Why You Feel Guilty Even When You’re Not Doing Anything Wrong

Do you ever make a decision you feel good about… and then immediately start questioning it? 

You set a boundary, say no, or take care of yourself—and suddenly you feel guilty. Like maybe you’re doing it wrong. 

In this episode, we’re talking about that familiar midlife feeling of second-guessing yourself—even when you haven’t actually done anything wrong. 

I share a personal story from this past week (involving cataract surgery, anesthesia, and a slightly questionable podcast recording decision), along with a deeper look at something many women carry for years: the belief that “I’m doing it wrong.” 

We’ll talk about: 

• Why your brain defaults to self-doubt in midlife 
• The difference between false guilt and real conviction 
• How to tell when guilt is actually pointing to something… and when it’s just old conditioning 
• Why things like housekeeping, procrastination, and productivity don’t carry moral value 
• How to stop making your choices mean something negative about who you are 

If you’ve been doing the work—setting boundaries, stepping back from overfunctioning, trying to trust yourself more—but still feel uncomfortable or unsure… this episode is for you.
 
You’re not doing your life wrong.
 
You’re just learning how to live it differently.
 

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And if you loved this episode, please rate the show and leave a review so others can find it, too.  

You can also follow me on my socials:

Instagram: @loribuckcoaching

Facebook: Lori Buck Coaching

Website: www.loribuckcoaching.com 

Email: lori@loribuckcoaching.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello friend and welcome back to Loving That Midlife. I'm Lori Buck, Master Certified Christian Life Coach, and I'm so glad you're here. So I have a question for you. Have you ever made a decision that you felt good about, but yet 10 minutes later you were questioning the whole thing? Maybe you set a boundary and then felt guilty. Or you said no and then replayed it in your head over and over. Or you decided to take care of yourself, but somehow it felt selfish. And underneath all of this is the quiet thought. And that's what we're going to talk about today. That kind of low-level sense of guilt and that deeper feeling that many of us carry in midlife that maybe we're getting all of this wrong, even when we're not. And if this is something you're walking through right now, this is exactly the kind of work I do inside my coaching practice, helping women untangle these thought patterns so they can start trusting themselves again. I'll tell you more about that at the end of the episode. But first, I want to start with a quick story from my own life this week. If you listened last week, you know I had cataract surgery last Tuesday. And I recorded my podcast while I was still coming off the anesthesia. At the time I thought, this is fine. I can totally do this. And then I listened back a few days later. And it wasn't super obvious, but I noticed I sounded a little slower than usual, a little stilted. And I think I pronounced one or two words a little creatively, shall we say? My very first thought while listening was, I can't believe I did that. I should have prepared sooner. I shouldn't have waited until the last minute. And friends, that thought did not come out of nowhere. I have called myself a procrastinator for as long as I can remember. And I've been guilting myself about it for about that long. Now, this is something I've actually done a lot of work on in coaching. I don't beat myself up about it the way that I used to. Instead, I stopped and I looked at the full picture of last week. It was Holy Week. It was Easter. My youngest daughter came home from college for several days. I had family things. I had things with wonderful family friends. I had eye surgery that I was a little bit nervous about. I made intentional choices to focus on what mattered most in that moment. My faith, my family, my friends, my health. But it's interesting how quickly my brain still wanted to go to guilt. Like it found evidence that I had done something wrong. I objectively did not do anything wrong, just the opposite, in fact. I had my priorities straight the week of Holy Week. And yet I still felt guilty. And that's what we're getting at today. Because for a lot of us, the question isn't actually, did I do something wrong? The question is, why does it feel like I did even when I didn't? And part of what's happening here is just how our brains are wired. As we've talked about before, your brain is wired to avoid discomfort, to seek what's familiar, to respond to danger, and to keep you in patterns it already knows because it's also trying to not use up so much energy, right? Those are the things it's really good at. So when you start doing something different, like setting boundaries or not overfunctioning, or just making decisions based on your values instead of other people's expectations, it can feel uncomfortable. And discomfort often feels like danger to your brain. It feels like this might take a lot of energy to change, and your brain is not interested in that. So, what does it do? It tries to convince you to stop. So it offers you a very convincing explanation. This must be wrong. You must be doing it wrong if you feel this way. And a lot of times that shows up as guilt or shame in our bodies. But here's what we have to understand not all guilt means you've done something wrong. Sometimes guilt is pointing to something real, meaning you have done something wrong. And sometimes