Guilt: The Healthy, The Unhealthy, and What to Do About It

In this Sunday Session, we had a rich conversation about feelings of guilt, and how to work with them.

We talked about the guilty feelings based in “shoulds” and harmful cultural messages that so many women and girls carry:

“I feel guilty for not making everyone happy.”
“I feel guilty for taking up too much air time when I talk.”
“I feel guilty taking time away from my family to do the things I love.”

We explored how to examine these kinds of thoughts, and shift into new ideas that support us better.

Sometimes, though, our guilt isn’t based in untrue “shoulds.” Sometimes we feel guilty about ways we have indeed hurt others, ways we missed the mark, real harm we’ve done. We talked about how to move from what often becomes the paralysis of guilt, into action & living amends.

Our conversation also explored the work of apologizing well, and setting boundaries (and sometimes doing both at the same time).

Whether you want to sit down with a journal and give this one your full attention, or simply let it play in the background while you chop those veggies, I invite you to check out the recording.

You can download an audio version of this session here.