The Loving Truth

The Truth About Guilt

• Sharon Pope • Episode 170

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Guilt is something so many of us wrestle with, especially in our relationships.

For a long time, I thought guilt was useless because it’s tied to the past.

But now I see it differently.

There’s healthy guilt—the kind that nudges us to make amends, apologize, or do better next time—and that can help us grow.

Then there’s unhealthy guilt, the kind that has us taking responsibility for things we can’t control, beating ourselves up, or carrying shame for decades.

Healthy guilt reminds us our moral compass still works.

Unhealthy guilt keeps us stuck and robs us of peace.

The real work is learning the difference, setting boundaries, and remembering that we’re human—always learning, always doing the best we can.

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host relationship expert and certified Master Life Coach, sharon Pope.

Speaker 2:

Hello, loves, this is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today we are going to tell some loving truth about guilt. This is a topic and an emotion that so many women inside my community really struggle with, and I figure if they're struggling with it, you also might be struggling with it. So I wanted to have some space to do a deep dive into why do we feel so much guilt? Where does it come from? What do we do with it? Is it bad, is it good? We're going to explore all of that, okay. So sometimes we feel guilt because, let's say, that we ended a relationship that felt unsustainable or unstable. For sure, we're going to feel guilt there. We might feel guilt when we see our partner in some degree of emotional pain, because it's hard to see other people in pain, especially if it's from a decision that we made or something that we said or did. If we've said some hurtful things or we've done some hurtful things in our relationships, we're going to feel some degree of guilt. And certainly if we've had an affair and we hurt our partner, we're going to feel guilty. Sometimes women just feel guilty because they can't seem to love the person standing in front of them. They can't seem to love the good man. So we can find lots of reasons to feel this emotion of guilt.

Speaker 2:

I used to say that guilt was a useless emotion, because guilt is all about the past, and the past you can't change, so this doesn't serve any purpose. It was sort of frustrating to me that so many people felt guilt and I didn't have some ninja tool that would help them. But now I understand guilt differently and I want to help you understand that today as well. So guilt isn't all bad and it isn't all good. Guilt is a nuanced emotion, and most emotions really are nuanced, and certainly relationships are nuanced, and there's good guilt and there's bad guilt or there's healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt. So first let's talk about the good guilt. The healthy guilt, that's when someone has recognized that they've made a mistake and they feel motivated to fix it, to correct it or to make amends in some way. That's where guilt serves us. I feel bad, so I go apologize for whatever it was that I'm feeling bad about. That's a good thing, that's a healthy thing in our relationships, right? If we have remorse over something that we contributed to or something that we ignored, that maybe we shouldn't have ignored, that's healthy.

Speaker 2:

When guilt occurs in the same degree, when it's in moderation and it's in the same degree and it matches the facts of the situation, then it can be helpful in terms of helping us right those wrongs. I think that the biggest thing that I've learned about guilt is that it helps us realize that our moral compass isn't broken. It helps us realize that our moral compass isn't broken. It helps us restore or sustain a self-image that we're good people, and so we'll beat ourselves up with a lot of guilt in order to feel like even though I did this quote bad thing or hurtful thing, I'm still a good person and I know the difference between right and wrong. And it helps us to care for the people around us. I mean, if you think about it, it also helps us be generous with our resources. This is one of the ways that guilt can be really helpful is. This is why we might give to certain charities. When we have more, we might give to people who have less, and that results from a place of healthy guilt.

Speaker 2:

Healthy guilt is usually the precursor for self-growth and some degree of inner reflection, because in order to feel guilt, we have to be willing and able to look at ourselves and our choices and our behaviors, and then we want to be able to grow beyond that and do better in the future. Right, that's the righting of the wrongs, or making amends or doing it differently. It helps us feel motivated for sure to do better in the future. This is the biggest thing that I have found that will help you move on from healthy guilt is when you realize, or when you make the commitment to yourself that I'm going to do this differently in the future. That's the quickest way to be able to move beyond the guilt that you feel, to be able to move beyond the guilt that you feel. And, unlike shame guilt, healthy guilt is not going to tell you that you are inherently a bad person. You might have done a bad thing, you may have made a wrong choice, but you are not an inherently bad person. It's not a part of your character. It's a choice that you made. Now, when it becomes part of your character is when you keep making the same choice over and over and, over and over again and you don't right the wrongs and you don't correct the behavior. Right, that's when it starts to bleed into who you are as a person.

