Don’t Play The Blame Game

Unshackling yourself of guilt may not be easy, but it is one of the most liberating things you can do – we show you how…

If you’re a woman, there’s probably something you feel guilty about. Perhaps it’s a mistake you made ten years ago, maybe you think your personality isn’t up to scratch, or perhaps you deem yourself lazy. It could be anything, because studies show that guilt has a wide range of triggers in women.

Guilt is rarely spoken about as a mental health issue, but research has revealed that it is linked to depression, and therefore ought to be taken seriously. Suffering from guilt can be corrosive, leading to feelings of low confidence or shame.

Often guilt relates to something we did in the past. “As fallible human beings we are all likely to act in ways, if given a chance again, we would have preferred not to have done,” says Professor Stephen Palmer, a Chartered Psychologist and the Director of the Centre for Stress Management. “The problem with on-going guilt is that people can start to beat themselves up about something they have done. If this carries on for too long, then they can start to feel depressed. I often discuss with clients the idea of time-limited guilt. Limit how long you feel guilty then just move on.”

Forgiving yourself for an old mistake can be liberating, unbinding you from psychological shackles that have weighed you down for a long time.

However, sometimes guilt relates to who we are. Guilt can be hardwired from childhood – the sense that our very being is lacking in some way. In which case, it can help to re-establish a new positive sense of self (either alone or with the help of a therapist) to correctly identify yourself as the lovable person that you are.