How to stop feeling guilty about everything in 3 keys according to this psychologist

• MARA FERNNDEZ OF CORDOVA

Updated 03/03/2023-09:49

like any emotionthe culpa it has a function in our life. He problem is when it becomes your own executioner.

“Guilty”. Sometimes our life can seem like a thriller. there is a little inner voice that, whatever you do, always blamed you. If you do not manage to attend to all your obligations as a professional mother you are guilty”. Yeah you say “no” to someone you are… “guilty”. if something is failing in the relationship with your partner you are guilty”. if you burn the lentils you are guilty”. That little inner voice that judges everything – what you do or stop doing, what you think or stop thinking, what you feel or stop feeling- and that lives in all people is nothing more than a emotion: guilt. And like all human emotions, it has a very important role. It is usually accompanied by an entourage made up of the vergence and discomfort, including sadness and the distress. It can even suffocate you and force you to live in a mental prison. We spoke with psychologist David Lanzas, director of the Lanzas Institute for understand and handle it better.

What is guilt and when is it a problem?

“Guilt is a emotion What happens when there is a inconsistency between our values ​​and our behaviors. Although it is not a pleasant emotion, it has a highly adaptive function on a social level: repair a damage. if we don’t feel culpa we would not know that we have done something harmful to the other and we would not ask sorry. so our emotional bonds with the people we love will weaken a lot”, explains the psychologist David Lanzas. “He problem is when we live from guilt, judging and moralizing everything we do. When this happens, the guilt ceases to be adaptive to become defensive and it arises with the aim of making us feel “perfect” which feeds on fear to what stop (or let’s stop) loving each other“.

How to handle three situations where guilt appears

We propose David Lanzas 3 different situations in which we can feel guilty. From her experience, she proposes 3 ways to deal with it with mental health:

• When I say no, I feel guilty.

“When this happens, we fear lose the affection of others if we are not always complacent. Obviously, this type of situation is important to deal with in therapy because there are always underlying needs not covered in childhood, however, it can be useful as a “fix” connect with what you are saying “yes” to (rest) instead of what “no” to (go out to dinner with your friends)Explain.

• If something goes wrong in my relationship, it’s my fault.

“That fear is not having control about the relationship and that this means the loss of it. It usually occurs in people who have an anxious/worried type of attachment style. It is important to connect with fear of breakup to be able to address it and not get into the obsessive loop of whether or not I was to blame for this situation. This is a smokescreen that hides the fear of feel lonely and sad if the relationship ends tackle this fear and regulating it is essential to build from the freedom instead of out of guilt”, adds David Lanzas.

• The Ultimate Guilt: When I feel guilty, I blame myself for doing it.

“This is very typical and I I see daily in consultation. The idea of ​​what should happen or how I should feel does not match how I feel and so I blocking. It’s okay if you feel guilty about feel guilty. That probably makes a lot of sense in your life experience since you have learned that certain emotions are dangerous. This makes you hypervigilant with what you feel and judge it instantly. Try to validate what you feelask yourself why it really makes sense for you to feel this way and the intensity of emotion Go down as you stop fighting it. Only when the activation decreases is it possible to stop feeling guilty about everything,” the psychologist proposes.