Who hasn’t felt guilty at some point in their relationship?

When ‘Alison’ called me today, she said she was simply fed up of feeling guilty all the time. And last week, ‘Mike’ called me and said the very same thing. Guilt is an insidious emotion that can eat you up and leave you feeling torn apart as you move back and forth in turmoil.

Typically, men and women have different ways of playing out guilt.

Men do guilt like this: She says ‘you don’t love me like you used to’ and he feels guilty because, honestly? He really doesn’t and there is nothing he can do in that moment to make her feel better. He says ‘no’ to something she wants or asks for and then she gives him ‘that look’ and he feels guilty even if he really had to say no for a specific reason.

Women do guilt like this: He says ‘do you have to go out again’ and she stays in because she knows that if she did go out now, she would feel guilty all evening that he was on his own. He says ‘you never want sex anymore’ and she decides to have ‘lay back and think of England’ sex with him because she feels guilty that she is not being a good enough partner and he might leave her.

The difference between men and women experiencing guilt is that men ‘feel’ guilty and mostly don’t know what to do to about it. This is because they don’t want to be dishonest and know that whatever they say or do will only dig them into a deeper hole. When women experience guilt, they ‘do’ something, which usually compromises what they really want. Women will often be dishonest (as much to themselves as the other person) to avoid conflict and men generally will not. Two quite different approaches to the same emotion.

Guilt is one of those emotions that doesn’t go away very easily but the truth is that if you compromise yourself often enough to assuage your guilt, you will begin to feel resentment and upset and conflict will eventually follow.

Most of the time we are trying to move away from feeling unhappy to feeling happy. But in some cases, where we believe that something happened because we were not responsible enough – like someone got hurt or hurt themselves as a result of our perceived behaviour or neglect, its almost comforting to hold on to the guilt and make ourselves wrong – because if we were to believe the other person held a part responsibility, we’d have to move on with our lives and if someone else is perhaps still suffering, we cannot give ourselves the permission to do so. We don’t feel we deserve to be able to move on when someone else is struggling and we were part of causing that struggle.

This is another reason why its so hard to leave a relationship if you believe the other person will not be able to manage for whatever reason without you.

My belief is that Guilt is a wasted emotion. It gets you nowhere. So what can you do with your guilt? Well it really helps if you can take a step back, and become the ‘observer’ of your thoughts. Ask yourself, ‘what am I thinking right now? Am I thinking about what I do want or what I don’t want’?

Once you have your answer you must start creating some real time solutions in your mind. As your mind starts to move in a forward’s motion, the feeling of guilt will go away. The reason for this is that it’s impossible to hold a creative thought at the same time as a guilty thought because creativity is positive and guilt is a negative emotion. Positive wins every time.

Instead of reacting to a person or situation, you need to be able to choose your response. When you take time to think about how you want to respond to the situation or circumstance, you can make a decision about what you really want and that will make you aware of what you value and where you can or simply cannot compromise. Learning how to deal with your guilt is about understanding the beliefs you hold about yourself underneath the guilt. When I work with you and I uncover the beliefs you hold about yourself and your relationships, it’s easy for me reflect those beliefs back to you, so you understand what keeps you in guilt. Once you understand this, then you can take control of your emotions and you can choose how you want to respond, rather than be unconsciously reactive. You stop reacting blindly. Don’t let your fears rule your life.

Your emotions are so valuable and if you take the time to listen to them and understand them, where they come from and what they are trying to tell you, you will be able to use them to your advantage, let go of guilt and move towards solutions that are useful to you and your partner.

Don’t suffer with guilt, call me and we’ll talk about how you too can get rid of guilt get back into your own driving seat and make the best decision for you and for those you are interacting with.

Till Tomorrow,

Love Francine

PS: Don’t forget to listen to me live on Tuesday 14th September on Glastonbury Radio between 12pm and 1pm
http://glastonburyradio.com/listen_and_browse/
This week I will be live in the studio in Glastonbury, pressing all the buttons (not sure it’s a great idea but the producer seems to think it is!) and speaking to you about all things ‘Relationship’. My guest will be The Barefoot Doctor, Stephen Russell speaking live from Ibiza about the principles of power in relationships. Check out his website – he is one interesting man! We’d both love to hear from you with any questions you may have, so please do text, Skype or email to:
studio2@glastonburyradio.com