HEAL GUILT IN 10 MINUTES
Learn how to transcend self-blame in one fast, yet profound, exercise
Do you ever get caught in regret and guilt? Do you sometimes beat yourself up with self-blame and that excruciating “if only” that keeps replaying in your mind (even though you never consciously clicked 'replay')? This post provides a simple technique for transcending self-blame and guilt. You can do this in ten minutes. Ten minutes — seriously? Yup. And it works.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GUILT AND REGRET?
Most of us have regrets about certain actions we took in the past that caused us or others pain. Regrets, in themselves, may be very helpful. After all, we learn from our mistakes and regret for a mistake can make for better decisions in the future. Regret becomes counterproductive when it is accompanied by self-denigration — otherwise known as guilt.
GUILT = REGRET + EMOTIVE JUDGEMENT AGAINST ONESELF
There is a difference between judgment, in the sense of accurate discernment, and judgment against oneself or others. You may, for example, make the accurate judgment that an action you carried out turned out to have harmful consequences, which you regret. But when judgment is fired by the fuel of aversive emotion — as in I’m an idiot, I’m not a good person, and what the hell was I thinking, anyway? — we act against ourselves, pointing fingers at our eyes, and there is no peace, no benefit, no winner.
EXAMPLES OF GUILT THAT CAN BE HEALED BY THIS EXERCISE:
You feel bad or guilty about something you did or didn't do in the past. When something reminds you of this incident, the bad feeling or the guilt often surfaces.
You ask yourself: “Why did I do it?” This is not really a question, it’s an accusation.
Or you remonstrate with yourself: “How could I be so stupid?” This is not a question either, it’s an indictment.
You feel contracted, tense or depressed when the regretted act comes into consciousness.
You replay a regretted act in your mind over and over again.
You wake up in the middle of night and cannot sleep because you cannot stop thinking about the incident you feel bad about.
I do not recommend the exercise for guilt about someone’s death. The reason for this is that it is common for us to feel guilty about what we might have done to save someone we love from dying (e.g. maybe we could have gotten them to the hospital a little earlier, even though, perhaps, medically speaking, this would have made no difference). This kind of unreasonable regret with associated guilt is quite a common part of the grieving process, which I will come to in a separate post.
How to Heal Guilt: The Exercise
First, set yourself up:
Choose the situation you wish to work on.
Make sure you have alone time in a space you feel comfortable in.
If possible, turn off all phones and other possible sources of interruption.
Sit in a comfortable chair.
Have a pen and journal, notebook, or paper to write on.
If you are using the audio recording below (recommended), set it up in advance and be clear how to pause the recording to give yourself the time you need. If you do not use the recording, you will need to remember steps 1,3 and 4 of the exercise, since your eyes will be closed and it will be difficult to read.
if you do not use the audio, follow these 5 simple steps:
1. Review your past experience in the following way: close your eyes and imagine you are sitting in a movie theater and watch the incident played on black and white film. You are watching yourself — from a distance — interact with other actors in this drama. After you have finished playing the movie clip, open your eyes.
2. The second step is a mental exercise: think of an internal resource or asset that you did not possess at the time, but which would have changed the situation wonderfully and positively if you had possessed it. Examples of internal resources might be:
Acceptance
Assertiveness
Carefulness
Compassion
Confidence
Consideration
Detachment
Enthusiasm
Flexibility
Forgiveness
Generosity
Humility
Imagination
Joyfulness
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Optimism
Patience
Perseverance
Preparedness
Respect
Responsibility
Self-discipline
Sincerity
Tact
Tolerance
Trust
Understanding
Wonder
You can choose one of these, if any fit, or choose another resource that fits better for you. Take a moment and find the internal resource what would have changed that situation for the better if you had had it at the time. You may have several, but just choose one, or at the most two, for now.
3. All these resources or qualities are available to everyone, only we forget we have them or forget to use them or, perhaps, lose belief that they are possible for us. Whatever resource you choose, it is quite likely that there has been at least one time in your life when you have used this resource effectively and to your satisfaction. Think back on the time when you used this resource and remember it. Give some credit to yourself for using it. If you cannot remember using the resource you have chosen, that’s fine. It may be an internal resource that you’ve seen in someone else, or read about, or seen at the movies.
4. After you have decided on your resource, and you have remembered it either in yourself or someone else, you will be going back into the past experience taking your new resource with you. Only this time, rather than seeing what happens on black and white film, you will be jumping into the scene, so to speak, in full color — and this time, you will have your resource with you. Okay, close your eyes. Now, taking your resource with you, imagine yourself at the beginning of the movie. You are no longer watching this movie, you are in it! You are right there in that situation, noticing everything in as much sensual detail as possible. This time, things are going to be different because there is a crucial change in you: you have your new resource. Imagine yourself using this resource and see the different scenario that unfolds. Feel what it is like. How does it feel? See the response in the other people involved and notice the effect this has on you…. When you are ready, open your eyes.
5. Write down what happened for you. How did it feel for you? Write in a journal or a document. Whether your document is hard or soft copy, make sure you file it in an accessible location.
