it i was not going to make that same mistake again another tip you can use is to ask yourself if you would continue to hold a grudge after somebody apologized to you so if you made amends to somebody for something that you did but you're still feeling guilty for it think to yourself if you were that person would you still be holding a grudge and hoping they felt guilty another tip is to recognize that whatever you did that you feel guilty for you may have been a different person back then if it's something that happened six months ago a year ago six years ago and think about how you've changed for the better how would you handle it differently this time time you did it you feel guilty about it so what changes have you made and how have you grown as a person since then you're not the same person and it's going to be important to explore self forgiveness consider all of the factors at that time and have compassion for yourself what did you know at that time what did you not know at that time what other factors influenced your behaviors at that point in time that you feel guilty over a lot of times we look back and we recognize that based on the tools we had at that particular time and all the other factors that were going on we were doing the best that we freaking could you can have toxic guilt about not being perfect or as good as somebody else well if this happens you probably grew up in an environment in in which you were told that you were only lovable for what you do and only if you did it perfectly if you didn't do it perfectly you were getting criticism you were having to do more more practice or whatever the case may be and only when you did it perfectly were you going to get approval be mindful of those that you love and your mentors you know pay attention are they perfect i have yet to find somebody that says yes most everybody and there may be a perfect person out there i don't know but most everybody in the world is imperfect we make mistakes we do things wrong we do things we feel guilty for and then we make amends so it's important to recognize that perfection is an illusion ask yourself this think about children on the playground even if you don't have a kid think about children in general or think about yourself as a little child however you want to think about it think about a child would you love a child any less or be angry with them because they're not perfect if you have a child that wants to learn how to draw and they pick up a sketchbook and they start drawing and they are not picasso with their first drawing would you love them any less if you feel guilty about being successful that's toxic remember that you are successful because of hard work and your success can serve as a model for other people my mother came from a family of very poor hard working people and they had difficulty some days putting food on the table she was the first in her family to go to college and not only did she go to college but she ended up graduating and ultimately working up to a very powerful position in a very large company in the united states so she was able to be successful but she didn't get it the easy way if there is an easy way she worked hard really hard to get there however she still felt guilty for her success so it's important to recognize that part of her was remembering the young her remembering the families that she grew up with that may not have been able to break out of poverty and she felt guilty for that your success can give you resources to help people less successful but you don't necessarily need to take a vow of poverty now i have some very good friends who are nuns who might disagree with that but recognizing and my mother did this she volunteered when she retired she volunteered just as probably forty fifty hours a week the entire time that she was alive after she retired and that was her giving back her using the resources that she had the skills that she had and the abilities that she had to help others who were less fortunate have the resources that they needed in order to follow in her footsteps and she showed a great role model so it's not necessarily healthy to feel guilty about being successful it's okay to present that facade whatever i don't know what word i'm looking for persona of how hey i'm successful it doesn't make me a good person or a bad person it just means that i have been successful and you can too you know let's help you figure out what you need to be successful but going into those environments where she was volunteering she served as a role model of somebody who had made it out so to speak and finally explore your relationship with jealousy are you angry at others like your mentors for being successful some people because of what success means to them they grew up being told that successful people were bad people so when they became successful they started seeing themselves as a bad selfish prideful person so it's important to explore your relationship with success what does it mean to you and if you're jealous of others then explore what that means that's anger at them for being successful so where's that coming from if you feel guilty about taking care of yourself remember that self care is not selfish evaluate where you got that message and if you agree with it not everybody disagrees with it and it's not my place to tell you what to think or what to feel but if you're burned out you're not good to anybody if you push and push and push till you just can't go anymore then you can't help anybody else so evaluate that message whether someone self care is unhealthy whether self care is a bad thing another perspective do you guilt children or do you think children should feel guilty for going out and playing for being kids should they be helping around the house should they be doing their homework should they be doing all these adult things well yeah there are some things that they need to do