26. The Guilt Trip: How to Pack Light and Enjoy Your Life

How is the heaviness of guilt holding you back from living a fulfilling life? Join Jenn this week as she goes deep into the mechanics of this uncomfortable emotion and how it's affecting you each day.

Some key points in today's episode:

• What actually is guilt and what causes it?
• How does guilt effect us, both positively and negatively?
• Identifying strategies to overcome guilt in a healthy way.
• Differentiating between guilt that does belong to us and guilt we are not responsible for.
• How to move forward and heal from the guilt in our lives.
• When to seek support.

We hope this episode was helpful to you. If you would like more information or to connect with Jenn directly, please use the following links:

Mindset Makeover One Day Workshop: https://www.jenncody.com/mindsetmakeover 

Email Jenn: jenn@jenncody.com

Website: www.jenncody.com

Group Coaching Program: https://www.jenncody.com/masteryourmindset

One on One Coaching: https://www.jenncody.com/mindsetcoaching 

Thanks for listening! 

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I have a question for you. How easy is it for you to trust yourself? Think about it for a minute. When you're making a decision in your life, whether it be your personal life or your professional life, how trusting are you of your own capabilities to make the right choice? If you're hesitating for even a moment, I encourage you to join me on June 17th in New York at the Hilton Garden Inn on Staten Island for the Mindset Makeover Workshop. We're going to be talking all about how to trust yourself so that you can have the success in your life that you're looking for and that you deserve. So again, it's Saturday, June 17th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Staten Island, New York at the Hilton Garden Inn. We're going to cover a variety of topics, but my goal for you is to leave there with practical strategies that you can implement immediately into your daily life so you walk away with this amazing energy for your future. I want you to feel secure and confident that everything that it is that you're working towards is available to you because you trust yourself to make the right decisions to get you there. Consider joining me. You can go to my website, gencody.com, and click on the link at the top of the page to register. June 17th, Staten Island, New York, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I hope to see you there. Hi there and welcome to the Create Your Day podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody. This podcast is where you want to be to learn practical and sustainable strategies to shift your mindset and propel your personal and professional growth. Listen in each week as I share the techniques that took me from being an overwhelmed and stressed-out mom and entrepreneur to someone with a successful and fulfilling life and business. Are you ready to dive in with me? Let's do it. And I hope everybody has had a good week. I know that this past week for me was super busy. My daughter graduated from the University of Alabama, so my family and I got to travel down there for the graduation, and we had many celebrations and beautiful dinners and lots of time together, which was really, really sweet. And it was great to see her kind of, you know, having her dreams come true and all the hard work that she's done pay off. So I am definitely one proud mama this week. And um still kind of floating on a cloud from that high. And now Mother's Day is coming up this weekend. By the time you hear this, Mother's Day will have passed already. So for those of you who are moms, happy Mother's Day. For those of you celebrating your own Mothers, um, I hope you guys had a great day. And for those of you who this is a tough day for for various reasons, right? There are so many reasons Mother's Day can be a difficult time for people. And to all of you, I'm definitely sending you some love and support and um just honoring those feelings as well. So as we talk about this week's episode, um, we're going to be discussing something that comes up very often in my own life as well as in my conversations with my clients. It is something that many, many of us, I think all of us, probably wish we could eradicate from our lives and not have to deal with. And that's unfortunately not possible. It's something that sneaks up on us, that can really wreak havoc in our lives and cause us a lot of heartache and grief. So what we're talking about today is guilt. This is definitely one of my areas of expertise when it comes to the research I've done for my coaching business. I've done a ton of research over the past, I don't know, four, five, six years in the world of guilt and shame and how it affects us and how it holds us back, and how it propels us forward, too, to be quite honest. We'll talk about that a little bit as well. So, what I want to do today is really get into what guilt is, um, how it affects us, how we can cope with it, what are different things that we can do to help us heal from guilt, and also how to recognize when we should be feeling the feelings we have and when they don't really belong to us, when we're holding on to uh, I guess it would be considered like misplaced guilt. When are we feeling guilty for something that is not necessarily ours to hold? So we all know what guilt is, but just