The Truth About Guilt No One Talks About (

Dr. Jennifer, I'm so thrilled to have you on the podcast today. Welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to speak with you. And your work with shame blends so beautifully with some of the work I've done with guilt.

It really does. It really does. And that's why I really wanted to have you on. You have a book coming out, which I'm sure I intro'd, called Guilt-Free: Reclaiming Your Life from Unreasonable Expectations. And everybody knows I'm the, you know, complex shame woman. So guilt and shame go together. And I really want to have a discussion Today, and we have the same publisher, which is really kind of cool. Um, and I really just want to talk a little bit more about guilt in relationships because I talk a lot about shame. Um, but many women— and I know I have those men out there, hi guys listening to the podcast— uh, do deal with, with guilt in relationship, and it might not be necessarily to the same level as shame. So Let's get started.

Awesome. I love it. Let's do it.

Can you tell me, how did you get to this place of starting to talk about guilt?

It really started from speaking to so many women, certainly men as well, but, but primarily the women are the ones I've noticed having this kind of overwhelming guilt, this sense of I'm just not doing enough, I'm not productive enough, I'm not attractive enough, I'm not loving, etc., etc. And I wanted to figure out like, what is this coming from? And really put a name to it. I think you can't really sort of push back against a shadow. You really need to name it. Right. And clarify what it is sitting in front of you. And that was sort of what I set out to do, is like, is there any research on this? I couldn't find a good book resource necessarily for patients, which I like to often give them. You know, certainly I was experiencing my own feelings of guilt. I mean, during COVID and trying to adapt to all those changes and the need that's so great in mental health and how many people need care and not able to really facilitate and bring them all into my practice, guilt was just an everyday experience. And as a working mom, very common as well there. So it became a way for me to sort of help myself as well as those around me. And I really did fine. You go through, you know, you edit it so many times when you have a book coming out. Yeah. Each time I read it, I would sort of reinforce and remember and keep working on those tools myself. And so I learned a ton. In writing this book and editing this book.

That's awesome. We could talk about writing all day, but this is not a writing podcast. This is a podcast, uh, for really women who are struggling in relationships. So where do you find that guilt shows up the most in intimate relationships?

Well, what I like to— let's start with the kind of what's my definition of guilt, because I think I want to use that to break it down specifically in relationships, which is a very common place for women to feel so much guilt. And really thinking about guilt is the difference between our expectations Of ourselves in a particular role. We'll talk more about those, minus our perceived reality, our perception of reality. So let's say in a relationship, you know, I'm with my husband and I feel like a good wife would schedule a date night for every week, and each one would be fun and spontaneous and something he liked, but also something I enjoyed. So we'd have so much fun together. And maybe I missed a week, or maybe I got sick, or maybe he— something came up, or kids needed something, and I didn't get that done. If my expectation is a good wife wife is only someone who always does those things, right? The sense of perfection. Then I'm gonna feel really guilty because what I see is like, I didn't do that. I didn't every week schedule this wonderful date night. And then I think that's where we really can downplay all the things that we are doing in that situation. So we have these high expectations and we only notice the things that we don't think are going that well. And so we say, oh, I'm not, I'm not a good partner. Mm-hmm. But I think we need to kind of make shifts in both of those variables. to recognize that, that we can be a better partner in that way. And we certainly can talk about, about how that goes. But that's what I hear in relationships, this sense of, I need to be constantly caring for my partner. I need to be able to actually be responsible for their feelings. I need to make sure my partner's happy. Like, how do we control someone else's feelings? You and I both know as therapists, that's pretty hard to do.

Right.

But that can come up a lot. Or just, how can I be perfect? My partner expects me to be Even the appearance of perfection or doing things really, really well. And so I think those are some different areas where it really can come up in our romantic relationships.

Hmm. Yeah. You know, there's so much guilt attached to I should, right? I should be able to do this. I should be this. Um, and I think when we start talking about how we look, I think then we may be going a little bit into shame, right? Um, But I do like your definition of guilt, and especially how that applies to relationships. Now, I know that a lot of women, whether it's as a mother or as a partner, feel guilty for having any needs at all. So there's this guilt of like my role. And then there's sometimes a guilt about my needs. Do you see that popping up for you?

