Hi Blog-friends,
Please could you share your thoughts/experience if you get a moment - I would love to know what you think about this.
Guilt - where does it come from? how does it serve us as parents?
When was the last time you felt guilty for something? What do you do with that feeling?
Bit cheeky of me I know, but there's this list of things I'm fascinated about at the moment and the words just aren't coming together so I'd really love to do some listening.
Over to you:
Hey there.
ReplyDeleteGuilt's interesting isn't it? I think it masks a human trait that has a valuable purpose, but often it becomes distorted by the predominant world view and turns into a kind if feedback loop that can be destructive and tragic.
Let me explain: We are extraordinary creatures gifted with the capacity to empathise, on the one hand, and process our experience logically, on the other. It's a combination of these two traits (plus others, more subtle) that allow us to proceed on a path of personal, spiritual evolution - one tempers and informs the other. We make errors, we learn from them, we grow.
Feelings that we might associate with guilt are often appropriate, if we do something that conflicts with the needs of others, we empathise with them - we feel bad, putting ourselves in their shoes - and make reparations, if possible. In a naturally healthy human being (I hope to meet one some day!) there is no need for the bad feeling to linger, for self esteem to take a beating and you move forward, grateful for an opportunity to learn.
I think we learn from an early age that we must never make mistakes, we live in a culture that attempts to prevent experimentation with error and makes moral judgements about it. We also learn that self esteem rests in other people's (or a supernatural tyrant's) opinion of us, rather than in our own capacity to be effective.
There's more. We also grow up, believing that self sacrifice is a virtue. This is quite complex but, in short, we entertain deep seated notions that it's morally suspect - or just plain wrong - to take time to attend to our own needs.
I think it's these mistaken ideas that turn our emotions from a reliable moral compass into a stick to constantly beat ourselves with.
I feel a constant, debilitating guilt about all sorts of things, since becoming a parent it's gone into overdrive! I'm trying really hard to re parent myself and heal my world view. It's slow going but I'm making progress.
Hi Alan, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this - I really like the gist of your message and its reminders for some of the patterns we have in our culture and the call to be our own healers/comrades on the journey!
DeleteI was moved to write the post about guilt when a close friend of mine shared how much guilt she has about sending her child to school even though there are many ways in which its the right choice for them, for now, for their family. And I remembered back to our decision to home ed and how for the first few months (if not more!) I was racked with guilt even though, again, for us, it was totally the right choice for us, for now.
I wondered then how this serves us evolution-wise and what you've written definitely resonates with my suspicions that there is some sense to guilt and that we can choose how much weight to give it. And yes, I too am working on the gentleness needed towards myself when this kind of thing comes up!
:) Cheers, Ali x