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 shoulds there and make our lives more frustrating than necessary. Sometimes, someone else puts a should there for you and you don’t even realise it.

Naturally this can be good or bad — when your parents tell you that you should finish university, they’re hardly being malicious. But what if they tell you that you should have a certain job or income, marry at a certain age, or live a lifestyle that you don’t identify with? What if a loved one tells you that the way you dress should be different? Or that you should spend less time with your friends? These shoulds are tougher to process. And should we?

The gap between reality and how we perceive our life should be is a space where we can thrive or crumble. When the gap is small, guilt can motivate us. When the gap is big and our shoulds can’t get us where we want to be, it does the opposite.