Absolutely. It pops up in almost everyone I speak to. Because, you know, keep in mind, these expectations came It came from somewhere, and a lot of it came from our socialization from a very young age, being expected to respond in certain ways and circumstances, which are caring for everyone else around you, even if that means your own needs are placed secondary at least, or last. It means trying to be accountable for other people's emotions around us. And that comes up with maybe a father telling his daughter, you know, your mother seems really sad today. Could you see if you could maybe try to cheer her up a little bit? Or, gosh, someone seems to be struggling, why don't you go and spend some time with them and try and help them feel better? And that's not always a bad thing, right? We want to be empathic, caring people. But I think women face these sort of expectations throughout their lifetime that they need to show up in this certain way to take care of everyone else. And they then repeatedly are putting themselves— I mean, there's not enough time in the day to do everything for everyone else and have time for me. And so that, that latter part gets sacrificed. To the point that many women in my practice, you may find this as well, don't know what to do if they actually have a little bit of free time because it's so hard for them to think, what could I possibly enjoy? And why would I deserve to do something that brings me pleasure, that feeds my needs? Which is really, really sad because how do you show up for those around you if you're so incredibly depleted yourself? Right.

You know, it's interesting, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking, Why are we still talking about this? Are we really still having this conversation over and over for what seems like a decade? I guess it hasn't been decades because the conversation, I feel, started way too late, you know, in our history as a, as a species. But why are we still talking about this? Because The reality is, yes, women are still showing up day after day. And I'm hearing people say, I feel guilty for asking for too much. Am I too much? Right? Mm-hmm. And so how does a woman figure out this line? Because I have been accused of being selfish and asking for things that I want in relationships in the past. And so have so many other women, whether it's a mother saying, you just have to be agreeable, or shouldn't ask for too much, or those kinds of things. Or it's a partner who's saying, my needs matter, yours don't. Whether it's a verbal— whether it's an actual saying that, or whether there's insinuations in other modes of communication. So how does a woman determine, is this healthy guilt? And maybe we need to talk about healthy guilt. Is this healthy guilt, like, I'm being selfish here, or is this—

Now, that is really important. I think in some of the research I did around guilt is figuring out what is adaptive guilt. If something has kept it, you know, in our human species for all of these millennia, there's a reason that we are experiencing guilt. And part of that is that it does help build connection and collaboration because it says to that other person or the group, I recognize that something, some harm has come to you. And I've, and it may be my fault or I may have contributed. Right. I feel badly because I care about you and I want to try and repair Right. Again, because I may empathize with your experience. I feel like I've contributed to it. Let me see if I can repair. And of course that can help in any relationship, right? In a romantic relationship, if there can be some repair after conflict, that makes a big, big difference. And so guilt did help us bring, bring us together as a species and collaborate and build community. The trouble is when it gets to be this sort of broad sense of, I feel guilty about Everything. I'm just perpetually failing. I'm perpetually not enough. And that's where I really wanted to break this down and say, okay, what are the expectations that are really driving that? And I think you can get involved in relationships or with partners whose expectations of you, maybe from the beginning or maybe over time, have gone up, up, up because we've become so hyper-competent as women in circumstances because we say, okay, this is what's going to help me not feel so guilty. I'm gonna do more. I'm gonna work harder.

Yes.

Right? Yes. And so we get hyper-competent, and then we, we're training the people around us how to interact with us, how to treat us. And that comes up a lot in therapy. I'm saying to you, okay, I'll just take care of it. If it falls through the cracks or you forget or you don't do it, I'll just take care of it. And so I think that's where we have to be really careful, that in that dynamic, the guilt isn't driving our decision-making, right? I feel guilty, and so what I'm gonna do because of that is I'm gonna work harder and add more. And take on more and accept more from others that are saying, this is how you need to respond here. Right. Mm-hmm. And really letting them kind of drive, fly right past our boundaries on our time and our energy and our focus for our own lives.

So I love, what did you say?

Hyper— Competent.

Competent. Okay. I've heard hyper-independent, but I like hyper-competent because I think that that is actually a better word than hyper-independent. Mm-hmm. Because, A lot of women who tend to be what has been termed hyper-independent, they're not wanting to be solo. They're not wanting to be on their own and only, you know, having nobody else to rely on or be interdependent. But they become hyper-competent because of all of these situations, maybe the guilt, maybe the sense that I have to do it, or I have to prove myself, or I have to hustle for my worthiness. So I like that word. I'm going to write it down. Hyper-competent. Um, so in your book, you talk about unreasonable expectations, um, and some of the invisible expectations that women carry into their relationships. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Absolutely. So I call them the Four Furies because they really are, you know, we, we have pattern recognition when we're therapists that people are describing some of the same challenges in their own unique way, but over and over and over again. And when I really tried to delineate what are these expectations, 4 kind of key categories, you know, stepped up. One was just constant caretaking, that women are supposed to take care of everyone, everything, everyone's needs.

Yeah.

There's the hyper-accountability that we must be responsible, especially for other people's emotions.

Right.

