Hi all.

I am struggling with guilt - of course that is my least favorite subject and has driven me to drink and drug many times in the past. What crappy emotion and I am having a really hard time with it. I beat myself up daily for things I should have done, things I didn't do, things I did do and shouldn't have...yadayadayada.

I am told that I have to forgive myself and love myself and to get past it...the past is the past but I DON'T KNOW HOW.

Does anyone know how?? I really need to know.

thanks.

Hey Christine,
Well, said the guilty man, funny you should ask...I have been focused on that myself this last year. It is a hard battle, almost as hard as the one's I was in 35 years ago.
Then I have guilt from things I have done in the intervening 35 years. I was not a model citizen and definately not a model husband and father. Christine, everybody has their own way of dealing with guilt, with themselves and what they have done or not done. No one can tell you how you are going to overcome it, you will have to find that out for yourself.
Here are some ideas,things for a person to consider and to possibly help him/her sort out their feelings and decide on how they are going to live and let live.

Forgiving your guilt is essential for you to heal from your actions and losses. Forgiving is something we must do for ourselves, not something someone else can actually do for us

Forgiving is letting go. It is releasing a grudge and hatred against ourselves that serves no useful purpose except to mire us down and prevent us from getting or doing better. And to prevent us from ever doing good for ourselves or others.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to forgive ourselves, for our instinct for right and wrong and revenge compels us to hold grudges, even if they are against ourselves. Yet grudges hurt us and others, and don't help anyone else and they don't right the previous wrongs.

One reason we suffer with our obsessive grudges is that we believe in the rightness of guilt and shame. Our primitive consciences make us do this. Only one problem with this. Your conscience does'nt know when to quit, when to say "ENOUGH"
This is one of the most important reasons it is so difficut to forgive yourself.

To forgive yourself, use your reasoning mind to discover and turn off your conditioned, (self destroying) guilty concience. Hit the stop button by saying I can't help myself or the people I love by continuing this any longer. I'm only making things worse, I am being selfish and foolish.

If you actually have hurt someone, you might need reassurance and forgiveness from that person. If you can't get it you must accept your apology as the best you can get out of that bad situation. If that person is dead, hold an imaginary conversation with him or her in your head. If the person had been very close to you, you will know which responses to expect. For example, Joe would have wanted you to live a good life and have a good time, because that is the kind of friend that he was. He would not want you to feel guilty and hurt yourself with it.

On the other hand, if you haven't actually hurt someone, But hurt yourself, the self inflicted wound. Learn from it and then laugh at it. If its no laughing matter, consider it a learning situation and hope and try to not make the same mistakes again.

Finally, it is necessary to remember that, It is just as hard for others as yourself to encourage you to let go of your guilt. After all "you deserve it don't you"? This gives you the idea that you may have to forgive yourself without the support of your family, your religious community, and your usual circle of friends. But its you are the one you have to convince to stop, not them.

Ask yourself about your own family and friends to discover their attitudes toward guilt and depression. If you mention your guilt feelings, for example, do they scold, "You've probably done something wrong to deserve your guilty feelings." If you complain of depression, do they order you to "Snap out of it," or do they berate you with accusations such as, "You're just feeling sorry for yourself."

If your family and friends give these common unforgiving responses, you will likely need to find other sources of support to overcome your unreasonable guilt feelings. If you are seriously depressed, you will need to find help from the medical community. Also,you may find support in a group (like this one)that is dedicated to helping people and themselves to cope with their illnesses.

But in the end, when the lights are out and in the middle of the night, it still comes down to dealing with yourself and convincing yourself that you have suffered enough and that in order to give back and to help yourself and others...it has to end.
Peace

[This message has been edited by TrickyDick (edited 01-22-2001).]

[This message has been edited by TrickyDick (edited 01-23-2001).]

Christine:

Guilt is one of those double edged swords, it is an emotion as a result of going against what you believe to be the right thing to do. That is good because it means that you know the difference between right and wrong and have a conscience.

With me, guilt will help me to not make the same mistake again. If I feel guilty for a wrong that I have done, I will attempt to make it right again, which is a good thing. I feel guilty because I divorced my kids mother and have created a broken home atmosphere, I therefore spend more quality time with them and assure them more than ever that I love them and that they are the most important thing in the world to me. I do not overcompensate and try to buy their love and affection, I just hold them and hug them and tell them how important they are to me, which I did not do enough of before.

My opinion is that if you recognize your wrong doing, vow to not do it again, and do everything in your power to make it right again, that the feelings of guilt will be reduced. I also do not know how to rid myself of guilt, but it forces me to do the right thing and to not repeat the offence. Perhaps we need guilt to keep us on the straight and narrow, who knows?