it's just noise. It's just our brain doing what it does when we aren't paying attention to it, when we aren't wise to it. And one place this showed up for me for years was in my home. I was a homeschooling mom of three with a husband who traveled, and we had five people in a three-bedroom house. And friends, let me tell you, I was the queen of piles. Piles of books, piles of toys, piles of papers, just piles everywhere. And I carried so much guilt and shame over that. I really believed I wasn't doing it right, that other women could keep a home better than I could, that I should be able to manage this. Why can't I be a quote unquote real adult? But when I look back now, I wasn't failing. I was living a full life in a full house with limited time and limited capacity. Nothing had gone wrong. But I felt guilty all the time. And one of the most freeing things I've learned since then is this there is no moral value attached to whether or not your house is clean or messy. Let me say that again, one more time, so you can let it sink in. There's no moral value attached to whether your house is clean or it's messy. There is, in fact, no verse in the Bible that says cleanliness is next to godliness. That's a lie. A clean house does not make you a better person. And a messy house doesn't make you a worse one. And I know some of you out there need to hear that. Because a lot of us were taught just the opposite. So we feel huge shame and guilt where there actually isn't anything to be guilty for. Side note, if this is you, if you are still spiraling in this guilt and shame over keeping a house clean, I highly recommend the book How to Keep House While Drowning by Casey Davis. Warning, there is some spicy language in it, so just know that going in. But even though some of the language is quote unquote bad, it is such a gentle approach to housekeeping and organizing your home. It is written by an author who went through a period of deep depression. And she talks about how she survived that and kept house during it. I recommend it for anyone who has experienced shame around housekeeping. I wish I had had it years ago when I was spiraling in that. But housekeeping isn't the only area where this guilt and shame show up. They also show up in things like procrastination, which I was talking about earlier. Friends, there is no moral value attached to whether you do something early or at the last minute. It doesn't make you a better person if you're always ahead of schedule. And it doesn't make you a worse person if you're not. It's morally neutral. Now, you might not like how it feels to wait until the last minute. So you might decide you want to change that. But that's a very different conversation than making procrastination mean something about who you are. Because for a lot of us, procrastination isn't about laziness at all. Oftentimes, it's about perfectionism or a fear of getting it wrong. And sometimes it's just that you have a really full life or a full week and can't get to it. And you get to look at your situation honestly and decide: do I like my reasons here for putting something off? That's the question, not what is wrong with me? Why can't I get myself together? Now, I want to slow it down for just a minute because this part really matters, especially if you're a woman of faith like I am. It can get a little confusing sometimes because we think, what if this is actually conviction? What if this guilt is actually from God? And the truth is, sometimes it is. Listen, friends, we are all sinners in need of a savior. So obviously, there are going to be times when we do sin against other people, when we miss the mark, when we act in ways that aren't loving toward God or toward other people. And the Holy Spirit does convict us. But here's what that conviction does: it shows us something specific. It brings something into the light and says, This right here, this isn't in alignment with scripture or your beliefs. And it leads us somewhere. It leads us to repentance, not to shame, not to spiraling, not to questioning everything about ourselves and our worth. It leads us to repentance, which then leads us to forgiveness. So real conviction might sound like this that wasn't loving. You need to go make that right. That's something you need to turn from. It's clear, it's specific, and it points us to scripture and to something that can actually be addressed. And then it doesn't leave you there because God doesn't expose our sin just to make us feel bad. He brings it into the light so it can be forgiven and released. But that's very different from the kind of guilt that most of us are carrying around every day in midlife. What we're carrying is a false guilt. And false guilt isn't specific, it isn't clear, and it doesn't lead to repentance. Or it might lead us to repenting from something we don't need to repent for and doing that over and over again because we can't feel the forgiveness. It might sound like you should have done more. That wasn't enough. You're probably getting this wrong. A better mom would have handled that differently. A better friend would show up better. And notice there's nothing actually there to repent of. So here's the distinction. The Holy Spirit's conviction reveals our sin and leads us to repentance and forgiveness. False guilt that comes from the enemy and it just accuses and keeps you stuck. So why does this matter, especially in midlife? Well, if you can't tell the difference between those two things, you'll either stay stuck in people pleasing or second-guessing every healthy change you try to make, or it'll keep you from