I need to make sure my child isn't sad. I need to make sure that my parent isn't lonely, right? All these ways that we try to kind of convince ourselves we can do that. The third one is just perfection. And that is in self-control, that is in our moods, right? I don't wanna appear anxious. I don't wanna appear too frustrated because then I'm too much. I don't wanna be too moody. All these different ways that we feel like we have to police ourselves. And then the fourth is really having it all. This idea that we should be able to have everything in perfect balance and effortlessly so, right? To appear like that's effortless. Yeah. And we often end up, that hypercompetence again, we end up doing it all. Mm-hmm. Because that's the way that we're gonna show that, that we can have it all. And so I think these 4 types of expectations are just a helpful tool to sort of reflect and say, which, which one or ones of these are coming up in this situation? You know, if I'm working with a partner and it feels like, you know, he or she comes home from work, say, and they're in a really bad mood, My job is to try and fix that, as opposed— which of course, you know, backfires often because we can't necessarily fix it. We bend over backwards, we try to do increased caretaking, they don't feel any better, we feel resentful, etc., etc., right?

Yeah.

And so I think it's, it's just helpful to have these in mind. Are they applied to absolutely every situation? Probably not, but they're helpful tools, I think, to just reflect, are some of these happening in this situation?

And so my thought is, okay, so yeah, we have all these things, and I'm sure many women are like, yep, yep, yep, feels very familiar. And so is this a— are we creating this? Is this— are we creating this own problem for ourselves? Is this an outside thing, a social construct? Which of course, yeah, it is to some extent. And what do we do about it? How do we become guilt-free in relationships?

I think the answer, sadly, to that question is that both are true. That this is— these are external forces. The sort of water we swim in is our socialization of what a good woman is in each role, right? I had watched this documentary about women in surgery, and a good woman surgeon would ask questions in a way that wasn't too assertive, like, would it be okay if— like, would you mind handing me that scalpel? Which came— seems sort of ridiculous to me, but—

Yeah.

You know, having to really ask very carefully the staff around her to help out with something because if she asked, she was too pushy, or she didn't do it with a smile, that that was going to create problems. And that's sort of an extreme example, right? So I do think we exist in this world where these expectations are placed on us.

Mm-hmm.

But I do think one of the things I really hope the book can do is start a conversation among women, because I do think we utilize it at times to police each other, meaning, you know, I can't believe she doesn't feel guilty that she went away for the weekend with her friends and her kids are home with the grandparents, right?

Right.

Or, you know, like, gosh, she seems like she's really excited about this promotion that she had. Like, you know, maybe she's getting a little too big for herself. Or maybe, you know, I don't know that she's doing all this stuff at home all that well. So, you know, these kinds of ways that we might police each other. And I think that can be really difficult, or even just for us to prove to those around us we care enough. By feeling guilty in a particular situation, like yes, I did take a day and go to the spa, but don't worry, I feel terribly guilty about it. So you know, I'm still a good friend, mom, what have you. And so I think shifting that conversation, catching it in ourselves, and helping to support each other and allow someone to do something that really feeds them without guilt, and that that's not unusual or questioned or you know concerning. I think that's the sea change we really need to see among. Women, so that maybe we start from there. And we— helps us push back on those around us. You know, we're locking arms and saying, no, no, no, I don't have to have— you know, it doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure. It can just be a pleasure. Full stop. And we're here together, we're doing this, and those around us, we're trying to show them like, this is what's possible. But I do think the change will have to come within us as well, that we really have a sense that I deserve To live my life in a way that's full and joyful and meaningful.

Yeah. So I see a lot of women leave themselves. I talk about self-abandonment. I talk about it in my book to preserve a lot of things, to try to prevent shame, to preserve connection, getting to this place, and probably to alleviate guilt, is I'm just going to abandon myself, right? And so what would you say— and I'm sure you talked about this in the book— for a woman who recognizes this in herself, what would be the first steps or the first things she needs to kind of look at in herself to make sure that she's not allowing guilt to force her to abandon herself in her relationship? Because it is— it can be hard, especially when you're in a relationship that can have some codependency, to just kind of try to feel like, where's me? And where is, you know, where is everybody else and where are those lines and what's, what should I be feeling guilty about? What should I not be feeling guilty about? So what would you say are the first steps for a woman who's really a little confused trying to figure it out?

It makes sense. I mean, one way I would think about that is that we sometimes use guilt. There are many reasons that guilt can be so sticky. It can be somewhat motivating for us, but at a high cost. But another reason that it can really be so sticky is that it protects us from something, and it protects us from this feeling of powerlessness, that we're vulnerable to whatever situation is happening. Okay, if we're feeling guilty because we must have done something wrong, that means we can fix it.

We have power.

