14: The Guilt Women Carry

On this episode we’re diving into a topic that so many of us can relate to—the guilt we carry. Whether it's the guilt of not doing enough for ourselves, feeling like we’re constantly falling short of expectations, or juggling the demands of life, it’s easy to get weighed down by it all.

As women, we often put others' needs before our own, and the result? Guilt. But it doesn’t have to control us. In this episode, we’re talking about how to recognize this guilt, understand where it comes from, and take steps to let it go. 

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by guilt or like you’re carrying the weight of the world, you’re not alone. Join me for a heart-to-heart conversation and start building lives we’re proud of—guilt-free.

Tune in and let’s empower ourselves to let go, focus on personal growth, and keep moving toward the strong, confident women we were always meant to be!

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Transcript

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Hi, I'm Laura Orlando and welcome to the Build Strong Women podcast. I believe as women that we are the role models for the next generation of girls. So how do we become the best role models for these young girls? We work hard to become the best version of ourselves, whatever that means to you. It's not easy. It takes work. It takes learning, trying new things, falling down and getting back up again. But that's what we do on the show. We dive deep into how we can grow on the inside. We will learn from women that are on the same journey as us. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of the Build Strong Women podcast. I'm so happy that you're here with me tuning into this week's episode. This week we are talking about the guilt do, I want to remind you to head over to wherever you're listening to and please rate and review this podcast. It means everything to the podcasting world. It literally takes two minutes to rate the podcast and just give me a review. Let me know. I want to know the feedback from my listeners and all of you because it means everything to me. I really want to know how to guide the next episodes and I really want to make sure that I am touching on topics that you enjoy and that you like and that are helping you in your life. So it would absolutely mean the world to me if you would head over to wherever you're listening to and just rate and review really quick you only even have to write like one line let me know how you like the podcast I would greatly appreciate it and if any of these podcasts are helping you or if this whole all-around podcast is helping you, I would love for you to send it to a friend. That's all you need to do is just share it with one person. It's kind of funny because I heard this statistic saying that the reason that Facebook blew up back then, I know this has nothing to do with the episode, but I wanted to share this with you. The reason that Facebook blew up is because they shared their experience with Facebook with one person with one friend one person shared it with another person and that was it and that's all it took was every person that did Facebook or tried Facebook shared it with one person and it absolutely blew up so it would mean the world to me if you would just share this podcast with one person that's all it takes you can just copy the link send it through text send it through email whatever is easier for you send it through social media I don't care it would mean everything to me so I greatly appreciate it so let's dive into this week's topic. Okay, so today we're going to be diving in to the powerful emotion that all of us women experience, but we rarely talk about. I know I don't talk about it a lot with my friends or my friends at school, and it's a really hard one. It's all about guilt, and it's an emotion that often lingers inside of us quietly, and we all suffer from it, and we all have it in the and it's really influencing the way we make decisions. It's really influencing how we feel about ourselves and our self-worth and our confidence and it's affecting our relationships too. It could anyway. So throughout this like whole podcast episode and conversation, we're going to touch on the guilt that comes from a couple different things. One has to do with eating because I know that as a woman who is in her mid-40s who is struggling with you know just dealing with hormones and weight and how I look and how I feel I know that all of us have this common struggle of bad foods that we eat. And I know that that might sound weird to you, but this guilt around eating affects women. And I really, really wanted to talk about this. And another thing I wanted to talk about is just not doing enough for our families and our kids and questioning, you know what, am I doing a good job? Am I being a good mom? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good whatever it is that you are? And that really has this underlying weight on all of us. And things for ourselves and I struggled with this for so long. Whether it's taking time for a little bit of that self-care that you do or just pursuing like these personal interests that you have, even doing this podcast and this business that I absolutely love or just simply carving out little moments of peace when things are going crazy in our house or just running around from the day-to-day life. We just want to get away and we just feel guilty that we even want to get away. So we're going to unpack these feelings. I'm going to try to offer you some insight and explore ways that we can maybe hopefully just let go of that guilt a little bit that holds us back from being who we are. And I really don't want this to be weighing