FURTHER ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE, USING YOUR new VALUABLE RESOURCE:
Share what happened in the past with someone you trust, including, if you wish, sharing the results of this exercise.
Make amends. If you made a mistake, and a person who suffered from your mistake is still alive, you have the option of apologizing. Even thirty years later, and I speak from experience, an apology can be profoundly healing and connecting.
Whatever resource or quality you chose, you can take steps to practice it. You can apply it to similar situations to the one you worked on, or you can apply that same quality to other, quite different situations. Practicing these qualities makes us realize that we do indeed possess them, and is the best possible way to hone them and make them more effective.
Interesting Facts about the Healing Guilt Exercise
WHY IT WORKS:
By imagining the guilt-ridden incident as if you are seeing it on black and white film, you are deliberately dissociating yourself from any self-punishing emotive involvement with the incident.
Thinking of an internal resource or personal asset that you did not possess at the time, but which would have changed the situation if you had possessed it, is a technique of self-forgiveness. When you tell yourself words to the effect of “I was stupid,” you are forever caught in the emotional reverberation of self-accusation, which is unpleasant to say the least. When you choose a resource or asset you previously lacked, you are practicing compassion for yourself. There is nothing wrong with you, you simply lacked a particular asset that you now have or that you now know about. You are not a “bad person,” you are a good person who lacked a certain piece of knowledge or know-how at the time.
You will probably have noticed that the list of resources is basically a list of qualities, and some of these are sometimes called virtues. If, for you, the word “virtue” brings up a picture of boring, unhappy, chastity-belted, misery-inducing, self-righteous, preachy people, you can substitute the word “quality.” The important thing about these qualities is that they are intrinsic to us as human beings. We all have access to them. This is both an optimistic and true statement. What varies is how much we practice these qualities.
By jumping into the scene with your previously missing resource, you are practicing how to attach yourself emotionally to positive inputs. The more you know how to attach and detach yourself from different situations, the more self-mastery you achieve. You are also changing your history. Our history is “remembered” through a screen of beliefs and judgments. Changing an emotive judgment on our history, changes our concept of our history and this changes how we feel in the present.
The reason for writing down what happened for you, is that it helps ingrain the new understanding. This is your written reminder that there is another way of seeing the past that is warm with understanding and kindness.
WHERE THIS TECHNIQUE COMES FROM
This particular exercise, with some small adaptations, comes from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a therapeutic methodology originally developed by Bandler and Grinder in the 1970s. Bandler and Grinder’s methods were, in turn, derived from their careful study of three exceptional therapists: Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and Fritz Perls.
The technique also has deeper roots in the past. No therapist is an island; we are all influenced by cultural concepts from history and philosophy. Here are some of them that relate to this exercise:
The NLP techniques of disassociation (of which the first part of this exercise is one example) are simple steps toward the quality of detachment which has roots in both western and eastern spiritual teaching. Detachment does not mean being distant in the form of coldness; it does not involve being cut-off or lacking in empathy. On the contrary, it fosters care and compassion.
A visual analogy is to imagine yourself embroiled in an inter-group argument in a field of multiple fences. In this situation, on the ground so to speak, you cannot see over the partitioning fences erected by opposing factions. You can only see your side of the situation, and therefore your point of view is limited and partisan. But if you could rise up, say in the basket of a hot-air balloon, and see the scene from above, you would then envision a wider picture encompassing many different points of view. The fences would still be visible of course, but they would no longer obstruct your view of the whole scene. With this more detached view, you have a greater chance of being fair and compassionate to both yourself and others.
All religions, and humanism too, teach (and practice with varying degrees of success) the value of compassion. This exercise provides a simple shift of focus from judgmentalism (I made a mistake because I am bad/stupid/wrong) to a compassionate recognition (I made a mistake because I lacked knowledge/inner resources at that time).
The great philosopher Socrates, born around 470 BCE, taught that no person is knowingly bad, that people err or commit anti-social acts not because they are in essence bad, but because they lack knowledge. “No one desires evil,” Socrates said, "“no one errs or does wrong willingly or knowingly.” Socrates was not condoning anti-social actions; he was choosing to avoid the divisive act of name-calling (such as “evil”, “bad”) and, instead, look for the erroneous or limited beliefs that always fuel anti-social action. This is a kinder and more effective approach. We can do the same with ourselves. Rather than castigate ourselves for our mistakes, we can look for the lack of knowledge (or asset or resource) that we lacked. This is an exercise in practical Socrates.
Going back into the past — or our version of the past — and changing it has a long history in psychotherapy. In the early 1970s, Dr.Vladimir Raikov carried out some interesting research on “artificial reincarnation.” Subjects under hypnosis were "given" past lives in which they were told they had exceptional talents in certain areas. On testing these subjects in these same areas, after their artificial past life experiences, they were found to score much higher than before hypnosis even if they had no belief whatsoever in their “past-life” experience. For example, if you believe you're no good at music, and a hypnotist tells you that you were Bach in a previous incarnation, your musical ability will probably improve (even if you never were Bach). This effect, known as the Raikov effect, shows that by taking an imagined resource and applying it to whatever version of the past we entertain, we can actually affect our present capacity.