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Just letting go of guilt can activate our threat systems and make us feel like we are "selfish."

Feelings of guilt and responsibility can stem from childhood relational wounds.

Addressing your guilt feelings can be difficult and needs small steps and professional help.

It’s something I come across in the consulting room all the time. A client has come to therapy to stop doing something she knows is not serving her. “I need to stop taking her calls”; “I need to stop always picking up after him”; “I need to stop neglecting myself.” So what gets in the way? This is a question I ask a lot. And more often than not, the answer is guilt: “I just feel too guilty when I don’t do it.” And after some probing, the story often goes something like this: If I don’t do what my guilt tells me to do, I’m a bad person, a bad mum, a bad friend, a bad daughter. I’m not who I want to be. If I got rid of my guilt, I wouldn’t know who I am anymore. I’m always the one who takes care of others and fixes things. What if I let go of my guilt and I become lazy and selfish?

I’ve changed my approach to guilt in therapy, and it’s still evolving, but It’s at this point that I used to fall back onto my trusted therapy tools. If this is a belief that is not serving my client, the next logical step is to find a way to challenge it. The problem is that most of my clients know that logically, rationally, they need to stop taking care of everyone else. They know that they need to set boundaries. They even know that they are not, in fact, selfish or lazy because they have mountains of evidence to the contrary.

You can't just get rid of a feeling

So why can you not just stop feeling guilty? The question is, in many ways, as nonsensical as asking why we cannot stop........

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