And maybe that fixing is abandoning ourselves. So if we don't have any needs, if we're just like smooth water across the board, We're not going to create any waves. We're not going to cause any trouble for our partner. They will stay with us and love us, right? And so I think it can be we're using guilt as a way to not feel powerless, that we we can't get what we want in our relationship at this moment. So we're going to use this guilt to create a place where we change. We just keep changing, keep changing to try and alleviate that guilt. The trouble is the guilt's hiding what those true emotions. Right. And maybe it's a feeling really of loneliness, or maybe it's fear of being alone, and that if they don't— they feel like if they don't conform in all these different ways, they're the one that's hurt, they're the one that's punished. And so I think it can be a sense of what could the guilt be, you know, hiding? What could the guilt be protecting you from? And allowing some of those feelings to come out. Because if we're in a place of fear in a relationship where it's just this constant fear that someone's going to step away, that's where working with a therapist can be really helpful because there probably were other situations, other relationships in our lives where that was the case, where we did maybe, maybe we expressed our needs and that person said, I can't meet those, I'm out, I'm gone. And so I think we have to process that we're not bringing in those prior relationships, and that we're not using guilt to sort of hide and protect us from other difficult emotions that we do need to feel so that we can start to process.

I like that question. What is giving in to guilt or living in guilt keeping you from acknowledging, right? How is like, how, what are you hiding from by giving in to guilt? And those could be some really powerful feelings that may be a little scary to acknowledge. Like, if I, if I lived in such a way that I wasn't always feeling guilty in an unhealthy way, like invalid guilt, what would I have to face?

Right. If I shifted the blame from myself, not necessarily to some specific other, but just outside of this was in my control and I failed, Which is what guilt tells us, shift it to, this is not necessarily in my control and this hurt, or this was really painful, or this was a loss, or this is an ongoing loss in a relationship that's really disconnected.

Yeah.

And I think acknowledging that, I mean, gosh, that doesn't feel good. I'm certainly guilty of this in many ways, but it is the path forward and through.

Yeah.

Right. As you know, with shame.

Right, right. And, you know, it's funny because people don't really like to talk about shame. And I always try to talk about shame with a smile on my face because there's so much hope in the getting over of it and the learning to maintain it. And the same with guilt. Who likes to talk about guilt? We don't want to— we don't want to sit around and think about that. But when we're able to pay attention to it in our life and understand the messages it's giving us, then we have so much freedom to actually live the life we want instead of Encumbered, um, imprisoned, right, by guilt. Okay, so I would like to invite our listener, the woman or the man listening, to ask themselves that question. The places in your life where you feel guilt, if you let that go, what is the thing that you need to actually look at, actually feel? actually deal with? I think that's a really wonderful question for our listeners to take away today.

Absolutely. What is sort of— what is underneath that? And it may be that it's protecting you from your own doubts about, am I a good parent? Am I a good partner? Right? All those different things that can pop up if we're not feeling guilty and saying to ourselves, that's— I must care a lot. I must be really invested and really engaged and really loving. Because I feel so guilty all the time. But we need to kind of separate those two because they're not the same thing, right? Feeling guilty when you can't do something for someone is different than feeling love for them. And I think we can separate those and really let the love kind of lead and try and step away from the guilt.

Yeah, I love that. Let the love for yourself and for others lead. So last question, if guilt weren't running the show anymore, what becomes possible for people in love and partnership And self-connection?

Like so much. I mean, it's really exciting. Like you said, there is so much hope in, in working with guilt and that if guilt's not making the decisions, there's so much more room for agency. There's room for open communication with our partner. Instead of saying, I shouldn't even feel like I wanna take a night off from us going out and seeing your friends, we can actually communicate that. We can say that and we can work to actually meet each other other's needs. And if your needs are being met in a relationship, it helps you to care for that other person, not to mention you feel a lot better, right? Right. So it opens up communication. It gives us some energy back, 'cause guilt is a draining emotion. If we're using guilt to motivate ourselves, like, I can't believe I didn't go to the gym. I'm the worst. I better go now. Otherwise I'm just a terrible lazy person. We're starting from behind. We're starting feeling really negatively. So it's draining.

It

gives us energy and agency and a potential for more connection and just a sense of joy and meaning. Like, I think it just can make so much of a difference. I've seen it in my own practice and even in my own life. Wow. What starts to emerge when guilt starts to step away?

Yeah. Wow. Thank you, Dr. Jennifer, for coming on and sharing some of the wisdom from your book. How can people find you? How can they get your book?

So Guilt-Free, it's available any major booksellers. They can go to my website, jenniferreedmd.com, and then I'm I'm on Substack at A Mind of Her Own, which is just what I like to talk about, is, is women creating and really engaging with a mind of their own. So they can find me in those places.

I love that title, A Mind of Her Own. That is— that's nice. I like that. Well, thank you so much. We wish you the very best with the launch of your book. And thanks for coming on and sharing some of your wisdom.

Oh, thank you, Dr. Zoe. It's been a pleasure to be here with you.