for the sakes of the sake of the podcast, I'll go ahead and define it. So, guilt, by definition, is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for a wrongdoing or mistake that we've made. So now this is interesting to me because uh that phrase, the mistake that we've made, I think when I first read it, I took it as a mistake that maybe caused harm to other people. But now reading it again, I feel like we can really feel guilty sometimes for making mistakes that just affect us, right? We can feel guilty for not holding up the end of a bargain that we had with ourselves. So it's not always causing issues for other people or hurting other people. Sometimes it's not following through with things that we wanted to do for ourselves, and that can result in us having some guilt as well. So the causes of this feeling, you know, they vary completely from person to person. Maybe you broke a promise, you hurt someone's feelings, like I said, you're not living up to your own expectations. Um, there's so many different things that can cause us to feel guilty, and it's important to recognize those situations so that this way we can really have a better understanding and manage the emotion in general. So when we have this feeling, the whole point of discussing this today is to figure out like how does it affect us? And everybody is affected by this emotion at some point, and it can have negative effects on us, and it actually can also have positive effects on us. But first, we're going to talk about the negative effects because these are the effects that we want to be able to monitor, and um we can't really control them, but we want to be able to um find our way through them, right? And have it not be such a heavy, heavy burden for us. So on that negative side, like some of the things that guilt can cause for us, it leads us to have some self-doubt, it can lead to anxiety, it can lead to depression, it can affect our relationships with others, right? And it can even almost cause us to lash out at other people. And why would that be? Like, why does that happen? Because let's face it, we really don't like being uncomfortable. And guilt is a super, super uncomfortable emotion. So when we're feeling it, when we're sitting in it and like marinating in this guilt fest, we don't want to be there. So we struggle with that feeling, and it can cause us to kind of displace that struggle onto other people and cause us to lash out, and which just causes more problems, right? I mean, that's that's a vicious cycle for sure. Now, when we do feel guilt, when we are holding on to it, um, it also can cause us to struggle with feelings of shame and to hopefully feel some remorse, which is not a great feeling either, because usually it means that you've done something you wish you didn't do. So, all of these feelings together, we have like this soup of uncomfortable emotion, which is really overwhelming. And that overwhelm kind of snowballs into these feelings of being vulnerable, which is another very uncomfortable place for people to be. And when we're sitting in that, we can become very defensive, and it can be something that um causes us, like I said, to lash out. And that lashing out is a protective situation, right? We're trying to protect ourselves. It's our it's human nature to try and protect ourselves from discomfort and hurt. So this is just one of the ways that we might do that. So at the end of the day, if that's the way that guilt is affecting you, if you find that it makes you um maybe short with the people around you, you're snapping at them, anything like that, does that alleviate your guilt? No, not at all. You're still feeling shitty, but you're taking it out on other people, and it's like a way for you to express the um discomfort that's in your body at that moment. So that's a really negative way, obviously, to um deal with guilt. Is it healthy? Absolutely not. But unfortunately, we do do a lot of things when we're not aware that we're doing them that are really unhealthy and that um this is just deflecting our situation into another direction. It's not in any way handling it. And the cycle that that can perpetuate because now you're just causing issues with someone else who doesn't even know what they did. You know, they didn't do anything wrong, and you're like lashing out at them because you feel guilty about something else, and you're trying to not be uncomfortable. So you now you've caused an argument or a misunderstanding with someone, and this just be creates this cycle of more harm and more negative consequences. So nobody wants that. So we want to try and avoid this negative result of feeling guilt if we can. Now, like I said, there's also sometimes guilt can affect us in a positive way because we don't want to feel that way, right? So maybe something positive that could come out of it is that we're going to learn a little bit from these mistakes. So maybe we're going to make some better choices in the future. Sometimes, if guilt is coming from something deep enough and um meaningful enough to us, we may want to seek amends with those people that are causing this guilt. We may want to forgive ourselves, which is a whole other topic that we can talk about. Um, but these are some of the positive things that can come from feeling guilty. You know, it's a very powerful motivator that I think anybody that's ever had a situation where