on us all the time and influencing everything that we do. I want us to feel good inside ourselves and feel confident and strong as a woman, as a mom, as someone who is just trying to navigate this life and just feel good inside themselves. So let's dive into the first topic and that is all about the guilt around food and eating. And I don't know if this topic seems a little weird to you, but I just feel like as a woman in my 40s, I'm always thinking about, okay, should I be eating this? Is this healthy for me? Is this going to, you know what I mean? All the little things that we think about when we're eating something and the guilt that we have even after we're done eating. And I know that this has a lot to do with all of the social media things that we see on an everyday basis and all Thank you so much. just so you're healthy everyone should be doing that I'm not some genius has just thought of that that is just something that we all try to do I know that you do too but it's just really hard when you do indulge or you do something and you just have this little bit of guilt on you and I know that I do as well because I'm definitely a sweets eater and sometimes it's not all the time but sometimes I've been really trying hard to be intentional about this I don't want to feel guilty after I eat something like that I want to enjoy it and just It can just become a cycle for women to eating and then feeling guilty and then eating again and then feeling guilty. And I don't want us to go into this pattern. And it can really happen. Thank you so much. There are so many emotional factors with eating and just having this guilt of trying to be so perfect. So we really have to emphasize and work on the importance of just being really kind to ourselves and overcoming that guilt that we get when we are trying to prepare food or eating something that we think we shouldn't be and deeming things as bad or good. We have to just be very intentional about being kind to ourselves and rejecting that idea that Certain foods are good and certain foods are bad. If we put them into these categories and we just live our life like that, we're never going to enjoy anything. You're never going to enjoy just going out and having a great meal and having dessert or going to get ice cream with your kids or just doing anything in general or having a drink. You're going to feel bad about it and you don't need to do that. I'm really doing this episode because I want you to be intentional about knowing where you feel guilty in different areas of your life and And one of the areas might be feeling guilty about what you are eating. I know a lot of women who are so hard on themselves when they eat something that they deem as bad for them. And I know that I can do that as well too sometimes. I'm trying to be very intentional, living a life just enjoying myself and also trying to be healthy and trying to model for my kids this kind of lifestyle too. I never try to talk about, oh my gosh, that's too many calories. I don't want to eat it. I never do anything like that in front of my kids. I don't. don't want them to have that negativity around food. So I know sometimes just inside my head though, I hear those things because of social media or things that I have seen as I was growing up or in my 20s and my 30s. I don't want to have that guilt or shame anymore. And I just want to really practice and I want you to as well just being really kind to yourself and just noticing, hey, I'm thinking these thoughts. I'm going to stop myself and I'm going to reframe what I'm thinking. It's just about being intentional and that's what I want you to do. Another thing that I do in my relationship with food and feeling guilty around things like that is just really trying to focus on balance for myself and not perfection. I don't want to be perfect all the time. I want to be able to enjoy the things that I want to enjoy. And it's not about being perfect. It's just about being balanced. And I know that not Everything is going to be balanced in life sometimes, but just really being intentional about what I'm eating, trying to have a healthier relationship with my food and how I think about it is going to help me make change. And like I said, with personal development, it's all about growing and changing and helping ourselves just live the best life that we can and just being more intentional about how you think about food. Just really think about it. How do I think about things when I'm about to eat them or if I'm preparing for the week or if I do indulge sometimes? Am I being hard on myself? myself and going to be mad at myself and guilty absolutely not we can't do that we have to learn to be kind to ourselves and to just really be open to a better mindset about how we are living our everyday life because guess what we have to eat every single day we have to enjoy things we want to enjoy life we want to be happy and healthy we want to have good self-esteem and confidence so we really have to watch how we are dealing with that guilt and shame around food Because I think a lot of women struggle with this, especially as we start getting older and things just start changing and not the way we want them to be. And we don't know what's going on. It can be so hard. So just really give yourself grace and be kind to yourself and try to figure things out. Okay, maybe I can't eat this anymore. I have to look at other options or something like that. Or maybe I need to move my body more. You just really need to figure out what works best for you and really be intentional in catching yourself when you have these negative thoughts around eating so we don't carry that guilt. All right, let's move into the next topic. And this has to do