The Web address of this
two-page article is http://sfhelp.org/Rx/ex/guilt.htm
This
is one of a series of Web articles
that suggest solutions for common relationship problems in divorcing families and stepfamilies.
This
sub-series focuses on reducing
to co-parental team-work. This
gives background on this nonprofit divorce-prevention site and how to best
use it.
Ideas here aim to augment, not replace, other appropriate professional
Clicking on links below will open a popup window or a new one. Use your
browser's "back" button to return from the latter.
This article and
others are integrated in the
guidebook
Build a
Co-parenting Team After Divorce or Re/marriage (Xlibris.com).
|
Caution - reducing excessive guilts
and shame takes awareness, courage, help, time, and patience.
Expect this to take you months
of committed work, after you prepare to do it. Reducing
divorce-related (and other major) guilts is usually part of a larger
project: identifying and
significant false-self
and changing ignorance into
Stay aware that this is an organic
process, not an event with a clear end-point.
in this site focuses on this keystone work. |
Also note that a concurrent
divorce-recovery project is identifying and
the set of tangible and abstract
(broken bonds) that your relationship-rupture has caused.
in this nonprofit site offers options and resources to help you ex's grieve
well,
and help your kids mourn their losses.
Guilt
is the reflexive
emotional response to breaking some internal or social
- a should, ought, must, have to, or can't. Our word comes from the
old English root gylt, which meant crime or
offense. For ancestral, religious,
and psychological reasons, typical divorced parents are burdened by moderate
to major guilts.
Often their parents are too. Unresolved parental and ex-mate
guilts can promote family stress, re/divorce, and some health problems like
depression and addiction. These all hinder forming an effective co-parenting
team. Your kids probably need guidance in understanding, describing, and
managing their guilts, too.
This Solutions article is for separated and divorced parents and
their partners and supporters. It suggests options toward reducing any excessive guilt you,
your ex, and/or your parents feel about some aspects of your
including what caused
it, and what's resulting from it.
This article extends
these three pages which offer general perspective on
(a) what guilt is, (b) where guilt comes from, (c) how it differs
from shame, (d) how excessive guilt may affect your health and
relationships, and (d) options for reducing old guilts and avoiding unwarranted
new guilts. The rest of this article assumes you have read those three
pages. Here's a summary of their key points:
Review: Guilt "Basics"
Our automatic guilt reflex sprouts from our
earliest childhood needs to please our caregivers. As soon as we can
differentiate pain from pleasure, we form "good me / bad me" judgments
based on our caregivers' teachings about right / wrong behavior, and
their reactions to what we do or don't do. Often our adults assist us in
forming early rules by saying "What a good boy!" or "You're a
bad girl."
Moderate guilt helps us to regulate
our choices and behaviors in a complex, confusing world. Excessive
guilts and shame stunt our self confidence and esteem, hinder effective
communication and healthy relationships, and can degrade our health and
longevity.
Most (all?) people develop a set of
semi-independent personality
in early childhood. Among them, most (all?) of us evolve...
-
an
a
an
and
inner kids;
-
an ever-vigilant
or Blamer, and usually a shrill
-
a
Rule Keeper, who
catalogs all the rules we need to obey to get vital acceptance and
approval from other kids and adults and ourselves;
-
various well-meaning
tirelessly dedicated to protecting and comforting the Inner Kids;
and...
-
a
(capital "S:), whose natural (undeveloped) talent is to
effectively guide and harmonize your other subselves ("make healthy
decisions") in all situations.
Guilty thoughts and feelings occur any time
our Inner Critic and Guilty Child activate. If they are active too
often, and/or
our wise Self; we feel excessive guilt.
The initial behavioral rules we seek to
follow come from (a) our early caregivers, (b) our own pain/pleasure
experiences, and later from (c) our hero/ines, playmates, and teachers -
including any religious authorities in our lives. "Growing up" and
"maturing" is partly the long process of (a) differentiating other
peoples rules from those that we feel are appropriate for us as a
unique human being, and (b) learning to live serenely from our
rules - despite others' disapproval.
Excessive old guilts can be reduced to
normal by teaching our subselves to (a) identify the rule/s they feel we
have broken, (b) deciding who originated those rules, and (c) evaluating
whether we should update these rules to make them ours.
When we break our own behavioral rules, we
can learn to forgive ourselves, apologize and
ask forgiveness from others we have hurt, and then let go of any
self-blame and guilt feelings.
attitudes and skills provide effective
tools for
relating calmly to (wounded) people who "guilt-trip" (manipulate) us
or who feel excessively guilty and see themselves as
to us.
|
Implication:
if you, your ex, and others feel burdened with too much divorce-related (or
other) guilt too often, you can improve that. Do you believe this?
|
Status check: to clarify what you hope to get from this article, relax,
clear your mind, and reflect: where do you stand now
- on a scale of one (I feel no
divorce-related guilt at all) to ten
(I am constantly burdened by excessive divorce-related guilt)?