I'm trying to think of what an example would be, um, but feeling shitty leads to change, essentially. That's like if you you want to like quote to carry with you, feeling shitty leads to change because nobody wants to feel that way. So, oh, I uh here's a great example. So let's say you are running errands in the afternoon, maybe you're supposed to pick up your child, your children from school, and you lose track of time and they wind up sitting there waiting for you. You will most likely feel guilty, especially if for some reason they're very upset about it or something like that. That guilt is something you're not going to want to feel again. So I promise you're going to make different choices in the future to make sure that never happens again. So that's one of those positive results, is in this situation, it's something not that serious. But um, if you were late to pick up your child and it caused a lot of anxiety and hurt for your child, you could be damn sure you're not going to be late for your child again. You're not going to want to cause that again. So that would be a positive result that came from those feelings of guilt. So when we're able to do that, when we can reflect on our actions and consider how maybe in the future we can behave differently, that would certainly be a great um result of the guilt that we're feeling. So, how can we use guilt to motivate us? Like this is where we want to go. We want to stay away from all the negative stuff that we spoke about. We don't want to be somebody who's lashing out at other people. We don't want to be harboring all that resentment in ourselves. We want to be able to take the guilt that we have and help it fuel us to become better people. Help us to make those better choices. So, how can we use it to motivate us to be better? So, the first thing is definitely to encourage that self-reflection. So, if we can reflect back on the situation and back on what caused that guilt in the first place, we are able to learn from those mistakes. We gain a lot of insight into what our values might really be, what our belief system might really be about, and what motivates us. We need to be able to have a level of self-awareness to see what caused us to get into this situation in the first place. And then from there, we're able to really kind of segue into some personal growth. Like, let's use the guilt to inspire us to work on our personal development, to strive to be a better person. And that may look like setting new goals for yourself. You know, if you've found that you're harboring this guilt over a certain situation, and by sitting in self-reflection and understanding how you got to that place, you can maybe create a whole new set of goals for yourself that are going to shift direction for you, shift perspective, bring you to another place where maybe you're not going to have to feel that way anymore. That may also lead, like setting new goals for yourself, may also lead to creating new positive habits. So when you think about whatever the situation is that you're feeling guilty about, what are some new habits that you can implement into your life that can prevent that from happening again? So this is all great, like a great stage for personal development, for self-reflection, for really growing as a person into a better version of yourself. So, and all of this is something positive that can be fueled by the guilt that you're feeling from a situation. Something else that can be positive that we don't always realize is feeling guilty for something when we've caused harm to someone else can actually help increase our, it like works the muscle of our empathy and compassion. When we're able to, again, have that level of self-awareness so that we can really see and recognize the impact of our actions on others. This is something that takes a lot of emotional maturity and a lot of um, you have to have a lot of capacity for improving yourself. And that requires you to be very aware of the fact that you're not perfect. And this is a touchy subject for people because we really want to be the best version of ourselves all the time. And when there's something outside of our control, so we're feeling guilt, the situation happened already. We can't control that anymore. The guilt is there, it's within us. When something like that happens, it challenges our own self-image, it challenges who we thought we were. We don't want to be the person that caused hurt to somebody. We don't want to be the person that, you know, did something that caused a misunderstanding, whether, and even if it's something just for yourself, we don't want to be the person that didn't follow through on what they said they were going to do. So when that view of yourself is challenged, not everybody's going to rise to that occasion. This is where a lot of people will kind of fall off and go into protection mode, right? They're going to go into that situation where that's not the person they want to be, so they're going to just pretend that that doesn't exist, which can lead to the lashing out. It leads to it's not authentic, right? Being authentic means really owning up to who you are and recognizing who you are. So this effect of guilt, which is such a positive outcome to promote the empathy and compassion that we can have for other people is really a great, great thing to happen. So if you can dial into your self-awareness