What Your Guilt Is Telling You

… and what it’s keeping to itself

Guilt is an odd emotion. In small doses, you could argue that it benefits you. Guilt might encourage you to call your relatives when they haven’t heard from you in months. It might inspire you into action after a period of lethargy. Guilt might even inspire you to write a piece about guilt after too much time not writing.

Still, one could say that in each example, it’s the yearning for connection, the desire for a more balanced lifestyle or the goal of becoming a better writer that’s the driver. These are overarching goals —a series of snapshots which represent the road to our ideal self. The things we should do (our ‘shoulds’) are what we view as the milestones to get us there and short-term, guilt can provide an empowering boost in the right direction.

In that respect, guilt can be great. It tells us that we’re falling short on our standards. On what we should be doing, how we should be behaving. Do better, it says. And sometimes we do.

Should itself is a funny word though, and quite a loaded one too. It’s full of expectation. Sometimes it contains disappointment (you should have), sometimes optimism (I should…).

Sometimes we put shoulds there ourselves, to measure progress or ensure we don’t neglect our own standards. Sometimes we put unrealistic…