Health And Wellness Center: Coping healthily guilt

Guilt is a feeling by which we become aware of having done something wrong or unfair or simply can arise from not being able to do something.

Guilt usually associated with the experience of having crossed the ethical, personal or social norms and appears especially if someone is out injured.

The function of this is to facilitate excitement attempted repair. Therefore, in principle it is a necessary emotion for adaptation to the environment.

However, the fault is only positive when it involves a learning process. Thus, you can differentiate between healthy guilt, which arises as a result of real harm we have caused to someone, and unhealthy or morbid, in which there is no objective need to justify it. The latter type of guilt is destructive, crippling and does not help adaptation to the environment. In addition, it can lead to other symptoms such as pain, stress, anxiety, among others, and recurrent thoughts of self-reproach. Thus, a high tendency to experience guilt can mask low self-esteem, excessive need for approval or a high perfectionism, and a high degree of mental rigidity.

Guilt should help take responsibility for one's actions and to take charge of one's life. Therefore, the key is not in the feeling itself, but what is done with it; that is to say, in how it handles and is approached from a positive and constructive perspective.

Some indications to confront and handle the guilt

Try to take an open and flexible attitude of the various situations that are crossed; ie think equally in positive and negative aspects and perceive the nuances.
Knowing how to recognize when conduct has been bad or inadequate, without confusing the actual behavior with the globality of our person. It is important to accept the consequences produced and analyze the reason for the action itself, correct as far as possible and apologize sincerely, and learn what happened to not make the same mistake again. Perform this process is synonymous with responsibility, personal growth and maturity.
Evaluate specific episodes that have triggered a sense of guilt, detecting that often the person had no way to anticipate or foresee that damage or that in any case the responsibility for what happened is shared between more people or factors. And even, it is important to also assess the intentionality that had to perform that action or information and knowledge available at that time.
Analyze their own behavior with the intention to understand why reason acted so, what feelings were, what thoughts they were and what he wanted to achieve with this action, considering that try to analyze and understand does not mean to justify.
Take action to try to resolve the situation rather than thinking endlessly about what happened and what should have been done or not done, in order to live in the present moment rather than be held to a painful time in the past.
Think about how to remedy the damage, rather than get sucked into immobility and suffering to keep up with guilt. It is advisable to try to use the energy that we consume to stay with guilt to carry out some positive purpose, wondering what can be done to improve the situation and increase welfare itself.
Looking back only in order to learn from mistakes.
Really do what you want, provided they do not harm others without trying to always meet the expectations or desires of others.