actually repenting when you need to, and just assuming an all-encompassing feeling of guilt is what life is like now. Honestly, this feeling of false guilt is one reason why so many women start doing this mindset work and then stop. Because the false guilt convinces them they're doing it wrong. So what do you actually do with this now? Well, here are a couple of simple ways to start thinking about it. Number one, you can ask yourself, is there something specific I need to repent of? If there is, repent, confess it, receive forgiveness, and move forward. I love Martin Luther's opening to the 99 Theses. He says all of the Christian's life is repentance. Friends, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm a Lutheran, but I am very comfortable with the fact that I need to repent daily. Absolutely, so I can receive that forgiveness, which does bring freedom. But not everything we do requires repentance. Sometimes, oftentimes, it's just that false guilt and shame that the enemy uses to accuse us. So if there's nothing to repent of, be free of that feeling. You don't need to keep carrying it. Number two, notice the tone. Is it clear and calm? Or is it anxious and spiraling? Conviction from the Holy Spirit is specific and steady. False guilt is vague and urgent, and it feels like it'll never end. And number three, let the feeling be there without obeying it. You can feel false guilt just like any other feeling that comes up and not act on it. You don't have to fix it, explain it, or reverse your decision just because the feeling showed up. Just notice it. Oh, I see what my brain is doing here. It wants me to feel guilty because it's uncomfortable or because someone else is uncomfortable. Interesting. And then you just sit with it. Friend, you are not doing your life wrong if you start doing this work and all the feelings come up. That's actually what you should expect. You're just learning how to live it differently. And sometimes that's going to feel uncomfortable. But discomfort is not your enemy. It's often just evidence that you're doing something new. And friends, sitting in that discomfort so you can build a life that you really want to live is worth it. I promise. So, what's mid about the midlife this week? Well, those medical sunglasses. That's what. This week I learned why all those septigenarians and octogenarians out there are wearing those giant wraparound shades. It's because your eyes are really sensitive after eye surgery. Turns out those ugly plastic sunglasses are very practical. And listen, I expected to need them right after surgery. I was told I would go home with them. What I did not expect was to need them indoors, like in this church sanctuary on Sunday morning. But yet, here we are. So yes, on Sunday, I was sitting in church wearing my giant medical sunglasses. And Jeff leans over and may or may not have said, You look ridiculous. And listen, our love language is sometimes laughing at and with each other. So he wasn't being mean. I think he was just a tad bit embarrassed about his extra wife. And honestly, he was not wrong. I did look ridiculous. And what made it even better was this. Not only did I need sunglasses, I also needed readers for the bulletin. So there I was, taking one pair off and putting the other pair on. It was crazy. And here's the insulting thing. I've never needed readers before. Now, technically, I had progressive lenses, but let's be honest, those readers never really worked right. I am so nearsighted that I could just take off my glasses, hold something about six inches from my face, and read it perfectly. And yes, that looked ridiculous too, but it worked and I could see. But now that little trick is gone, and I am suddenly living in a world where I am holding everything at arm's length to try to get a look at it. And the font on my phone is now approximately the size of a billboard. My daughter was shocked when she picked up my phone the other day. And when I complained about all this to my husband, he just looked at me, smiled, and said, Welcome to my world. He's been wearing readers steadily for probably five or six years. Thanks, honey. I hate it here. And apparently, part of this new season of life is also having to borrow your husband's readers because you don't have any of your own and pulling them off and on all day long, which honestly feels very midlife to me. And back to the sanctuary on Sunday. At first, I actually felt guilty, like I was doing something wrong, like I was wearing sunglasses for attention, or I was trying to be distracting. We had a guest pastor preaching for goodness sakes. And we are not a megachurch. The pastor can see you from the pulpit. So my first thought was I hope I am not distracting him. But here's the honest truth I was in literal physical pain from the overhead lights. The sunglasses made it bearable for me to sit there. So that was some false guilt coming up for me right there. And when I realized that, I just told myself, I'm taking care of myself and embracing what works, whether I look ridiculous or not. I am healing from eye surgery. And let me just say, embracing what works and feeling a little ridiculous while you do it, well, that feels very midlife to me as well. Well, friend, that's all I have for you this week. If you're feeling false guilt and shame and can't seem to get out of it, that's what coaching is for. I offer free consultation calls to see if coaching is the right fit for you. You can find me on social media at Loribuck Coaching or at my website, Loribuckcoaching.com. That's L-O-R-I B U C K Coaching dot com. I'll see you next week.