Guilt, blame & feeling guilty

If you feel guilty often & strongly it can be because of two things. The first cause of guilt is that you did something that you think you shouldn't have done or that you didn't do something that you think you should have done. You went against your own conscience, against your sense of what is morally good or right, just, honest, upright or humane. And your guilt makes that clear by blaming & condemning yourself for it & making you feel (very) bad about yourself.

If you lie, steal or cheat, your guilt (hopefully) tells you that this isn't right. If you are mean, harm or hurt someone, your guilt warns you (hopefully) that you are doing something wrong. If you are very selfish, lax, blunt or callous, your guilt (hopefully) makes it clear that this is not okay. So maybe you're feeling legitimately guilty about something you did or didn't do and your right to blame yourself for it. Guilt and blame are trying to get you to improve your life & change your behavior.

Imposed & instilled guilt

The second cause of feelings of guilt is that you blame yourself a lot & often because of the (dogmatic) ideas that have been imposed on you by someone and that you (unconsciously) have come to believe to be true. For example, if you were raised with strict (religious) beliefs about good & bad, those ideas get instilled and can make you feel guilty about a lot of things or you can even come to believe that you are a bad person. Or if you have been given a great sense of responsibility, that can cause a lot of feelings of guilt because you feel responsible for a lot & are afraid of being selfish.

It can be very difficult to gain clarity in this web of ideas, sincere feelings, beliefs, feelings of guilt, accusations & (self)reproaches and to know what is true & what is imposed on you by other people. Especially when you get blamed a lot, gult can become deeply instilled in you. This can cause you to get stuck in a kind of straitjacket of commandments & prohibitions and become entangled in a web of resistance & denial or guilt & penance, from which you cannot or cannot properly escape without help. And then you better make an appointment, so that your insight increases and feelings of guilt are put in the right place.

A guilty conscience

If you struggle with your feelings of guilt, you better do something about it, because otherwise you can, like many people, continue to be burdened by your feelings of guilt your entire life and (unconsciously) let yourself be determined by a very strong sense of responsibility and/or very restrictive commandments & prohibitions - and that is really no fun. It makes you quickly & often have a guilty conscience and that you start punishing yourself & endlessly doing penance or constantly having to show off - and that you don't really dare to have a life of your own.

You can then become very hard on yourself and try to force yourself into line your entire life & start trying to live like a saint so as not to feel guilty. Or you can continue to feel your entire life that you are actually going against your conscience & are selfish, sinful or even bad and carry a heavy burden of guilt with you. In both cases there is a lack of real insight & a little bit of real wisdom and it is important that you develop that, so that you can start to determine - and guard - your own integrity.

Taking responsibility

The Centrumpraktijk helps you to gain insight into your feelings of guilt, so that you can determine for yourself what a good and honest way of living is & your feelings of guilt are attuned to it. You are helped to sort out the web of doubts, ideas, feelings, beliefs, accusations & (self)reproaches and to keep the good, so that you do not go against yourself & squander your integrity - and you can (continue to) look yourself straight in the mirror.

You will receive practical tools to examine your feelings of guilt & effective tools to deal with them in a good way. This means that you learn to take responsibility for your actions & omissions and to what extent you lie, steal, cheat, are mean, selfish, lax or callous, hurt or damage someone - and/or hurt or damage yourself. You will investigate whether & where your integrity has been compromised.

Restoring integrity

Maybe you feel guilty and rightly so & instead of denying this & persisting in your behavior or punishing yourself & thereby only creating more pain & negativity, we will then look together for constructive ways to come to terms with the other(s) & yourself and what it takes to be forgiven - and how you can start to forgive yourself. Because restoring & maintaining your integrity is really very important to be able to feel good about yourself & to be able to live a little well - with yourself & with others.

And maybe we will discover that your feelings of guilt mainly stem from old outdated (unconscious) beliefs that make you doubt yourself & your integrity unnecessarily and unnecessarily torture, punish, accuse & reproach yourself. You will then be helped to unmask and tackle these patterns, so that you do not remain stuck in a straitjacket of commandments, prohibitions, responsibility and feelings of guilt - and you can free yourself from imposed, instilled and learned feelings of guilt.

Centrumpraktijk Haarlem
Email: info@centrumpraktijk.nl
Phone: +31 616 44 43 44

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