Amber HollingsworthRecovery Conversation Simulator, Amber's Recovery Practice Lab · Interactive learning tool trained on Amber methodoloy

Helping or Harming? The Secret Guilt Trap

25 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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Excerpt from a YouTube talk by Amber Hollingsworth discussing the emotional burden of guilt and anxiety when financially supporting others (e.g., adult children). The speaker describes a 'double layer' of guilt—feeling guilty both for helping and for not helping—and the chronic fear about potential outcomes (homelessness, enabling, harming).

Chapters

You got the double layer of guilt, right? The guilt if you do, the guilt if you don't. And then you also have this constant worry and anxiety about what's going to happen. Like if you're paying someone else's bills, like maybe it's your adult child's bills and you think they're going to be homeless, and then I'm going to have to be faced with do I let them live here or do I kick them out and can I tolerate them, be on the street? And that's where this guilt, anxiety, double up layer, not of a mess really, just starts to take over. You get to where you're constantly reacting from a fear based place of what if I don't? And then again, you have a fear of what if I do? What if I'm harming them? What if I'm making them worse? What if I'm keeping them sick.