A Spell for Releasing Excessive Guilt

Real talk: guilt isn’t always bad. When it’s reminding us to

treat people better than we have in the past, guilt can be a helpful guide.

But the dominant culture knows we want to be better, and encourages us to

overextend ourselves by taking too much responsibility for other people’s feelings.

This spell will help you start to let go of the impulse

to feel guilt when you make decisions that honor your values.

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Make Magic:

When we think about the example we're setting,

it's easier to align with our values.

It's easier to think about who we want to be in the world,

rather than who we've been conditioned to be in the world,

and to stop feeling bad about making self-honoring choices.

Transcript: A Spell for Releasing Excessive Guilt

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Hello there, my friend. So today's episode is long-requested. I have received several messages from people saying, "Could you please talk about guilt?" And to be transparent, I really had to think about it quite a bit because guilt is complex and is actually not always a bad thing.

So in today's spell, a spell for releasing excessive guilt, I am sort of just kind of beginning [laugh] to talk about this particular emotion, and I imagine this is probably the first of episodes oriented toward guilt. OK. So let me talk first about what I mean by excessive guilt, because when we think about guilt itself, what is guilt about?

Guilt is a negative emotion. Guilt is the sense that we've done something wrong or that we've harmed someone. And as humans here on planet Earth, we do do things wrong and we do harm other people. And therefore, I agree with so many experts that guilt is not at all necessarily a bad thing.

In fact, like me, maybe you have encountered a person that doesn't seem to feel guilt, and the absence of any guilty feelings at all often indicates that a person is insensitive to or unconscious of their effects on other people, and that is most def a problem. However, I've definitely seen for myself and for my clients and just for my friends that there are many people who are hypersensitive to other people's feelings and who tend to be over-responsible for people's feelings.

And this is for a variety of reasons. I think primary among them is conditioning. Those of us who have fewer privileges conferred upon us by the dominant culture are conditioned to be much more sensitive to our effects on other people, yeah? Of course, there are also family dynamics at play as well. When we grow up in volatile households or if we grow up with emotionally immature caregivers, we are much more sensitive to how our actions and words affect the people around us, right?

And in both of those cases, this is a matter of safety, yeah? We stay in our lane. We stay in our place. We take care to push down our own self-expression or to defer our own self-care in favor of caring for others, being responsible for others, remaining sensitive to others.

And if you're listening to this podcast, I imagine that you, like me, are like, well, fuck that. [laugh] Like, that in many ways doesn't actually work for us. That results in people-pleasing. That results in self-censoring, and emotional over-responsibility is exhausting, yeah? We want better than that for ourselves, and for the world that we are co-creating.

So excessive guilt happens when we are feeling bad about something that (a) isn't actually wrongdoing. And I'm going to give you some examples of that in a moment. And excessive guilt happens when we are being over-responsible for the effects of our decisions, yeah?

OK. So here's an example that comes up a lot with my clients who are parents. So very often, the parents with whom I work are pretty desperate for self-replenishment. [laugh] Like, maybe they are desiring breaks in the everyday. Like, they just—they really want help time off from caring for their kids. Maybe they are wanting to pursue some kind of self-development. They want to take a class or they want to go on a retreat or even just take a weekend to themselves, yeah?

And very often, when they do make plans to do this self-replenishment, excessive guilt is a feeling that arises. They feel bad for taking time away from their families. They feel bad for putting the onus of childcare on someone else for—even if it's just an afternoon, yeah?

They feel—and I should be really clear that maybe 12, 13 years ago, this was me too when I had little kids, and I was so desperate for a day to myself or a weekend away, I would be consumed with this excessive guilt, right? Now, notice what I'm feeling bad about isn't actually wrongdoing. Like, I have good and values-aligned reasons for wanting to take a break, yeah?

So my feelings of guilt aren't coming from a sense that I've betrayed my own values, or I have done something wrong and malicious. My feelings of guilt are excessive because I'm just knowing that my kids will miss me. I'm just knowing that whoever will be giving care to them will be dealing with all the bullshit I'm always dealing with [laugh], right?

I'm being over-responsible for other people's emotional experiences. And, by the way, I'm also assuming that those emotional experiences are going to be uniformly negative. I'm saying, "Ugh, I'm going away, and I'm going to enjoy myself, and it's going to be so hard for everyone at home."

So when I'm coaching someone in a situation like that, here is the question I ask. What is the example you want to set for your children in, let's just say, going away for a weekend on your own, leaving them in the care of someone else? What is the example you're setting for them? What are you showing your kids a parent can do, and even should do?

Similarly, what's the example you're setting in your friend circles? What's the example you're setting in your family? And almost always when I ask that question, immediately, it's so easy for my client or my friend to say, "Oh, I absolutely want my kids to know that it is OK to take a break. I want my kids to know that a parent is a whole person. I want my friends to see that they don't have to be responsible 24/7, all 365, for running their households and tending their families."

So when we look at ourselves as exemplary, and we think about the example that we're setting, I think what happens is it's easier to align with our values, it's easier to think about who we want to be in the world rather than who we've been conditioned to be in the world, and thus to stop feeling bad about something that isn't actually bad, yeah?

Another example comes when people are leaders at work, and they're beginning to step out of over-responsibility in their own businesses. So, for example, it might be a leader who is really ready to stop doing work email in the evenings and on the weekends, or an entrepreneur who is really ready to stop attending—I don't know—a marketing meeting, yeah?