If we feel guilty and turn to our addiction, we will then feel more guilt. If we deal with guilt by doing something positive and refraining from abusing, and dealing with our emotions, then we will have feelings of pride, accomplishment, satisfaction, and build our self esteem and confidence in ourselves. This will help to overshadow our guilt instead of feeding it.

I don't know if I'm full of BS, but that is how I approach the situation anyway. So you see, guilt is not always such a bad thing if you use it to guide you in a more positive direction.

Keep up the good work.

Catch 22

Guilt sucks. I know exactly how you feel. The thing about the past is just that its the past as much as you and I both want to change all of the crappy things we have done we can't. What you can do is try to learn from it,don't repeat it and the most important. DO NOT LET THE GUILT CONSUME YOU.Your a good person your addiction just caused you to do some ****ty things. GOOD LUCK

Guilt can be VERY healthy, if it motivates us to change.

We need to make sure we have asked forgiveness appropriately for any wrong doing, and made restitution as much as we are able, first.

False guilt is when we did nothing wrong, but feel guilty anyway. Or when we paid for our wrong-doing and then don't forgive ourselves. In that case, when I do that, I remember that if the God of the universe can forgive me, who am I to hold a grudge against myself?
Gradually it gets through the guilty feelings.

Getting into a new pattern of genuine honesty, considering and serving others really helps get rid of the "demons", too. Try volunteering to work with others less fortunate.

Hi Christine - I too struggled with it at one time. But thru the years, I found it usually does me no good unless it spurs me on to ACTION.

The action part would be making amends to any/all we may have hurt. If we've done that, guilt serves no purpose but to keep us closer to relapse.

I figure if my Higher Power forgives me, who am I to not?? How egotistical is that of me?? Do I feel that my forgiveness is worth more than my Higher Power's??? No.

Sometimes we are our worst enemies. We treat ourselves much worse than we would a fellow sufferer, and that's a slap in the face to God! He loves us and forgives us -- we must do the same.

A little assignment I was given early on in sobriety was to look into the mirror daily --- look into my eyes and try to see and know the person in there. At first, all I could see was a disgusting, lush of a woman. At time went on, I could also see the hurt -- hurt the stemmed back to childhood and that built up thru the years. I felt sorry for this person. In time, I found the "old" me -- the person that I used to be, and she wasn't all that bad. I had to learn to like myself before I could love myself. Today I can do both.

Please, leave the judgement to your Higher Power. He made his decision to forgive you immediately. God Bless. Peace, Lee

Hey girl, what is up???!!!!

Man, have you ever heard in this program that once we get some Self-acceptance, than we can move forward.
You have to understand that what happened in the past is just that. Think about it, all that guilt feeling has not changed anything that happened, has it? It is still there. All the would've, could've, should've will just bring you down. And please don't try to make amends to anyone unless you are on that step. The stps are in order for a reason. If you try to go around making amends for the guilt, it is also for the wrong reason, and it can screw things up worse. We don't make amends to make the guilt go away. We make amends to let folks know and show them that we are willing to change and that we don't want to behave the way we used to. Sometimes we make a living amends. That is when we just remain clean on a day to day basis and change the way we live and eventually people see that you are living differently. That is how I do it with my brothers. I wanted everybody to just love me and accept me because dammit! I was in recovery. I wanted to "fix" everything as soon as I got clean. It will take some time. Everything is recovery is a process. It is a journey, not a destination. That is why we say "just for today" Just stay clean, and the rest will take care of itself.. I was disgusted at first because my brother still wouldn't let me near his kids, etc. My sponsor told me to just wait and stay clean. It was hard, but I did it. Now my brother lets me around the kids, personally invites me to his house. Never in my life had he done that, he has alot of nice things. That has given me faith, that in time stuff works like it should. Not the way Hazel wants it too, but the way it SHOULD.
Well honey, I don't know if this has made any sense, but I am back, I was out with some surgery, I still can't go back to the gym for another month or so and that sucks, but I have to heal from the inside out.
Female stuff.

write soon to apachesquaw56

ciao

LOL - OK, Ok you guys - give me a break - I posted that last January - see? almost a year ago - since then I have learned some tools for dealing with guilt - I am learning to forgive myself - I even survived a weekend -long relapse and came back - almost 3 months clean sober again.

This is a great topic and probably has guided me in many of the wrong decisions I have made, but also has kept me honest in others. Double - edged sword for sure!!!

Wow, what a topic, I have this same senario waiting for me in the morning when I think about the ways I have treated my own body,
I regard that we all can contain a piece of God if we will listen.
I myself am in the same boat as you, I am having so much pain physically from being an addict to pain pills, that I am forcing myself to stop, my kidneys or my liver, could even be back muscles have been burning for 4 days,, my tolerance level has shot up and I can no longer choose this path, so the only thing I am worried about is not getting off the junk,, but getting past the guilt of being addicted for so long,
if I had only listened sooner,