Speaker 2:

Now let's talk about bad or unhealthy guilt. This is all about the negative voice in our heads, and we all have that negative voice telling us that we are horrible people, especially when we find that we have hurt someone else. It tells us that things could have been different had you only done better, that things should have been different. It can lead to certainly a great amount of anxiety and depression because we're beating ourselves up and we're thinking and rethinking about how horrible we are as a person. And I'm going to tell you, if you have perfectionism in you, it's going to fuel this, because you will never actually be perfect. I think everyone knows that. Even perfectionists know that. They just keep reaching for it and trying to attain it, but every time you fall short, you're going to beat yourself up and get into that space of unhealthy guilt because you can't ever reach that pillar of perfection in your mind. Now, this is a part that I think is important to talk about.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes we will get into unhealthy guilt because we feel responsible for things that we cannot control. That sounds crazy. However, we do it all the time. As an example many times, women feel responsible for how other people feel. Other people's feelings are not something that you can control. I know you think you can. If I orient my actions and my life in the way that this person wants me to, then they'll never be mad at me, then they'll always be happy, they'll always be content, whatever Like. We think that if we do all the things in the perfect way, that they will feel a certain way. We have jumped entirely out of our business. We're over here in their business trying to control something that's not ours to control, because my feelings come from my thoughts, your feelings come from your thoughts and other people's feelings come from their thoughts. But I think we think we're somehow like all magical and powerful, that we can control how other people feel. And if you've ever done something that you thought was nice for someone else and they were super irritated by it you already know this to be true Then just because you had the intention that you were trying to do something generous or nice for someone, that doesn't mean that that's how that person is going to receive it, because they have their thoughts about what's happening in their life that creates how they feel. So you're not in charge of that. And so, ladies, we've got to stop overtaking responsibility for other people's feelings and then leading us down this path of feeling unhealthy guilt that we carry for like decades. We need to stop that.

Speaker 2:

Another one is overtaking responsibility for something Like, let's say that you feel like this is like you've just you've, you've. You're in the middle of a divorce, or you're on the other side of divorce and you feel like your ex um, because you over-functioned in the relationship and he under-functioned and he just doesn't know what he's doing. So you feel like you have to do all the things for your ex. You have to find him the apartment to live in, you have to show him how to pay bills online, you have to talk to him about taxes, you have to teach him about, like all these things that come with adulting that he never learned or never embraced or whatever. That is not something that you have to overtake responsibility for because you feel guilty.

Speaker 2:

Now, sometimes, look, doing for others feels generous, it feels lovely. When it feels good, do it, do it all day long. But if it's out of obligation and guilt, that's always going to feel depleting, and so you are the only one that can know and tell that difference, because your body will feel the difference. Guilt and obligation feels very different than giving through generosity and love. Those are two very different feelings and you know the difference when you really hone in on it and pay attention to it. Sometimes I just joke that it's like what do we think we can control everything? Like who do, who do I think I am God, I can control other people's emotions, I can make everyone else feel safe, I can make sure that they're getting their bills paid, I can make sure they know how to adult, like? None of that is your business. What's in your business are the things that you can control your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, choices and behaviors. And every time you're in someone else's business, you are abandoning yourself. No one's there for your business, no one's paying attention to the one thing that you have some control over, which is you.

Speaker 2:

So I want to speak about what I'll call the guilt gap, because men and women experience guilt very, very differently. Some of that is a result of what we've learned, nurture, and some of that is a result of who we are and our hormonal differences between men and women, and that's nature. So it's a little bit of both. But honestly, ladies, there is a little bit here that we can learn from men when it comes to guilt and I'll explain in a minute. So most of this context, when I'm talking about the hormonal differences and the studies that have been done, this is all taken from the book the Female Brain by Dr Luanne Brizendine. It's a brilliant book. She also did one called the Male Brain, but I refer to it a lot when it comes to human behavior from a hormonal perspective.

