Episode 224 - Psychology : Why guilt stops you from setting boundaries (and how to set them anyway)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Ayurveda and Psychology podcast. I am Charlotte Scoksberg, psychologist, Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga teacher. This is a space where we explore the path of self-realization through the physical, mental, and spiritual spectrums. In each episode, I share practical tools from the ancient wisdom of yoga and Ayurveda, as well as the modern approach to the human mind of clinical psychology. In order to help you reconnect with yourself, understand your nature, and live with more awareness. In this episode that focuses on psychology, I want to speak about resentment. I'm going to talk to you about why we tend to walk around with resentment, the underlying, let's say, psychological mechanisms that we have there. Before we get into the episode, if you are new to the podcast, let me welcome you to this worldwide community and to also remind you that you can connect with us as well through the newsletter. And you find the link for that in the show notes. If you are coming back to the podcast, here is what I know about you. You're committed to a life worth living, and you are certain that this is achieved from knowing yourself because this anchors you and creates self-empowerment. Anyone who comes from an anchored and self-empowered place will go out into the world and create meaningful relationships. From the very first one, that is the one with themselves, and then extend that to the relationship with others. If you are here because someone in your life shared this episode with you, I would like to congratulate you because you are someone who people care about. I hope that you will enjoy the episode just as much as the person who sent it to you. And the reason I want to talk about it is because I would be so bold to claim that in most conflicts that tend to not really be resolved, there's an underlying kind of boiling feeling that we might not be even aware of of resentment. It's that tendency to not be able to really feel entirely happy for someone when they're succeeding. Or just this off feeling that we don't really want to see the other person as much as we used to. For instance, it can be very clearly, of course, and we know exactly why, but it can also be this underlying feeling that we can't really touch and that we would need to investigate more and deeper for the resentment that we have towards them to actually come into the light. Now, that in itself can often seem strange. Why would we not be aware of a resentment that we hold towards someone? Well, of course, because it's something that we most probably have pushed away not wanting to acknowledge something that really therefore lies in the darker corners of our shadow self. And why would a resentment towards someone else lie in the darker corners of our shadow self? Aren't we in our rights to feel resentment towards someone? Yes, of course. And so why would we not want to acknowledge it? Well, if the reason that we resent them comes from an even deeper sensation that what we are feeling is not right, that we are not entitled to feel the way we feel, that maybe even we are a bad person if we feel the way we feel. And this, therefore, then brings me on to the topic of today, which is even more difficult sometimes to discuss with people because it's also such a trendy thing to talk about, which is boundaries. I feel like in social media, we often see people talking about setting boundaries, having healthy boundaries, just as much as people talk about having needs and meeting our own needs, and maybe even being able to detect what the needs of another person are in order to meet them where they are at. Now, don't get me wrong. I know that when I say, oh, it's all over social media and so on, it might sound as if I dismiss it or don't agree with it, and absolutely not. Obviously, these are two incredibly important aspects of our psychic well-being. But I believe as well that it's two of the really dark corners of humanity as we raise children. And this is, of course, why we end up as adults with those things, right? Boundaries and needs and so on, kind of like blind spots. I find that in general around me, I see many people in any kind of relationship, right? It's not necessarily only talking about relationships that we have with our romantic partners if we have one. No, it's also, and very much so, with family members and maybe even extended family members, those who we are not actually related to by blood, maybe even, and that just happen to be in our lives anyway, for family ties, and there might be various reasons that we carry resentment towards them that is really due to a difficulty in our own personality to respect our boundaries and our needs. And so when you have a conversation with someone in a more therapeutic scene around these specific aspects, you might need to dig quite deep before the pain of the resentment really comes to the surface. It makes it even harder, I think, when a lot of people have really good reasons maybe to resent certain family members, right? Like parents, due to how disrespectfully often children are being treated. But then that pain that maybe someone experienced as a child from a neglected neglective parent turns into a deep feeling of guilt later on, because it is far from accepted often in many cultures, in many places, to blame our parents for certain things that we have experienced as children. Now, I know as well that in other contexts it might even be the opposite, that all of a sudden everyone turns towards their parents to blame them for anything that they've been through. But I'm spo speaking in in a more kind of general manner here. I believe that even if it's not outspokenly said so, in many parts of the world, there's still an underlying feeling that you should not resent your parents and that you should indeed instead love them, even if they might have not treated you in the best ways as a small child. And that brings in another question that I kind of just want to put out there for each and one of you. Do we live in a society where because a child is a small version of a human being, we actually don't take their feelings and their expressions as seriously as if they were an adult person the same size as oneself. So how does this pr represent itself in our daily life? Well, the reason that I speak about the resentment as the kind of grudge that we walk around with is because it has not been addressed, not been spoken of usually, and for sure, therefore not been dealt with. And usually the reason that that has not been done is because we do not feel as if we deserve to do so, as if we're