and dial into your emotional maturity and truly understand that your actions impact other people every single day, you develop like a great understanding of other people's feelings and have like a newfound respect for other people's experiences and realize that I think I've said this before on here. Um I know I've said it with my clients so many times, but we're all having an individual human experience. And once we realize that our experience is not in any way the same as the person that we're interacting with, they're having a very separate experience. So once we can really appreciate that, we're able to increase the empathy and compassion that we have for other people, which is such a great thing. It's such a great characteristic to have, it's such a great trait to carry with you. It makes people gravitate to you. It makes you someone that people feel safe around. So who doesn't want to be a safe place for people? So that's a really great um outcome that we can have. And in doing that, if we can promote that empathy, if we can grow our capacity for compassion, that's just going to strengthen the relationships we have, right? Which is a great outcome to experience. If we can be motivated, even to maybe repair some damaged relationships. If our guilt is going to cause us to want to make amends with someone that maybe we weren't seeing eye to eye with in the past and had lost touch with, this driving force of us trying to become a better person because of something that we did can really be beneficial in uh repairing relationships that we've lost along the way. And it helps build stronger connections with the people you have in your life now, the people that you're going to come into contact with. You know, it takes a lot of guts to say you're sorry. It takes a lot of um courage to put yourself out there and be vulnerable enough to admit to someone that you did something wrong, that you um are acknowledging your mistake, you'd like to make amends with them. By doing that, having that conversation with someone, it really helps build trust in the relationship. They know now that you are a safe friend. You are someone who is going to admit, you know what, I'm sorry that I hurt you. I'm sorry that I did that. Um, how can I make it up to you? What how can I get your trust back? And it really deepens our relationships overall, which is such a great thing and such a wonderful feeling when you know that you are, when you know that you are in balance with your relationships, that your friendships, your romantic relationships, your family relationships, when you know that you are authentically you and you're living according to your values and your boundaries, and then you can let go of guilt because you know, well, we're gonna talk about that in a second, actually. I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's talk about overcoming guilt because that's really if you're listening to this and any of this is resonating with you, this is what you want. You want to know how to get rid of it, right? We talked about the different, the negative impact, the positive impact, but let's talk about how we can not have it and how we can learn from it and go from there. So overcoming guilt is absolutely not easy. It is something that um people try to do in sometimes very harmful ways. And, you know, this is something as a total sidebar for people who are really struggling with this. You know, people it can lead people to substance abuse, to withdraw from their relationships because it is so uncomfortable. It is something we want to get away from so much. So we need to come up with the strategies to overcome the guilt that are healthy, that are good for us. And those look like a million different things. I'm sure for everybody it can be different. But some of the things that I do in my workshops and in my sessions with my clients, we talk about like reframing the negative thoughts that we might have. How do we look at things differently? How do we challenge the negative thoughts in our brain to understand the guilt that we're feeling? How do we really come in contact with it and be in touch with it from a healthy place? How do we learn how to practice self compassion? How do we learn how to forgive ourselves? These are all the ways to actually work through the Guilt and move forward from guilt. And moving forward, you know, like I said earlier, can um involved you want to move forward in a different direction, right? So that is where we talk about creating new habits, setting new goals, making those positive changes in our lives, that's how we can actually move through the guilt. So now we've kind of discussed why we feel the guilt, what to do with it. And now we want to figure out like, how do we know when we're feeling this way, if we should actually be feeling this way? Because, like any emotion, it's not always accurate. It's not always something that we should be taking on. And this can be super challenging, but it's also super important because if you're carrying around a lot of guilt that doesn't belong to you, it's holding you back in every single area of your life. And it will continue to do that until you come to terms with the truth and choose to move forward in a different direction. So how can you do that, right? Because we don't just decide we want to feel guilty. We feel like in some way it's being handed to us, I'm sure, like