The Third of 3 Challenges in Overcoming Guilt
March 15th, 2010 | 
Author: 03/15/10
Post by Kim Gibbs
I’ve already discussed the first 2 challenges we face in getting rid of guilt – not knowing we’re supposed to get rid of it, and not knowing how to get rid of it. In this blog I’ll discuss the third challenge we face: feeling guilty when we haven’t done anything wrong.
It’s amazing how often we feel guilty when we shouldn’t. These are times when we haven’t broken a commandment or hurt anybody’s feelings or violated our personal code of ethics, yet for some reason, we still feel bad.
Something inside of us says that we shouldn’t have done what we just did even though there’s no evidence of wrong-doing. Maybe we were late getting dinner ready or got a flat tire on the way home from work. There’s nothing wrong with either of these things happening, but they make us feel guilty just the same.
This is called false guilt. This type of guilt is something we impose on ourselves. It’s self-inflicted, unhealthy and totally undeserved. It’s also rampant among women. The good news about false guilt is that if we examine it logically, we should be able to reason it away. ”Dinner was late because I got stuck in traffic.” ”I never even saw the nail I ran over.”
With false guilt, it’s not unusual for us to exaggerate what we think we did wrong and make it much worse than it actually was. “If I was more organized, I would have made it home in time to start dinner.” “If I was a better driver, I would never have run over that nail.” These are the kinds of useless, negative thoughts that make us feel even worse.
So if we pause and peel back these layers of exaggeration and take a realistic look at what we did, we’ll see that we didn’t cross any line after all and can release the guilt.
The first question we need to ask ourselves when we feel guilty about something is, “Is this true guilt or false guilt?” Then try to find any evidence of actual wrong doing. If there isn’t any, then use reasoning to let the feelings of guilt go.
This is such a huge problem among women that I’ll be spending some time in future blogs giving you examples of false guilt and the reasoning you can use to let it go.
Posted in Challenges to Overcoming Guilt | 
Tags: false guilt, feel guilty, feeling guilty, get rid of guilt, guilt
So basically, when I start saying “If I had…If I were…” that’s how I know it’s false guilt instead of true guilt? It’s the ‘If’ that makes the difference?
Not really. To figure out if you’re feeling true guilt, look for evidence of wrong-doing – did I hurt someone else or myself, did I break a law or commandment, did I take something that wasn’t mine? If you have, then you’re feeling guilty for a legitimate reason and that’s true guilt. But if you can’t find any sign of hurt or wrong-doing, or any valid reason to feel bad, then you’re feeling false guilt.