And again, excessive guilt can arise in these situations, like, oh, but I don't want to leave my colleagues hanging when I know they're expecting an email response from me, or, oh, I don't want my team to think that I think I'm too good to attend that meeting, or I don't want to hang all of that on them while I opt out. So again, I'm making myself over-responsible for other people's experiences. I am allowing my conditioning to override my values, right?

Why do I not want to answer emails in the evenings and on the weekends? Well, probably because I desire wellness, probably because I want more balance in my life, probably because I'm wanting to nurture the parts of myself that are not associated with my work.

Why do I not want to attend the marketing meeting? Well, probably because I want to place my energy where it will have a greater impact, probably because I am an entrepreneur in the first place because I want to create a different way of doing things, because I want a world in which we are doing what we want to do. We're doing what lights us up. And, hey, if the marketing meeting lit me up, I'd be there, but it doesn't, and so I don't want to force myself to.

So, again, in both of these examples, though what I am doing might create some discomfort, that is not coming from a malicious or wrongdoing place; that's actually coming from me moving toward my values. So, again, the spell for releasing excessive guilt is, OK, what's the example I want to set?

Isn't it the case that I would prefer no one is doing work email in the evening and on the weekends? Would I like to show how it is possible to take a break? Would I like to exemplify that? Actually, would I like to be in the uncomfortable position of leading that initiative so that there is that example for other people to follow? Like, I think yes.

Thinking about that marketing meeting, in my entrepreneurship, in my leadership, in my company, do I want to show that it's not only OK but good to reclaim your time and energy, and direct it in ways that could serve better? Like, when I think about the marketing meeting example, I think about gauging my staff's emotions when I say, "Hey, I don't think I need to attend this meeting, and I'd like to stop attending."

And if they're like, "OK, yeah, cool," then I'm good. And if they're like, "Oh, OK," then I want to investigate that, and I want to see, hey, is this meeting actually a problem for everyone? Maybe actually this meeting is not a great way to spend our time. Maybe there's a better way to coordinate our marketing strategies.

So it's not that I'm going to become unresponsive to other people's reactions, but I am going to unhook myself from being fully responsible for them. And my responsiveness—I hope this makes sense—my responsiveness isn't the placating, smoothing, soothing kind, right? My responsiveness isn't like, OK, let's just go back to the status quo so that no one needs to be uncomfortable, right?

My responsiveness rather is saying, OK, here are the values that are leading this move or leading this decision for me. How can I help you also to embody those values? OK. I want to circle back to my first example, the example of a parent taking a break, and share with you this anecdote that I often share to inspire my clients into this kind of evolutionary discomfort into this exemplary mode.

So once upon a time, I was, let's say, 7 or 8, pretty young. And as she always did, my mother made dinner for the family, and then after dinner, she did the majority of the cleaning up in the kitchen. The kids, we would help a little bit, but mostly it was on my mom.

And I remember this particular evening after dinner, she put on her walking shoes, and I said, "Mom, where are you going?" And she said, "I'm going for a walk." And I was like, "Cool, I'll come too." And she looked at me, and she said, "No. No, I'm going for a walk, and I want to walk alone." And it was very firm and it was also very loving.

And I am telling you as a mother myself, I have returned to that moment so many times. That moment is a touchstone for me. I remember at the time being sort of bewildered, like, I had never really considered my mother to be a whole person, if that makes sense. And I think maybe sometimes it's hard to even ever think of our mothers as whole people. But as an adult mother myself, returning to that example that my mom gave, "No, I want to go alone," it is OK to want what I want.

It is OK to leave you here. It is OK if you are a little disappointed. I have no doubt that that moment is in large part what enabled me to begin to go on retreats myself, and to lead retreats. This does mean being away from my children for a week at a time. Really, I have no doubt that that moment and also my mother's decision to divorce my father enabled my ability to divorce my kids' dad.

And in all of those examples, in me saying, you know what, it is OK for me to leave for a week or even more than a week. You know what, it is OK for me to choose differently when it comes to my own romantic partnership. It is OK that these decisions might generate discomfort because that discomfort is not coming from a malicious place, because I am not doing something bad or wrong.

No, actually, what I am doing is living into my values. I am thinking about the example that I want to set for my children. I want my girls to know that parents are whole people. I want my girls to know that it's not only possible but wonderful to travel, to take breaks, to have self-immersive experiences.

And in the case of me divorcing their dad, I didn't like the example of romantic partnership that we were showing them. I didn't want them to grow up with that example, and I didn't want to lead by that example any longer. So did me living into my values cause discomfort? For sure. But I don't feel guilt about that discomfort because when I ask myself, what kind of example am I showing? I am happy with the example. The example is aligned with my values.

OK, so a spell for releasing excessive guilt. In the situation where you're doing something that you want to do, you're doing something that actually is an evolutionary move for you, it is values-aligned growth for you. It is very likely antisocial conditioning, and very likely challenging the dominant cultures approach.

In that case, think about for whom you are setting an example, and ask yourself, what kind of example do I want to set? And trust that you can be responsive to other people's discomfort without being responsible for it.

All right. I so hope that this perspective and this spell is helpful for you, and I'm so glad that you tuned in today. Thanks for listening, and bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.

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