it's happening to us. And when we feel these emotions, when we feel that heavy, heavy guilt emotion, we don't really stop to say, should I be feeling this way? Because we do, we already do. We're sitting in it, we're marinating in it, and we need to figure out now, is this where we belong? So this is this involves challenging your thoughts, which is not always an easy thing to do. Um, but some of the strategies that I can offer you to help is first I want you to evaluate the evidence behind the guilt, right? Consider the situation. Like what actually is causing you to feel guilty? Think about it. It shouldn't be that difficult to come up with the scenario. What exactly is causing you to feel guilty? And then I want you to ask yourself, is this true? Did I have a direct role in this situation? Were my actions responsible for this outcome? If the answer is no, then that's all you need to know. Then this is not something that belongs to you. This is misplaced guilt. You're holding on to something that's caused by someone else. And those feelings of misplaced guilt are they're gonna F you up. I'm gonna tell you that right now because it's something that's going to um I don't it's it's carried with you all the time, every day. And it's one of those things that's like like just being held in the back of your head all the time. And it does not feel good. It feels terrible. And how amazing would it be if you're listening right now and this and you're saying, oh my god, yes, Jen, this is exactly what I'm what's happening. I'm I feel so much guilt. And now that I'm thinking about it, this is not something that I caused. This my behavior, my actions did not directly impact this outcome in any way. Well, congratulations to you because you can drop that shit right now. This is not guilt that you need to be carrying around. And that's meant to be a freeing exercise. And it's so simple, right? All I want you to do is sit down and actually evaluate the situation. Think to yourself about what exactly went on that you're feeling guilty about, and then ask yourself if it's true. It's very simple. And it's very black and white. It's not something that you could be like, well, I kind of did. No, you either did or you didn't. There shouldn't be too much gray area in this exercise. Um, next, what I want to do is talk about your values. Now, anybody that's ever, ever, ever worked with me knows that all of my work is values-based. It's one of the first exercises I do with my clients. It's something that we do in my workshops, we do it on my retreats. That knowing your values is super, super important. So if you can, um, and this is something, anybody that's listening, if you need some help with this and you want some um tips on how to connect with your core values, definitely reach out to me. It's an amazing exercise that helps you in every aspect of your life. It helps you create boundaries, it helps you strengthen your relationships, it helps you to know how to set goals for yourself and how to achieve them. It's just overall important in every single area of your life. And when it comes to this, when it comes to kind of deciphering guilt that you're feeling, and is this mine? Is it not mine? I want you to reflect on your personal values and on your belief system and think about the scenario, whatever it is that you're feeling guilty about, and compare it with your values. The actions that you took in this scenario, do they align with your values? Do they align with your beliefs? Were you coming from a place of integrity, of authenticity? If you were, then you're holding on to guilt that is unnecessary. You're holding on to guilt that does not belong to you. I'm trying to think if there's an example I can give of this. Um, because this is so important. It's so, it's, we all do this so often where we carry this around with us, and it's it's like a light bulb moment that can go on to find out, oh, wait a second, I don't need to feel this way. I don't need um to be holding on to this. Um what I'm trying to think of what an example could be for this, but I don't know, I can't come up with one right now. Um, I guess something could be like if you said something that hurt someone's feelings because you were telling them the truth, okay? Actually, this is a good this is a good thing. This is a good version. If you had to share information with someone, that was true, and you were doing it because you love them, and you were doing it because it was something they needed to know, but this information could be hurtful to them. You are not the one hurting them as long as it's something they need to know. If it's not something they need to know, then there's no reason for you to be telling them. But if you're acting on your values and being honest, because maybe honesty is one of your values, um, if your actions are in alignment with your values and you were doing that, the opposite of that would be lying to someone to spare their feelings. Right? That would be the opposite of that situation. So if you're choosing to honor your values, honor your integrity, and move forward with this action, that's not something you should feel guilty about. It's one thing to feel you can feel bad that somebody's feelings are hurt and want to, you know, be there for them and support them and help them to feel better, but that's not, you don't need to take responsibility for their