We all carry a mixed bag of emotions at any given moment in time. The emotion that we will take a deeper dive into is that of guilt. Feeling guilty does not normally serve us well in life. Guilt is defined online as having committed a specified or implied offense or crime. Guilt can also be an action, such as making someone feel guilty as a means to induce them to do something that we want them to do. When we dive into the true definition of the word guilt, we can see that neither form serves us in a positive way. We definitely shouldn’t carry the weight of having done something wrong with us, and we also shouldn’t want to manipulate others to feel a sense of guilt just to have them follow through with our own agenda.
Being a working mother, I can honestly say that there are many days where I drop my son off at daycare and walk away with an incredible sense of guilt. He is usually crying and clinging on to me as I’m trying to leave the daycare to make my way into work. Seeing and hearing him in that state totally tears at my heart. On the one hand, I remind myself, I work to provide for my children. I strive to earn a living to be able to give them a good safe home to live in, a solid school to attend, healthy food to nourish them, as well as clothes and shoes to wear. Working offers me the means to earn money to be able to provide all of the basic essentials for myself and my boys. Guilt sets in when I think about all of the time that I spend at work instead of with my kids. There is a significant trade-off to being a professional mother.
There was a time when I was not working, and I was able to join the ligeance of stay-at-home mothers. During this period of my life, I also felt guilt because I was not advancing my skills, dreams, goals, and career as I would have been had I been working. Being a stay-at-home mom was a job all in itself. I had laundry, cooking, cleaning, chores, errands, and a slew of other things to achieve on my daily to-do list. I was busy. Equally as busy as I was when I was working at my workplace. Many stay-at-home moms find it challenging to get back into the workforce after spending years at home with their kids. Employers look at our most recent work experience and our educational backgrounds. When they see a large gap between our work experience, it is almost as if the unspoken assumption is made that we’ve forgotten all of our prior skills and training. A stay-at-home mom attempting to get back into the work world may be passed up for another candidate whose work experience does not have any significant gaps. This can cause a whole new level of guilt and worry, in which the mom feels she is unable to get her career back on track to help contribute to her household and children’s future. As they say, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.
The point here is that guilt can seep into us no matter which path we take at a crossroad. Take path A and feel guilt in a variety of ways. Take path B and feel guilt in a whole different variety of ways. When we look back at the definition of guilt, did the working mom or the stay-at-home mom commit a specified or implied offense or crime? NO! Thus, guilt may not be the proper emotion to assign to ourselves. Again, guilt does not serve us in a positive way. Perhaps the working mom can turn the guilt of leaving her child at daycare and not using her work hours to spend with that child into an emotion that would serve her much better. She can use this situation as fuel, to earn a higher income to provide even greater things for her children that will benefit them in the long-term. All it takes is for us to assign a different emotion to our situation, switching guilt to motivation. The stay-at-home mother can also turn her feeling of guilt into something more useful. She can consider the time that she spends at home and out of the workforce as a temporary break that she needs in order to rebalance herself. She can focus on all of the things that she does for her kids as progress as well. She is progressing in her bond and attention with her children. There is always a give and take. The working mom is trading time spent with her children for a career, and the stay-at-home mom is trading her career for time spent with her children.
There are many other situations that cause us to feel guilt. The point to remember is that unless we have truly committed a specified or implied offense/crime or manipulated someone else to feel guilty in order to have our way, then we should not necessarily take on the low vibrational emotion of guilt. If someone else has committed the crime of causing us to feel a sense of guilt in order for them to get their way in a situation, then we need to realize this fact and process the sense of guilt within us appropriately. This emotion is life energy zapping. When we replay scenarios that cause us to feel guilty, we deplete our own life energy. Once our life energy is depleted to a low threshold, we run the risk of getting sick. This is because our immune system requires a healthy adequate level of life energy in order to “run” efficiently and effectively. Since guilt is an emotion that lowers our living energy, it is best to do away with that emotional anchor. Re-evaluate your guilt, process it, and then release it. Truly process that emotion so that you can put a type of closure to it and get beyond it. Perhaps forgiveness is required in order to move beyond it. Forgive others. Forgive yourself. Feel the sensation of guilt within you, and then casually purge it from yourself. Maybe crying and tears will be required. Perhaps a solid discussion or conversation needs to be had in order to be able to move forward from the guilt. Apologize if you actually committed the wrongdoing. Accept an apology from someone else who may have done you wrong. Whatever needs to occur, make it happen, so that you can protect yourself from allowing the energy lowering emotion of guilt to continue to fester within you. The goal is to love yourself enough to release all of the negative emotions that zap your overall life energy.
The imagery that may help to explain the energetic dynamic of guilt within the body is that of a cellphone. When the cellphone is fully charged it has a life energy of 100%. As we run an app (or multiple apps) on our phone, the energy power lessens to a lower percentage. Some apps require more energy to run than others. If we keep the apps running that deplete the battery power on our phone quickly, then eventually we will discover that it takes longer to download new apps or worse yet, we won’t be able to download any new apps. Certain functions that we attempt to do on our phone won’t work because we don’t have enough power to perform them. Guilt is one of the “apps” that drains our battery power (life energy) from our body quickly, and if we don’t close this app or uninstall it from our device (our body) then we run the risk of not being able to launch other apps/functions (like our immune system) when we need to. Be sure to do what you need to do with the guilt that you feel, but then shut it off or better yet, remove it entirely from within you so that you can continue to keep your living energy at a high level to function successfully. Again, guilt is an emotion that does not serve you well in any way. Make it a priority to uninstall and release guilt from within you. That sort of self-love and protection is important.