there are some responsibilities they have but we also recognize for kids that it's important that they also have time to decompress well where the heck does that go when we get to be adults explore if you're getting the must do's done self care requires time and when you are engaging in self care you may not get or all of the shoulds done all of the time and that may cause you to feel guilty so step back look at your time management and say am i getting the must do's done am i getting the laundry done am i keeping food in the refrigerator am i going to work like i'm supposed to okay if i don't dust the baseboards this week okay who says it has to happen you know what's more important dusting the baseboards or recharging view self care as modeling setting healthy boundaries self care is when you say you know what no physically emotionally mentally i need some time off i need to rest and recharge so i am going to set this boundary i'm going to do the things that i have to do because that's the responsible thing but all of these other things that are not critical if they get done great if they don't so what and sometimes it can be helpful to view being lazy as needed for recharging think about your mobile phone think about how much more slowly it charges if you've got it plugged into the wall and you're frantically using it the entire time it doesn't charge up nearly as quickly matter of fact it may not charge at all same thing for your body your body sometimes needs to be able to recharge without having something else trying to drain it at the same time if you feel guilty about what others tell you to feel guilty about oh you're letting them manipulate you listen for the litany of shoulds and you may have grown up in an environment where the only way it was safe was to do what other other people told you to do and feel the way they told you to feel so you may have learned this behavior that the only way to be safe is to conform listen for the litany of shoulds in the current environment evaluate their accurate accuracy who says and do you agree for example if somebody says you should always have a clean house okay you know my my grandmother used to feel that way and her house was so clean you literally probably could have eaten off the floor but that was not something that was important to me let's just let's just face it i heard that should and for the longest time i just spent hours and hours and i would forego sleep and everything else to make sure the house was perfectly clean before i went to bed and after i had kids i got to the point where i was like you know what no i need sleep i do not agree that the house must be completely clean before i go to bed that's my personal choice she doesn't have to agree but i'm making my choice in my space and i'm setting my boundaries recognize that using guilt to manipulate somebody violates their boundaries now let me say my grandmother never tried to guilt me into anything she never tried to make me feel bad for not having a perfectly clean house i did that all on my own i saw her house was always perfectly clean i felt well i should do that so i shoulded myself into it but in some relationships other people may use guilt to get you to do what they want it's important in relationships to practice assertively communicating your point of view or your pov if the other person says you shouldn't blank because blank okay they think i shouldn't do something and this is the reason i hear them i respect their opinion i may not agree with it but i respect that as their opinion and i'm not going to violate their boundaries by telling them that they're wrong however i may say i hear your concerns however i'm going to do this because i believe so i'm asserting my thoughts wants and needs i'm not invalidating theirs i'm acknowledging theirs but i'm asserting mine and i'm not letting them tell me what to think feel or do another example you should feel guilty for because you should feel guilty for doing this and this is why well what they're saying is i am angry or feeling threatened by you because you did something i don't like okay well anger's a natural emotion you're entitled to feel it that's not what we're going to say but it's important to recognize if somebody says you should feel guilty for this that means they feel angry or they feel threatened by you in some way and it's important to recognize that and your response could be something like i hear that you're angry and i'm sorry for that if you are however based on my knowledge experiences or beliefs i believe i did the right thing avoiding using the word should or shouldn't can be helpful here because if you tell them you know i don't think i should feel this way that can start to get aggressive just saying based on my situation this is what's right for me at this time and it's important to be able to separate their dislike of your choices or their dislike of your behavior from their dislike of you not everybody well nobody probably is going to agree with everything that you do all of the time and if you feel guilty when somebody dislikes a behavior or a thought that you have you're going to feel threatened a lot you're going to feel guilty a lot if the videos on this channel have been helpful for you please support us in our mission to make practical tools available to everybody for free donate at docsnipes dot com donate join the channel at docsnipes dot com join or purchase a thanks on videos that you particularly like guilt is a normal and necessary emotion toxic guilt often comes from messages you receive from others about what is right or wrong or what makes you lovable as a person overcoming toxic guilt requires evaluating those beliefs and deciding whether you agree with them in the current context if this video was useful consider checking out some of my other videos on guilt self esteem boundary setting assertive communication or codependency.