entitled to do so. We probably carry a lot of guilt for what we are feeling. And this idea of guilt is something that can be carried on throughout our whole life, and because guilt feels so bad, we become masters at doing anything possible for not having to feel it. So it can be really difficult to detect these things in the therapeutic situation. You can you can even find it hard to do it on your own as you're trying to just investigate and understand what it is that you are feeling. I was having a conversation with a client where we were discussing feelings of guilt and the the way that we could potentially try to deal with it so that we heal from whatever caused the guilt to be there. And what my client asked is actually very important and interesting because what they were struggling with was not necessarily to name the feeling, which can be one big part, but also to explain why it's there. So if there's a lot of this that has been kind of pushed away into the darkness and we don't really want to acknowledge it, the feelings can come up and we might be in tune with ourselves enough to be able to feel that they are there, but it might be really, really difficult to understand them and more specifically explain them why they are there. And so what I said, and I believe that this is always true, you don't necessarily need to explain yourself out of an emotion. Most of the time it might even be really hard, especially if it's an emotional state that is linked to a situation that has triggered a memory from the past, maybe from a very long time ago, where there was no necessarily, let's say, logical explanation, but that it was really more on a symbolic level, if you will, before we were clear in our minds to express ourselves fully. For that reason, I would say that it's more interesting to sit with the feeling and not try to explain it so much, but instead simply allow for yourself to feel it, which is really hard because it's uncomfortable, especially if we are on this negative emotion that we've been talking about now for the past few minutes, which is guilt. Now, guilt is a feeling that comes in when we believe or when we have done something wrong. And so therefore, guilt comes into the way we deal with things, the way we handle things. And so if we are feeling guilty, and that that guilt comes in because of something that we have done, even if from the external eye, that action does not necessarily need guilt. If you see what I mean, it's not an action that hurts someone, for instance. Now that's where it becomes difficult for us because then we don't understand, it doesn't make sense to us. And that is when we know that it probably comes from somewhere very long ago. For instance, there are plenty of situations where we are in relation to another person, right? Remember, life really in itself is relationship in all kinds of dynamics, and something creates an imbalance, a tension in the dynamic, and you can know what it is that you need, and you might even know what you probably should be saying, but something is blocking you from actually doing it, and that something tends to be a feeling of fear, of guilt, and that this fear is of what the consequences would be. Now, the fear of the consequences would only ever come in if you are therefore likewise in the belief that by expressing yourself you're doing you're doing something wrong. And what happens is that you avoid expressing yourself, but the feeling stays with you, and so that guilt that you don't actually want to feel stays inside of you and turns into a resentment instead towards the other person that was well, quote unquote, making you feel that guilt. So our first lesson there, let's say, the first takeaway is that whatever needs to be expressed is probably going to be felt better both by you and the other person if expressed in that moment. It tends to be more that the longer you let it sit, the more it accumulates, let's say, tension. And therefore, it tends to be more harmful maybe to the dynamic if you don't express it quite soon. And also I would say that there's a spontaneity in that that feels more equal and therefore more authentic to the other person. But the deeper truth behind it is that the fact that you're feeling the guilt in that moment is not random. In general, it means that it comes from far ago, right, a long time ago, in a situation where, or perhaps more a repeated pattern, where expressing your own needs had a price, such as being rejected, dismissed, or simply just feeling that the love is taken away from you. Let's be clear on something that I believe is important to state. This does not have to be in a situation of extreme emotional neglect or violence or alcoholism or anything like that. I believe that, as I was saying when I started, we're kind of in this like dark spot when it comes to dealing with emotions in general, and more specifically when it comes to the family dynamic, dealing with emotions, teaching our children, for instance, how to deal with their own emotions is never really thought of because most probably parents have never had that chance themselves. And so what we find usually in families is that there's a whole lot of things that are never actually dealt with, like just personal boundaries between family members. The fact that I just something that came to my mind right now that I told my own analyst about, I remember very clearly that I could have big fights with my brother or my sister. And kind of like five minutes later, come back into the room, and it was as if all was forgotten. And just, oh, by the way, you know. And as I was talking about this myself, it made me laugh. It made me laugh because this is something that we would easily claim for most of us is not acceptable with friends or partners or at work and so on. But somehow, when it comes to family members, we just brush it off. And so, of course, because we start out very often in this way, this becomes a really confusing message to when it comes to respecting needs and boundaries. And therefore, that feeling of guilt that comes up if we do actually put our foot down to state what our boundaries are. And often there's a tendency to function as a tribe, right, when it comes to the family. So if you are, for whatever reason, in the need of separating yourself in a boundary by stating something that might not be agreed upon by the group, you can also be seen as selfish or hurtful if you do so. And so that will definitely create guilt inside of someone who gives it a try as a child. I mentioned as well there a little bit earlier on that there's also maybe the possibility to feel that the love is going to be taken away from you if you state your needs very clearly. And this is something that I believe