feelings being hurt. I hope that makes sense. Um, okay, so let's move on to the next thing that I'd like you to do, and that is to see if you have any patterns of feeling guilty when you've done nothing. Now, this is something that actually comes from probably a lot of generational trauma. Um someone who maybe grew up in a home where they were blamed for everything all the time, even when they were not actually participating in the scenario. So if you find, if you can identify a pattern right now in your life that you're just feeling guilty all the time, you're second-guessing every move you make because you're trying to avoid guilt and then you feel it anyway, then you most likely are dealing with um some generational guilt that does not belong to you. And in this case, I would say you probably need to seek support to help you move through that. And we'll talk about seeking support in a minute. Um, but I definitely would suggest that for you because it's this is not as easy as just knowing the information isn't true, so you can now think differently about it. This is like years and years and years of something that's been ingrained inside of you, so it requires a different level of support. So, which leads me to seeking support. And this support can look different for everyone, and there's certainly many different levels of it. Sometimes seeking support can just mean talking to a friend, you know, or talking to a family member, um, getting their perspective on seeing whether or not what you're feeling guilty about is accurate. You know, if you've if you're confused about something that's gone on and you're feeling, you know, you're just feeling this like you're in this limbo of am I guilt? Do I feel guilty about this? Do I not, you know, should I feel guilty about this? By all means, that's something that you can speak to a friend about and be like, you know, I'm just trying to place where this feeling's coming from. I need some perspective. We all need friends like that in our life. So that's something that you absolutely can do if you're trying to figure out if the guilt you're feeling is warranted, or if you're taking on responsibility that does not belong to you. So once we've kind of differentiated what belongs to us and what does not, how do we heal from this guilt? How do we take all the knowledge that we've kind of gathered about our feeling and what we're feeling, and how can we actually heal from it? This is the important part, right? Because all of us want to heal from uncomfortable feelings. And this is one of the most uncomfortable feelings humans can have. So the first thing that I'm going to say, which is really hard for some people, is to actually acknowledge your feelings. Acknowledge how you're feeling about it. Recognize that the feelings of guilt that you're experiencing exist. You can try to identify the actual reasons behind it. Um, and consider how this guilt, how the reasons for this guilt are affecting your thoughts. How is it affecting your behavior? Um, and but really being comfortable with your emotions, really allowing yourself to feel them in a way that um may be uncomfortable at first. And a few years back, I heard someone speaking about her definition of emotion was that it's energy in motion and that holding, you know, we make ourselves sick when we hold on to our emotions. So if we think of the emotions as that, as energy in motion, and allow ourselves to feel it and have those emotions flow through us, that's a great healing exercise because a lot of times, you know, think about how you feel when you're in an uncomfortable state, whether it's from guilt or any other uncomfortable emotion. We feel frozen, right? We feel clenched. We're holding on to, we're like literally clenching our whole bodies, holding on to these emotions. If we allow ourselves to let the that emotion flow through us, just acknowledge it and release it, it's a great exercise in helping heal from whatever it is that's making you uncomfortable. Um, the next way that we can heal from guilt, and this is again back to that level of self-awareness, is to make amends. If you know that your guilt is valid, if you know that your guilt is belongs to you, you are actually responsible for causing someone pain and discomfort. One of the greatest things you can do for both of you is to try to make amends, to apologize, to, you know, apologize to the person. You can only make amends to the to the best of your ability, but just acknowledging it to someone and trying to repair whatever damage has been done to the relationship can be a huge step towards healing for both both parties in this case. And then I'd love for you to be able to practice a little self-compassion. And that means being kind to yourself. And this is something I find myself repeating to clients over and over and over again when they're struggling with how to handle a situation, when they're struggling with how they're handling a situation, and they're being so hard on themselves all the time. We really, we're all really good at that. Like we're so good at judging ourselves and being hard on ourselves. And what I would love for you to do in this situation is stop and ask yourself, what would you tell someone else in this situation? What compassion would you offer to someone else that came to you with whatever it is that you are working through? Why can't you offer that same