Then refocus on your ex, and locate her or him on the same scale. Would s/he
agree with your opinion? Restated; how important is it to you now to reduce
excessive divorce-related guilts in you and/or your ex mate?
Note that helping your kids and/or a new mate reduce their stepfamily guilts
is the subject of
this Solutions article For options to reducing excessive
shame, read this.
Premises about Divorce
To prepare to replace your outdated behavioral rules about divorce,
decide if your true Self is
of your other subselves now. If not, (a) identify which other subselves are
in charge, and (b) what they need now.
When your Self is guiding you, try
defining divorce out loud, as though you're explaining
it to an average pre-teen.
Then invest the time to see how these ideas about
marriage and
divorce compare with yours.
Behavioral rules about these two topics will flow from your beliefs
about them. Others will flow from your current beliefs about...
Clear awareness of how you and your ex feel about each of these primary
topicsis fertile
ground for identifying and replacing outdated rules from other people with
more relevant personal rules. If this seems like a lot of complex,
thoughtful work - it is! So is living most days burdened by the
impacts of excessive guilts, and not preparing your kids to manage their
guilts effectively!
Options for Upgrading Your Behavioral Rules
Reflect: have you changed some basic beliefs about yourself, people, and the
world since your childhood? Have you ever wondered how you made those
changes? Do you agree that all
people can permanently
some core beliefs, based on new information and experience?
Before we illustrate new low-guilt rules about divorce, get clear on how
you can change outdated or inappropriate behavioral rules. This Web site
proposes that excessive guilts come from several well-meaning subselves
believing outmoded or inaccurate rules learned from other people - like your
childhood caregivers.
Your task, then, is to convince your
your
and your
and any other subselves, that its best for them to change some old beliefs
to help you live a more peaceful, healthy life. Consider these options for doing that...
-
Key: work patiently to
get these and other subselves to
trust your true Self and other
to
make your daily decisions. This goal is the heart of recovery
from false-self
-
check to see what year these subselves
believe it to be. If you find they're living in the past (which is
common), use
to safely relocate them to the present time. Stress that you
no longer live with your original caregivers and you're a mature adult
now, so you're wise enough to form your own behavioral rules rather than
depending on your caregiver's judgments, values, and beliefs.
-
use your subselves' core wish to help you
(the person) be safe and happy to justify their adopting new rules to
live by.
-
reassure your subselves they are and will
always be valuable, and you're not trying to "get rid of them," but
rather retraining them so they can help you more effectively.
-
consider holding one or more "council
meetings" of all your subselves, to discuss agreeing to live by a Bill
of Personal Rights like this -
without guilt, shame, or anxiety.
-
if your Inner Kids and their Guardian
subselves are ambivalent or uneasy about adopting new divorce-related
(or other) beliefs, propose that they allow you (your Self) to try out
new rules for, say, a month, to see if the results are safe enough.
-
Use respectful
and
in your inner dialogs with your Self
to promote these subselves agreeing to change.
-
Steadily remind your subselves that they
will all benefit if they learn to work cooperatively as a
with
a common goal (finding and manifesting your life purpose), trusting in
the wise guidance of your true Self and other
and your
If your dominant subselves are ambivalent or skeptical about the idea of
retraining your personality subselves, read this
letter to you.
Now
- let's explore your options for upgrading your divorce-related rules and
reducing your excessive guilts...
Old and New Divorce-related Rules
If
guilt is the normal response to believing we've broken (someone's)
behavioral or moral rules (shoulds, oughts, and have-to's), see if you find
your old rules in the examples below. With each one, consider what it would
feel like to adopt a new rule like the example.
Options: (a) use this a checklist to track your progress. Caution -
use these examples to form
your new rules, rather than blindly adopting them; (b) try
saying each of these old and new rules out loud, and see what you
experience...
Old rule: men and women who marry
should obey
their vows "for better or for worse."
New rule: men and women should nurture
themselves. They (I) should claim my right to
live satisfying lives and to change, if prior commitment vows are steadily causing
pain, frustration, despair, and injury and hope for improvement dies.
Old rule: God and his church decree that divorce is a
sin, and I must obey God and the Church or I will burn in Hell.
New rule: I have the right to commune with
God and make my own decisions about "sin" and co-creating my life
with God's caring help and guidance. I do not have to blindly accept
other people's inherited beliefs about a Holy Book and/or what God
wants. Option: read this
article, and "Conversations
With God, volume 1; by Neale Walsch
Old rule: divorce is a sign of weakness, and I
must
be strong.
New rule: divorce is a sign of psychological
wounds and ignorance that I didn't cause, and I should act to end
toxic, unsatisfying relationships. Doing so is a sign of health, strength,
and self-respect.
Old rule: people who divorce are
bad and/or wrong - and I should be good and
right.
New rule: people who choose to divorce are
neither good nor bad - they're giving themselves and any kids a chance
for a better life, long term. They're courageously admitting that (a) their
prior decision (to marry) was unwise, and that (b) everything they've
tried to get their primary-relationship
met has not worked well enough.