Speaker 2:

So women have been socialized as young girls, right Like we. As young girls, we learn a lot before the age of seven and then young girls grow into young women and young women grow into being women and the only thing that changes our thoughts and beliefs and perspectives is life, and challenging those thoughts and beliefs and perspectives is life and challenging those thoughts and beliefs and perspectives. But many times we don't really do that. So we carry some of the things we learned as a child into our adult lives just because we're not terribly conscious about it. But women have been socialized as young girls to put other people's feelings and other people's needs before their own. Weren't you taught that? Wasn't that part of being a good girl or a nice girl? That's the nice thing to do. It's the kind thing to do is to make sure that other people have a chance to play with the toy, but little boys, when they're little, like that competition of I'm going to be king of the mountain and I'm going to get to play with the toy first. That is all very natural for little boys and they carry that into adulthood.

Speaker 2:

Studies have shown that infant girls come out of the womb studying faces and mirroring emotions. It's literally one of our superpowers, because we can do it so efficiently. And so think about that. A little girl comes out of the womb and she's automatically studying her parents' faces for some kind of an emotion. Little girls take meaning from themselves or sorry about themselves, from a look, a touch or the reactions that they get from other people, and that's how they figure out am I lovable, am I adorable, am I worthy or am I annoying? It's from the reaction on people's faces and a little girl think about a toddler age. She can't stand a flat, emotionless face. She will do all the things to try to get a response and she'll keep trying until she gets the response, because she believes that if she does it just right, she'll get the response that she's seeking. That face that shows I love you, I think you're amazing, I think you're adorable, aren't you the cutest right Like? That's what the toddlers and the babies are reaching for, and when we don't give it to them, they're going to keep trying to get that from us. At least little girls will.

Speaker 2:

Researchers have shown that by the time a little boy is seven months old, he can tell when his mother is angry or upset. This is hilarious to me, but by the time he's 12 months old, he's built up an immunity to her expression and he can easily ignore those expressions. For those of you that have both boys and girls, you might be able to see how that might have played out in your life, that girls were more responsive to you when you were upset as a mother than little boys were. So another study found that typical female newborns that were less than 24 hours old respond more to distressed cries of another baby and to the human face than male newborns were. Girls as young as one year old are more responsive to distress in other people, especially those that look like they're sad or they're hurting. This tells you that girls women have access to greater empathy than boys and men do. From a hormonal, biological perspective.

Speaker 2:

Okay, people with higher levels of empathy are going to experience more guilt, and that makes perfect sense, doesn't it Right? The more I can put myself in your shoes. And if you're sad and you're hurting or you're upset, I'm going to feel that. And so, generally speaking, women are more empathetic than men. Now, not surprisingly, psychopaths and narcissists don't feel any guilt because they have no empathy. That's one of the things that makes them who they are, right. So estrogen-ruled girls are very interested in keeping their relationships harmonious. They don't like conflict, so when there's discord it puts them at odds with the connection that they need and the approval and the love and attention that they need in relationships.

Speaker 2:

And sometimes we think that our guilt will lessen someone else's suffering, don't we? But here's what I want to help you realize you can't get sad enough to make a sad person happy. You can help them feel understood, you can validate them, you can be with them in that experience. But are you helping them if you take on their sadness as if it's your own Right? And this is the place where there's healthy guilt of I feel horrible for my friend who's hurting, or I feel horrible to see my husband in pain that's healthy guilt. But when you take it on as if it's your own, or you reorient your life or your decisions that might have been the right and valid decisions. Reorient your life or your decisions that might've been the right and valid decisions, like, for instance, if a marriage ends and maybe it is the right answer, but you see your husband hurting, and then that hurts you and now you're like oh, I'm just kidding, you know what? I'm sorry, let's just go back, let's try it again, let's just keep doing the same dance. That's when we merge into unhealthy guilt. We're so afraid and uncomfortable with the guilt that we will change choices, major choices in our lives, to avoid that feeling. That's how much we don't want to feel the emotion of guilt.