with our kids and our families. And you might not be a mom, you might be a mom. But sometimes we just feel guilty like we're not doing enough. So I have a full-time job that I go to every single day and so does my husband. And a lot of the times I just feel so guilty that I'm not doing enough at home. I'm not doing enough for my kids or I'm not talking to my mom enough or my family enough because I'm pulled in so many different ways. My children have so many things going on and we just have things going on at all times of the day and I just feel this guilt that I'm not being a friend that I need to be a daughter that I need to be or whatever I am and it just like weighs on me sometimes and I think a lot of women have this that they're just feel like they're not doing enough for their kids for their partners and for their families and it's just so much because we have careers we have a house where we have relationships we're parents and we have this guilt that all of these different parts of our life are just like falling apart through the cracks and falling down and we're not measuring up. And now with social media I think there's so much pressure to be this perfect person and this perfect mom and loving wife and this perfect hard-working person that goes to work every day and does an A-plus job. There's just so many things that we carry on our shoulders as women and we have all of these expectations that we are actually putting on ourselves and then we have this constant guilt. So this guilt can hurt us emotionally and physically because we're trying to be everything for everyone and it can really hurt our self-esteem and our self-worth because we're burning out at all ends we're not keeping up our end for all of these different people so then we feel like we're failing so the first thing that i want you to do to help with this guilt of not doing enough for our kids and our families is normalize that we're not going to be perfect imperfection is going to happen we We are not gonna be perfect for everyone. Some people are going to get upset with us. We have no control over anyone else. We only have control over ourselves. We can't control if our mother, aunt, friend, whoever it is gets mad at us because we're not doing enough for them. We can only control ourselves and we have to be okay with that. Sometimes people have no idea what's going on in our own lives and we can only control what we can control. We can't control how other people are perceiving us. The next thing that has really helped me It's just asking for help, especially from my partner, my husband. And yes, I want to be this wonderful mother that does everything for my family and my kids and all of those kinds of things. But I need help. And my husband is amazing because I do ask him for help with a lot of things and a lot of things we do around the house. And he's okay with that because we're partners. It's not one does more than the other. And yes, we're going to have seasons in our life like we just had where one isn't home as much because of things going on and coaching in school and all the things that we have going on. We are a team and that's what you need to do. You need to ask for help. And if you don't have a partner to help you in the house, then ask someone outside of the home, a friend or a family member, because everyone needs help. You can't have everything on your shoulders and it's not fair if you do. So you really need to take a look at your life and say, okay, do I have too much on my shoulders? Am I taking too much on? Because I know sometimes we do that as women because we're like, oh, we need to do everything. We need to be everything for everyone and take it all on. our shoulders, but you can't do that and survive and be thriving and feeling good inside yourself because you will burn out. So you need to ask for help. That has been key in my life and just trying not to be so perfect all the time and knowing that I can lean on someone else to help me when I need it and just to divvy up the chores in the house or things that we do on our day-to-day life. It has been a game changer for us. The next thing that I've been really trying to focus on is just being present when I'm with my family and not trying to think of all the things that I have to do and all my to-do lists and things that I want to get done I'm trying to really be intentional about being present when I'm with my family so it's more about the quality time and not like okay I need to spend 10 hours with my family right now no it's more about focusing on the quality time that you're spending together rather than the quantity okay the last form of guilt that I wanted to talk about today was the guilt of doing something for ourselves So a while back, I was feeling... Always guilty about doing something for myself and taking time for myself. I love to be alone and I love to have alone time and doing things that I want to do, like coming on my computer and like working on the business or doing things like that. A lot of the times I would feel this like immense guilt that I wanted to go and do those kinds of things. And when I talk about doing something for ourselves, it's not just about like self-care and going to the spa. It's kind of about like our hobbies that we want to have. It can be real. It can be self-care as well. But as women, we don't take time to do these kinds of things because we feel guilty. And we think that we're being selfish because we want to do something for ourselves. But we really have to prioritize our own needs or we're going to burn out. And we try to put everyone else first. That's just what we do as women or as moms. We put our kids first, our husbands. Everything comes before us and how we