Old rule: good
parents should always put their minor kids' needs ahead of their
own.
New rule: effective parents should protect
their kids from growing up in a low-nurturance home. When all other
options don't work, divorcing may give our kids the best chance of
minimizing their wounds and living satisfying lives long term.
Old rule: mates must be sexually monogamous,
and mates who have
are
bad and
wrong.
New rule:
mates should work to
admit their wounds and ignorances and help each other correct those,
in order to learn how to problem-solve and fill their respective
relationship-needs. People who choose to have extra-marital
affairs are wounded, needy, and
ignorant, not "bad" or "wrong."
Pause and listen in on what your subselves
are
about these examples, so far. Do you need to take a stretch break before
continuing these examples?
Old rule:
married mates must want to fill their
partners needs, and sometimes want to sacrifice their own needs to do so.
New rule: every able adult should accept the responsibility of filling their own needs
while being aware of other people's needs. Each mate should consider their own needs equally with their partner's needs.
They may choose to put their partner's needs first at times, but do not
have to.
Old rule:
committed mates have to
accept their
partner for who s/he is, without exception.
New rule: mates should try to respect
and empathize with their mates, and confront them lovingly and clearly
when disagreeing with their values, opinions, or behaviors. Not
doing so is a form of self-neglect and disrespect.
Old rule:
I must never be "selfish" and put my
needs ahead of other people's needs - specially my kids needs.
New rule: I should respect my needs
just as much as other people's needs, except in some emergencies. Even then,
I should respect my limits as to what I can give, and learn to say "no,"
"not now," and "I can't" without undue guilt.
Old rule:
I must never displease. disappoint, or
disagree with my parents and other key relatives and/or mentors and
hero/ines.
New rule: I should respect myself as much as I respect my parents
and other "elders." This means there will be times
I disagree with their opinions and values without disrespecting them.
Old rule:
good parents have to protect their
children against their family breaking up.
New rule: good parents should
evaluate the best long-term nurturance options for each minor child. If divorce seems to be the best option, then it's a healthy parenting
decision. Staying in a low-nurturance family to avoid divorce is
not
in minor kids' best interests!
Old rule:
people who divorce are flawed and inferior -
and I must not be flawed or inferior.
New rule: people who thoughtfully (vs.
impulsively) decide there is no better option than divorce to gain hope
for a better life are courageous, honest, and acting on their integrity.
People should never judge each other as "flawed," but
rather that others may be wounded and ignorant.
Old rule:
well-adjusted, healthy people
should
never divorce - and I need to feel I'm healthy and well-adjusted.
New rule: people should take
guilt-free responsibility for filling their own needs and achieving
their own long-term happiness - while trying to be genuinely considerate
and compassionate for the needs of other people. Doing this is a sign of
wholistic health.
Old rule:
people who divorce should
feel
ashamed and guilty for failing themselves, each other, their kids, and
their relatives.
New rule: people who divorce should
(a) accept their wounds and ignorances without self-criticism,
(b) forgive themselves and others that their
wounds and ignorance has harmed, and (c) commit to
their losses and helping other family members do the same.
Old rule:
I must not question or disagree with rules
like these about marital commitment, dissatisfaction, separation, and divorce
New rule: I must define my rights as
a unique, dignified person, admit that I and the world are constantly
changing, and courageously live by my integrity. To do this, I must
question and validate the rules I choose to live by.
Old rule:
people who seek marital counseling are weak,
and I must always be strong.
New rule: people who seek marital counseling
are courageous and responsible, and I must strive to be those things for
my own self respect.
Old rule: (add your own)
Were you aware of how many divorce-related
rules you (and your ex) have been living by? This is not a complete list! Options:
-
rank-order these rules in importance to you (and/or your ex), and/or
asterisk the rules you feel are the most powerful; and/or...
-
asterisk the
rules that your subselves are most resistant to changing, and explore why
- what would it mean to them to adopt new rules?
Based on some basic premises about guilt, marriage, divorce, and
relationships, we've just explored options for upgrading the specific
divorce-related rules that your subselves feel you've broken. Before continuing,
take a status check: T = "true," F = "false," and ?
= "I'm not sure yet.' I believe that...
...shame and guilt are related and
have different sources (T F ?)
...guilt is caused by believing I
have broken someone's rule/s (T F ?)
...moderate guilt is helpful,
and that excessive guilt can harm me and others
(T F ?)
...that as a unique, worthy adult, I
can decide what rules I live by, rather than blindly following rules
other people have taught me - without shame, guilt, or anxiety (T
F ?) And I believe...
...that my personality is composed of
and I am normal (T F ?)
...I can permanently reduce my
excessive guilts to healthy levels (T F ?); and that...
...my true Self is
these questions now (T F ?)
Now
let's look at your options if your
ex mate is burdened by excessive divorce-related
guilts (and shame. Do you think s/he is?
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