Guilt And Worry, How To Eliminate Them?

Our life is full of moments of guilt and worry, two emotions that most of the time only serve as a distraction from the present moment. We feel guilt for what we did and worry about what we could do, thus forgetting our potential and capacity for growth.

Often, experts in emotional psychology remind us of a simple aspect. 

Behind every disturbing emotion there is therefore a series of disturbing thoughts that we must learn to focus, to correct. They are cognitive distortions that we can all tear down taking into account a number of aspects.

Two wrong zones: guilt and worry

Guilt and worry are part of our wrong zones, and although they are two different emotions, we can actually place them at the ends of the same continuum.

Thus, when we blame ourselves for something we would be wasting the present by being immobilized by what happened in the past, and when we worry, we are immobilized by something that is in the future, and over which we do not usually have control. Therefore, both coincide in immobilizing us in the present.

Regret for something that happened yesterday, and fear of what tomorrow may bring us, is what usually drives us crazy in our day to day life. The world is full of people who are upset about something they shouldn’t have done or scared about things that might happen. And perhaps, we are not the exception either.

On the other hand, studies such as the one carried out by 

However, guilt and worry, if they are constant and intense what they achieve, is to worsen our reality. Furthermore, we lead to great psychological exhaustion.

The guilty process

Society often sends us messages of guilt and concern. This is so because we have been educated in the obligation to conform to more than one ideal. To what they expect from us. To what our environment believes to be expected (find stable work, have children, a home …)

When we don’t conform to those molds, frustration sets in. Later guilt and worry. Thus we become machines or boxes of guilt.

Guilt can become one of the most useless emotions, let’s think about it. We spend much of our energy feeling guilty about something we have not accomplished. For what happened in the past, for what could not be. We are immobilized by something that has already happened. And with that, we cannot change anything that happened.

Learn lessons from the past

We have to know how to differentiate between guilt and learning from the past. Guilt, as we said before, is the immobilization of the present, which can range from a small discomfort to the most severe depression. It prevents us from acting now because we previously behaved in a certain way.

In this state, we waste our energy for something that has already happened, being useless and harmful to ourselves.

Now, learning from the past, unlike the feeling of guilt, implies avoiding the repetition of some behavior, with the intention of learning from our mistakes without immobilizing ourselves. To learn from our mistakes is something healthy and necessary for our growth and personal development. It allows us to move forward.

Some strategies to eliminate guilt

As we have seen, guilt is a useless emotion that only serves to immobilize us and lose our present, so trying to look at the past as something unchangeable can be of great help.

Whatever guilt we choose will not help solve the problem, because we cannot change the past. Record this message in your consciousness, add it to your usual repertoire of thoughts.

• Ask yourself what you avoid in the present because of the past. Thus, little by little you will eliminate the need for guilt.
• Start accepting things about yourself that you have chosen, but that may upset people. It is necessary that you approve yourself, because this will disappear the guilt that you may feel for not obtaining the approval of others.
• Begin to make a guilt journal, in which you will write down all those situations in which you feel guilty, indicating that you waste time in the present because you worry about the past. This will allow you to delve into your guilt.

Try to teach the people with whom you relate, and who try to manipulate you through guilt, that you are capable of dealing with the disappointments that your behavior causes them. The result will take time to appear but will change when they see that they cannot force you to feel guilty.

Mind is Wonderful

We all have the right to fall, but is it mandatory to get up? We must let go of the useless suffering that sometimes accompanies us …