compassion to yourself? Practice being compassionate for yourself. Practice self-compassion on a regular basis. Um, it will change your life in many ways. It's not just around this guilt piece, but self-compassion is a game changer. It's something, you know, being gentle and understanding with yourself is the first step towards a new future, honestly. It will change everything about your life. Um, we spoke about challenging negative thoughts, but I do want to mention that again here because guilt is so is comes goes hand in hand with so much negative self-talk. So we spoke before about challenging the situation. Like ask yourself, is it true? Did I really cause this person harm? Well, now when you're feeling guilty and you're judging yourself and you're speaking badly to yourself, I want you to challenge those thoughts also. Are you really a bad person? Because that's the first thing people think. Oh my god, I feel like such a bad person. Okay, are you really a bad person? Because another thing I'd like to offer you is there are really amazing, amazing people out there, really good people who make really bad choices once in a while. There's a huge difference between being a bad person and being a good person who made a bad decision. So don't be so hard on yourself, don't be so judgy, don't, you know, beat yourself up as much as you are. Um, practice that self-compassion and challenge that negative self-talk. Most of all, I want you to remember that, you know, healing from any kind of guilt is a process. This is not something that's going to happen overnight. It's not something that you can just snap your fingers and have a new outlook and shift your mindset. This requires work. It requires a lot of work, and that work takes time. You have to be patient with yourself, you have to trust that you will be able to overcome these feelings, you'll be able to move forward, but it is going to take some time and some effort. Now, we spoke about like seeking help, right? And I spoke to you guys about talking to a friend, I'm talking to a family member. Guilt is really heavy. It's, you know, if we had to label all the different emotions that we feel, we would we'd be here all day. But if you just think about all the different emotions that we're capable of feeling, and if you think about each one of them and how they feel inside your body, most people would describe guilt as a heavy feeling. It's something that weighs you down. It's different than anger, it's different than sadness, it's it's something that is a constant heaviness in your life. And for some people, it can be crushing. It can be really, really crushing weight that they're carrying around with them. So I really encourage you to seek support. If that resonates with you, if that if I said that just now and you were like, oh my god, Jen, that's exactly how I feel every day. I feel like my body, I can't get out of the bed, the guilt is weighing me down in my bed in the morning. It's if this is resonating with you, please seek support. And that support looks like so many different things. You can talk to friends, you can talk to your family members, you can talk, you can join a group of like-minded people who are just there to offer support. You know, you are welcome to join my Facebook group, the Follow Your Bliss Collective. It's filled with people who want to offer support. Um, there are support groups that are for specific situations that you can seek out. Um you can hire a coach to help shift your perspective, to help change your thought process, to help shift your mindset so that you can look towards your future in an entirely different way and then build that future. And of course, if needed, professional help, if somebody feels that they need therapy to work through something, this is a case where it's so, so necessary to recognize that and move forward with that process. Um, so I appreciate you guys so much. I hope that this information was valuable for you today. I will wrap up. I know I was a little long-winded, but this topic is really important. I think that so many people are um dealing with this on a regular basis. And a lot of times it's one of those things where you know something is weighing you down, you know something is off, you don't feel flow in your life, right? You don't feel light, you don't feel like you can move nimbly through your day and from task to task, and in your relationships, there's something weighing you down, and you just can't necessarily pinpoint what it is. Many times it is guilt, and it's for so many different things. So doing the work around this will absolutely change your life in a positive way. I promise you that. So I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions, as always, you know that you can reach out to me. You can reach me on Instagram at Jen Cody, you can reach me on Facebook in the Follow Your Bliss Collective, and I hope that you create your day in the best way possible and have a great week. I will see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found the podcast helpful, I would love for you to leave us a quick reading and a review, as this really helps the show reach and support more people. And of course, if you screenshot and share us on social media, we will be sure to share it. For more information, you can always check me out on my website, gencody.com. That's www.jencody.com. See you next week.