Emotions are sometimes described as messengers. If you recognise their purpose, they can become your guides.
Yes, even guilt can be your guide. Not only can it bring you closer to your values, but it can also help you clarify the pressures and beliefs that no longer serve.
When guilt points to your values
It’s the end of a busy day, you managed, not without difficulties, to get the children in bed and they find the craziest excuses to get up every 5min. By now, you’re exhausted, your patience had dried up and overwhelm is flooding your system. You get angry and you scream at your kids.
In this situation, guilt will most likely show up because the way you reacted doesn’t align with how you want to relate to your children. The emotions are valid: anger, overwhelm, frustration have their rightful place amongst the myriad other emotions we feel daily. However, the response (screaming) is not aligned with, let’s say, the value of respect you want to uphold in your parenting.
That’s when guilt shows up to act as a reminder of your values. It points you in the direction of what is truly important to you. And if you’ve done some work to identify your values, it will be easier to make the connection. Sometimes though, the line is blurred between your true values and the unrealistic expectations or limiting beliefs you are holding on to in your mothering.
When guilt is connected to “shoulds”
Guilt can lead you to dismiss your needs for rest, for space. Your reasoning may go like this: “if I spend time caring for myself, I take time away from my children, my partner, my work”. So, you default to neglecting your own needs, to keep your guilt in check.
It’s a reasoning that doesn’t add up unfortunately. We all know the good old saying: “you can’t pour from an empty jug”. When you dismiss your needs, resentment and stress build over time. Which eventually leads to more irritability, more anxiety, less presence, less patience. And more guilt.
In that picture, the signature of guilt is often this one short word: “SHOULD”: “I should enjoy being with my child 24/7.” ; “I should not look forward to time away from my kids.”; “I should prioritise my children’s needs over my own.” Says who?
Influenced by your education, years of societal conditioning, your social media feed, you have internalised an image of what the perfect mother looks like (I have written about the Perfect Mother Myth here). Even though this image may not fit your current circumstances or life goals, you feel pressured to meet the unrealistic expectations it carries, and you’re stuck in a never-ending cycle of guilt.
How to address guilt and get unstuck?
What we’re aiming for is not to eliminate guilt altogether. As I said at the beginning, it’s part of the range of our human emotions. What we want to learn is to recognise what is hiding behind the guilt. And by the same token, make it useful, less painful and less damaging to our self-esteem.
Curiosity is your best ally here. Whenever guilt shows up, ask yourself: what expectation is hiding behind it? Where does the expectation come from? Is it realistic? In what way is it serving me or not serving me right now? Is this expectation linked to a value, something that is truly important to me right now?
If you feel guilty about a behaviour that is not aligned with a value you hold dear, you have the power to address the guilt by actively engaging in what is called “repair”: you can make amends, apologise to your children for screaming at them, for example. You can question your anger and discover the unmet needs it hides. You can act on those needs and voice them to your children, partner or whoever you identify as someone who can provide support to get those specific needs met.
And if you realise that the feeling of guilt stems from conditioning and your unhealthy attachment to the “perfect mother myth”, you have the power to make different choices. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I believe it’s essential work on the way to reclaiming your agency and power as a mother and a woman.
Sometimes it is beneficial to work with a coach or therapist to clarify what the core values are in your mothering and your life in general so you can more easily spot the difference between the conditioning and the new values and needs that are emerging. If you’re ready to harness the gifts of guilt to redefine success in your mothering and beyond, contact me here.
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