Driven by guilt.

Can we be honest about guilt for a moment? Guilt is a strategy used when someone is coercing a certain behavior/choice from someone else. Guilt is manipulation. Are you familiar with being guilted? How do you respond when guilt comes alive inside of you? Does guilt drive your decision making? A common way guilt can drive our decisions is by doing things for others out of a sense of responsibility or duty. Another is, thinking to yourself, “Just do it, so you don’t have to deal with their reaction”. The sneakiest guilt message sounds like, “It’s the right thing to do”. It’s time to ask yourself, are your decisions driven by guilt?  

If you are driven by guilt, you can give a lot of yourself to others. You are reliable and dependable and everyone counts on you.You do what you “should” do. But...how did you learn this is what you “should” do? How did you learn doing for others is what “should” be done, rather than doing for yourself? 

Reflect. 

Take a moment to connect with your younger self. When did you first experience guilt? The moment you did something you didn’t want to do...because it was what someone else wanted from you. Once you did that, were you praised? Were you told you were a “good boy/girl/kid”? Did this practice of you doing for others get encouraged and reinforced? Did this give you the unsaid message it was your job to please others? Make them happy? Soothe them? If doing for others was preached and applauded, it makes sense you would continue to do it. But, what about you? What happened to your needs? Now bring yourself to the present. Reflect on what the cost is each time you meet someone else’s needs and dismiss your own. What is getting ignored? What is not getting restored within you? What’s the impact of ignoring you? 

Connect. 

Slowly allow your disowned needs to come forward. Allow yourself to learn and feel what those needs are in order for you to remain grounded, content and whole. Allow yourself to reconnect with the needs guilt tries to disguise and push away for the sake of others. Instead, push away the guilt and make space for your needs in your life. Connect with them and explore how they can get met. Challenge yourself to remain connected to these needs even when someone else presents with a need of their own. Challenge yourself to say “no”, even when the guilt arises. Challenge yourself to say “I would, but I can’t”. Challenge yourself to put your needs first.