Speaker 2:

I find that women will carry guilt for years, sometimes decades or a lifetime. They'll feel guilty about something that they did 40 years ago. And I don't find the same thing in men. I just don't. And it doesn't mean that men are bad and women are better, like no, but it is. There's both nature and nurture at work there. But, ladies, this is a place where I feel like we can take a few notes from men's playbook, because they will feel guilt, but they won't carry it for a decade, right? So let me give you an example.

Speaker 2:

So sometimes, so many times, there are women in my community where they have been involved in an affair and they feel horribly guilty about that and there's a certain amount of healthy guilt there. But it might be call it a year or two years later that they are still beating themselves up like they are a horrible. Horrible person for the choice that they made to get involved in an affair, horrible person for the choice that they made to get involved in an affair. Men don't do that. Men will feel bad, certainly when there's been an affair, but it won't last as long. And so sometimes I have to remind women and I don't do this often, but only when it's genuinely helpful to them is I will say to them look, let's be honest here.

Speaker 2:

Men have been cheating on their wives since there was a thing of like husband and wife, since marriage was created, since monogamy has been around, and they don't carry the guilt of that to their grave. So you've passed out of healthy guilt, you have stopped cheating, but you've continued to beat yourself up about this for years now, and maybe it's time to just take a note from men's playbook, okay, and maybe it's time that you've taken enough lashings and you can stop beating yourself up about this, because if you are constantly feeling like you're a bad person, how are you going to create healthy relationships with other people? Because you will unintentionally sabotage the relationship because you feel like you're not worthy of it. Because you feel like you're not worthy of it, and in order to muster the energy to create positive change, we need to feel good about ourselves occasionally. I don't think it's a bad thing that we sometimes will feel good about ourselves. Ladies, the marketing machine that tells us we should never feel good about ourselves so that we can buy more products and we can get more services and we can look a certain way like all of that seeps into so many areas of our lives. And if we're going to reach for becoming a better person, we need to feel good about ourselves and we need to feel like we're worthy good about ourselves and we need to feel like we're worthy of the investment of getting better and doing better.

Speaker 2:

So what do you do about all this? If you are someone that struggles with immense guilt? First of all, recognize and remind yourself over and over again that it means you have empathy, and empathy is a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful quality. Now, if you become an empath, that means you're probably into the toxic area of unhealthy guilt. So be careful about identifying yourself as an empath and taking that on as though other people's feelings become my feelings. That's where we don't have great boundaries, right. But for you to feel healthy guilt, that just means you have empathy for other human beings, and I think that's a beautiful quality. Just don't let it bleed into shame and not having good boundaries for yourself to keep yourself safe while being in relationship with other people that might be struggling.

Speaker 2:

Use this mistake, or whatever it is that happened, as an opportunity for you to grow. Maya Angelou's quote when you know better, you do better. And so when you are able to be introspective and look at you know what I could have done that better introspective and look at you know what I could have done that better, and you offer a sincere apology, and then you use it as an opportunity for you to grow so that you won't continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. That's the way that you can start to feel good about yourself again. You've got to be able to distinguish between what you can control and what you cannot control. What is your business and what is not your business, and that's probably one of the most challenging aspects of this for people who carry a lot of guilt. I want you to pay attention to how you're speaking to yourself, because how you speak to yourself matters. If you wouldn't say it to someone that you love and care about, like that eight-year-old version of you, then don't say it to yourself now.

Speaker 2:

I get that we're using guilt to try to maintain our image of I'm still a good person. I get why we do that, but sometimes we will beat ourselves up so so much that it's hard to bounce back from that. And the last thing I will say is that you have to remind yourself like we are all human beings on this planet, doing the very best that we can, and sometimes we screw it up. Sometimes we don't live up to our expectations or other people's expectations of us, and that has to be okay. It has to be because we're human beings just out here, humaning, doing the best we can. Until next time, take good care.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth and clarity session with a member of my team. On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriagecom to fill out an application now. That's clarityformymarriagecom.