is quite common and hidden. The fact that a person, a child, for instance, then in a family, might. might not be the same as the parents or the other siblings if there are, can easily actually be experienced as an inconvenience. And I cannot tell you how many people in my life I've met, and myself being part of that crowd, that prefer to not stir up a conflict through the fear of being inconvenient. I didn't want to make a fuss. Right? The idea that a child is completely allowed to express themselves into the individual being that they're turning into more and more as they grow is not always accepted. And I see this very much in certain families where there is several children. It may be that there is one child who's a little bit older who's starting to express themselves a little bit more, to tr starting to become actually their own person, which means that they might not be so easy anymore. And then there might be younger siblings who are still in that kind of playful mode where nothing really matters. I shouldn't say nothing really matters. Instead where they are very malleable. And there are so many comments that come from parents or other relatives for instance older relatives who are absolutely not used to the idea of letting the child express itself freely. Comments about how the younger sibling is so sweet and they get so much attention, right? A small toddler who is still so cute and you know just laughs and it's everyone's just mesmerized by this little thing. And there you have the older sibling who's a couple of years older and who started to turn into a little person. So there's less of that absolute chubby cuteness and there's also less of just like that playfulness. There are so many things that happen in that age that is going to stay with that child later on. There are also other things there's just this dynamic in the family of kind of like not respecting boundaries being normal and if you state your boundaries you're being selfish. There's very often in family dynamics and for sure maybe sometimes more often in single parent homes where the child has been well asked more or less to grow up too fast. Where as a child you might have had to manage certain emotions from adults that you were not yet ready to deal with. You might even have had to deal with conflict resolution at an age that was far too young to deal with these kind of situations. Now in these kind of situations we become masters at keeping the peace as taking care of someone else at mediate and what happens in all of those situations you are anything but in the center of the attention it might even come to a point where you feel so used to having that role that well first of all it feels uncomfortable to be in the center of attention but more than that you don't even have the capacity to know anymore what your needs might actually be and where your boundaries are. Now that side opens the door to a whole lot of difficult conflicts that you would have to deal with as an adult if you do decide to meet your needs. And not everyone is ready to take those conflicts and especially if you were brought into that role of being the mediator or the caretaker for sure you do not enjoy being the center of attention in a conflict. So in both of these situations that really come from the family home whether it's the dynamic of not kind of the tribe or the dynamic of I have to become an adult before time what we see is that knowing what you need and then setting a boundary is something that's going to push the love from the other person and most probably from the adult, from the parent, which means basically threatening my life as a child, right? And therefore I can find any reason not to state my boundary in the relationship with the person because I would not want to feel that I risk that threat of losing the person. But whatever made me feel the need to state what my boundary is is still going to be there. And that then gives birth to the resentment that just stays with us and lingers in our belly. You know some people even say that certain diseases, certain long-term diseases and chronic diseases come from the unwillingness to forgive certain events or people in our lives. And maybe the unwillingness to forgive actually is a resentment that has never been able to be expressed. It is really important to remember that we live in a society where the idea of unconditional love has often been promoted as reality whereas what we actually experience as children when we grow up is well education. And education is conditioning. Conditioning means if you do what I'm telling you to do, you're going to be rewarded and if you do the opposite or if you don't do what I'm telling you to do, you will be punished somehow. That is the furthest from unconditional love that you can be. And so we also grow up with a distorted view of what caretaking and loving really is this idea of the unconditional love that we are kind of fooled into believing is what we received also leads us into another misunderstanding. And that is that completely misplaced feeling of the guilt. You see if you're feeling guilt for an action that is not truly harming someone else but actually the fact that you wanting to be who you are then what you want to do is to ask yourself in the first place why is the feeling there? There's a few things that I believe you can do yourself when you're resonating with what I'm talking about and you're feeling that maybe this is something that's quite active in me. And that is first of all to just notice in the moment when you're feeling bad, right? Am I feeling this guilt because I am hurting someone or because I am tending to myself my protecting myself and secondly now this depends on their reaction maybe ask yourself as well the way that they react when I'm being difficult because I'm stating my need am I actually responsible for their reaction for their disappointment perhaps and I would want to add to that is it possible for me to be okay with the fact that my actions disappoint the other person just look at some of the things we do in our daily lives when it comes to relating to other people when it's saying yes even though you actually want to say no when it's stop doing something that you were tending to for you because someone else wants your attention it can be such simple things and trivial things like choosing a movie at the cinema and ending up saying that you want to see what the other person wants to see when you somewhere know that you would want to see something else. So these were very simple things but I believe are very very common actually and in those moments it would be interesting to ask oneself first of all am I sure that the other person is going to find me difficult or be