feel. And that has to stop. So I started just thinking about, you know what, I don't want to feel this guilt anymore because I want to work on my business. I want to have some alone time for myself and do things for myself. And it doesn't mean that I don't love my family or want to be with them at all. It's just about taking care of myself so that I can be the best that I can be and feel good inside and do things for myself. So you have to find things that bring you joy and that make you happy. And that's kind of where I really dove into creating these happy habits into my life because I wanted to do these little things for myself that didn't take like 10 hours a day or a full day at the spa because I would maybe go get my toes done or my nails done and yeah I'd feel good in that moment and when I came home after I did that but I wanted to feel good every day I wanted to have some type of joy every day and it just started sparking something inside of me where okay I need to make a list of all the things that make me happy and bring me joy and that make me feel good inside kind of like making So I created these happy habits in my life that I try to incorporate every day and I try to do them for different parts of my life like my mindset and all the different things that I do and my movement that I get in every single day because it fills me up and it makes me feel good and I feel like I'm doing something for myself. So I was on my computer and I really wanted to find something that talked about self-care and how it can help us. And what does research say about self-care? And I found something from the American Psychological Association, which found that taking time for self-care can improve mental health and well-being, leading to greater effectiveness in caring for others. In a study on burnout and emotional exhaustion, the APA highlighted that women who prioritize self-care, such as alone time or engaging in activities they enjoy, report higher levels of energy, resilience, resilience and satisfaction in their caregiving roles. So as moms, can you even imagine if we start taking care of ourselves every single day in little ways, we will have so much more energy for everything around us. We'll feel better. We'll feel more rejuvenated in every way. And it's not about just going to the spa once a month or every three months. If you're like me, it's every two times a year. I'm going to get my toes done. But if we start incorporating these little things of self-care and prioritizing it and just even going in your room and shutting the door and reading your favorite book for 30 minutes, that can be a way that you can enjoy your life more. You can have more energy. You can have better resilience and you can just be a better mom and woman inside. Wouldn't that be completely amazing? So if you haven't listened to episode four of the podcast, I really want you to do that. It's all about happy habits and what they are in creating them. It's a form of self-care that's not like this overindulgent thing. It's these little things, these little micro things that we do every single day that we incorporate into our lives that help us to feel good, that can bring us more joy, that can make us more energized. And I have absolutely loved doing this in my own life and it has literally changed my life incorporating these happy habits. I have something really cool coming up soon all about happy habits and focusing on it and just creating this framework that has helped me so much. It's literally changed my life and I really want to share it with you and I'm really excited to do that. But I want you to remember that that type of self-care like happy habits, it's not a luxury. It's a necessity for us to feel good inside, for us to feel happy and healthy. We have to schedule these things. We have to do these things and we're just done feeling guilty about doing things for ourselves we're not going to do that anymore we need to do these little things for ourselves even if it's just like going for a walk reading your favorite book doing a hobby that you enjoy or going to bed a little bit earlier remember you have to create these happy habits within your everyday life so that you feel like you are taking care of yourself and it's going to change your life i'm telling you we have to make sure that we are prioritizing who we are as a woman and making sure that we are not burning ourselves out so I hope this episode was helpful I know it was a little different because we're talking about different ways that women feel guilty and the whole guilt around eating and not doing enough for our families and just feeling guilty about doing things for ourselves those are things that just can weigh on our shoulders and weigh on ourselves and I don't want you to feel that way anymore we have to be really intentional about not feeling that guilt because as women as moms we feel guilty all the time because we're not doing all All the things. And we have to be intentional about stopping and reprogramming ourselves to not have that guilt anymore. And it just takes work. It just takes intentionality. And I know that you can do it. So I hope that this episode was helpful. And if you think this episode could help someone, like I said, if you could just be sent to one person, that would mean the world to me. And as always, I want to end you with an affirmation to send you on your day. And that affirmation is, I deserve to take care of myself without guilt. Resting, recharging, and focusing on my needs is essential for my well-being because I am worth it. Well, I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you on next week's episode. Thank you so much for being here and tuning in. I'll see you next week.