disappointed or not love me anymore if I actually say what I truly feel? And maybe more importantly if I notice that I don't really have an opinion if I don't know what I want is that actually true? Or is it because I very rarely take the time to investigate in what I want and then the last part of it which for me is the most important part of the work can I be with the feeling of the guilt that I'm experiencing without giving in to releasing it by then obviously doing the opposite of what I want hey there are you listening to these episodes because you're interested in Ayurveda andor psychology have you signed up already for my newsletter did you know that there's a whole community behind Ayurveda and psychology if you sign up for the newsletter today you will get a free gift from me. I have an Ayurvedic lifestyle cookbook and if you sign up right now you will get a free recipe sent to you from that cookbook. You find the details in the show note and that really comes back to one of the fundamental truths that really belong to the spiritual seeker which is to learn how to be with discomfort to not instantly want to release yourself from the tension that is created when that happens I'm going to give you a really silly and simple experience from my own life of wanting to take the time for me to do my yoga practice in the morning even though I know that maybe I'm in a place where there's other people around me and so on and that somewhere I feel that I should go and socialize because other people have woken up. I have a strange idea in my head that I need to be up so early that I can do all the things that I do for me my cleansing in the morning my meditation my practice and so on before other people get up in the morning so that I can do it in peace. Yet there is no rule whatsoever that I couldn't do that even if the other people in the house that where I might be are up and doing their thing. But somewhere there is a belief that I'm being selfish and that I should therefore spend that time with these people instead. Spend that time with other people instead but you see when you then almost set that as your intention for your yoga practice of saying I can feel the guilt lingering inside of me every time I hear someone move around but I'm going to stick to this and continue my practice and turn my attention inwardly instead of straight away needing to turn my attention outwardly which is what I was taught to do as soon as there are other people around that it's more important to tend to other people than to myself. That's really part of that practice can I be with this discomfort can I allow for that to sit with me while I keep doing what I know I have chosen to do for me. Because you know what? And this is of course where the resentment comes in if you don't it feeds resentment and then it feeds imbalances in relationship and dynamics and ways that we react and passive aggressive and so on and so forth. And all the while and this is a harsh truth I know you are responsible because you did not express your need yourself even though you knew it when we work on that side for ourselves when we decide to learn how to recognize what we need to feel into where our boundaries are and then clearly also express them to other people we are not only doing ourselves a reparenting let's say of the child that was not seen or heard or loved or whatever we feel but we are also giving the chance to other people to have a straightforward and healthy relationship back to us. It can be really difficult to do these things. Don't get me wrong it is so hard because we want to be accepted and loved. But you can start with small things. You can start with just practicing with strangers where it doesn't really have as much impact on you to just state clearly instead of letting that person pass in the in the line at the supermarket even though you've been waiting for a while and you need to go and pee and you're in in a hurry, right? So then tell them no actually right or it can be when someone asks you to do something a certain day and that somewhere you might feel that actually you don't really want to do that. It could be by starting saying let me get back to you let me think about it. If it feels so uncomfortable to just say no you don't have to justify every time you say no by the way if someone is asking you about something and you feel the need to say no I don't want to do that. No, I'm not available then or whatever it might be there's actually no universal law that says that you have to explain yourself, which is what we tend to do. You can also just say no if it feels rude you can say no I don't have the energy for it. I don't have time for it. But you don't have to go into whole explanation which is often what happens and that's how we go into the white lies as well right you know what I'm talking about here. You're like amplifying certain things or you're changing a little bit here and there so that it sounds better. And that way you can say no one is justified but you do not actually need to justify. So a simple no is sometimes even better. Another thing that I find very effectful but also quite hard is when there is a boundary that needs to be set and you set it and this goes a little bit what I would have said earlier there about justifying yourself but you set the boundary and then you stop talking you don't need to then fill the space the the silence that tends to follow doesn't need to be filled. And then with the feeling itself what do we do well see guilt like everything right is an emotion which means that it's a sensation that is a message inside of the body. So it's existing inside the body when you are feeling it just let it be don't try so hard to dismiss it or to get rid of it. Let it be and just let it sit and you will notice that actually the more you let it be and focus on it's going to move away and the grip that the feeling has over you is also going to soften and you might sit for it for a while you might even hold yourself you might rock back and forth from side to side like wagging. And you will notice that just like any other emotion soon after it's going to pass and you didn't die thank you for joining me in this episode of Ayurveda and psychology podcast. If this content resonated with you and you feel ready to go deeper in your healing journey you can book a personalized session with me or explore my programs at the website you find the link in the show notes. You can also follow me on Instagram at iurveda.psychology where I share rituals, tips and weekly reflections. If you enjoyed this episode share it with someone who might need it or leave a review. It helps this community to grow. I'll see you next Friday with a new episode. Take care and stay grounded