Why Do I Always Feel Guilty?

PROGRAM W-1712 – Part II

It’s pretty clear that men and women handle guilt quite differently. That should not surprise us because God created us with different natures. We often respond in opposite ways, especially where emotions are concerned—and guilt is an emotion.

Men can isolate their feelings and emotions in order to get a job done or solve a problem. They have the ability to remove the emotions from the equation and address a situation or problem purely cerebrally. Women are more likely to get to that rational stage after going through the emotional stage first. We are more sensitive and tenderhearted, and we do take things personally, no matter how many times our male counterparts may exhort us not to! It’s not difficult to see why women struggle more with guilt than men do.

Girlish Guilts

I often envision us women carrying our guilt backpack with us all the time, collecting guilt as we go. These backpacks are stuffed full with what I call “girlish guilts,” the small everyday guilts we accumulate without even noticing. These are the little nagging guilts that are peculiar to women; our sensitive natures make us very vulnerable to seeing things that are not there, reading between lines incorrectly, and interpreting body language and facial expressions inaccurately.

Here are some examples of girlish guilts to which a woman’s first response will most likely be, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”  Following each example, I’m going to suggest a more appropriate response than “I’m sorry.”

• A coworker says that while you were on vacation last week, the place fell apart and she had to work late every night. You feel guilty for taking a vacation.

Proper Response: “I really appreciate your extra effort. I’ll do the same for you when you’re on vacation.”

• Your child says she got in trouble with her teacher because she left her homework at home, trying to shift the blame to you for not reminding her to take her homework. You feel guilty for not making sure your child took her homework.

Proper Response: “Honey, a good idea would be to put your homework in your backpack the night before so you won’t forget it.”

• Your husband complains that the dry cleaners put too much starch in his shirt collars, looking at you as though you should have corrected the problem. You feel guilty for not noticing it before he did.

Proper Response: “Maybe you need to try a different cleaners. You haven’t been real happy with them lately.”

• Your sister says she tried to reach you three times yesterday and kept getting your voice mail. She didn’t leave a message but still seems irritated that you were not there for her when she needed you. You feel like you’ve failed your sister.

Proper Response: ”If I had known you needed to talk to me, I would have called you back right away.”

• Your boss asks you where you put a certain file, and you are quite certain you have not touched that file. Yet because he/she accuses you, you assume guilt.

Proper Response: “Let me look through the files on your credenza and see if I can find it for you.”

• You report to your friend that you won’t be able to attend the committee meeting on Saturday, which she belatedly called, because of other family plans. Her facial expression is close to a frown. You read into it her disapproval, and keep explaining why you can’t make it.

Proper Response: Ignoring the facial expression, which you may be misinterpreting anyway. . .“Do you know when the next meeting will be? If so, I’ll put it on my calendar right now.”

• You promised to help decorate the church for an upcoming women’s luncheon, and then you came down with a bad cough and headache the night before. The tone in your friend’s voice was anything but sympathetic when you called to say you couldn’t make it, and you feel very guilty.

Proper Response: Ignoring the tone of voice, which you may be misinterpreting anyway. . .”Believe me, I’d rather be decorating with you than battling this cough.”

• Your mom calls and says, “You mean you’re not coming over for dinner on Sunday?” You have other important commitments – or maybe you just need some down time – and yet Mom expects you every Sunday. You feel like you’ve ruined the day for your mom.

Proper Response: “I love your cooking, Mom, but I just can’t make it this Sunday.”

You may be able to think of more appropriate responses, but the principle here is that we need to break our bad habit of apologizing for things for which we are not guilty. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with saying the words, “I’m sorry.” You could say, “I’m sorry to hear you had a bad week while I was on vacation,” meaning you empathize with your coworker’s predicament without accepting the blame. Remember, you can empathize—put yourself in someone else’s shoes—without apologizing.

Refusing Undeserved Blame

It could be that you have allowed others to shift their blame to you for so long that you have become their dumping ground. Mothers, wives, and women do that far more easily and often than fathers, husbands, and men do.

Boundary setting is essential in this process. It needs to begin by surveying where we’ve fallen into this bad habit of accepting blame indiscriminately, deciding in advance where we will draw the boundaries, and figuring out how we will communicate those boundaries, if indeed they need to be communicated.

Think of it as flies swarming toward a porch light on a summer night. If you turn that light on, they will come. But if you put a screen around that porch, tightly fitted with no holes, they may head for the light, but they’ll run into the screen and won’t be able to get to the light. Similarly, we need to build some screens that prevent others from dumping guilt on us when indeed we are not guilty.

Mother Guilt  

I am convinced that children are born with an instinct for manipulating their moms through guilt. They learn how to do it before they learn to walk or talk.

• If I cry loudly enough and long enough, my mother will pick me up.
• If I pout and look unhappy, my mother will give in.
• If I say that all the other mothers do it, she will capitulate.
• If I complain that I don’t have what others have, my mother will buy it for me.
• If I accuse her of not being there for me when I needed her, my mother will try to make it up to me with gifts or leniency.

Perhaps more than any other people in our lives, we moms cater to our children. It must be in the mom gene. Truthfully, we are not doing our children any favors by allowing them to invade our boundaries and use us for dumping grounds. We have a responsibility to teach them to respect our boundaries, and to accept responsibility for their own actions or inactions. We’ll raise much healthier children when we do.

We set boundaries by our words and our actions. As you set these boundaries, you will be building that screen which keeps your kids from continuing to dump guilt on you. Of course, your children will test those boundaries, and if your resolve is weak, you’ll end up caving in and it will be worse than before. So be sure you are serious about following through on your boundaries.

Authority Guilt

Whether it is an employer, a pastor, a group leader, a teacher, a principal, a parent, or an older sibling, we have a natural tendency to be easily intimidated by an authority figure. Even people who assume authority that is not rightly theirs can make us feel guilty before we know it!

• Here are some examples of authority guilt:
• Workload guilt – Feeling guilty because we didn’t get enough work done.
• Unsatisfactory-work guilt – Feeling guilty because the quality of our work was unacceptable.
• Disobedience guilt – Feeling guilty because we didn’t follow instructions correctly.
• Unrealistic-expectations guilt – Feeling guilty because we are expected to do more than we are able to do.

People in authority must confront unacceptable behavior or performance, but there are far too many instances where those in authority dump their own guilt on those who report to them simply because they can. I cited one example of the boss who blames his/her assistant for losing the file, but there are far more serious examples that can cause much harm, especially when that authority figure is a parent. How many young children have been permanently damaged by parents who blamed and punished them undeservedly?

Again, our challenge will be to set appropriate boundaries in these relationships. In some relationships, it may be necessary to put some space between us and them, when that is possible, and limit our exposure to their abusive tactics.

Keep a Tender Heart

In learning appropriate ways to deal with our girlish guilts, we don’t want to lose the advantages we have as women. Having been a woman in a man’s world through most of my career and, indeed, my ministry as well, I am well aware of how easy it is to let the pendulum swing too far to the other side. I saw many women try to play like the boys—to use their tactics and mimic their behaviors. Not only is that a mistake, it is ineffective.

God created us with these built-in differences, and when we try to get “outside of ourselves,” as the saying goes, we lose our most effective weapon—the femininity that God gave us. We don’t have to lose our tender hearts, our compassionate tendencies, and our sympathetic ears in order to get rid of girlish guilt. We certainly don’t want to become so defensive that we can never say, “I’m sorry.” We are women, and while we don’t need to roar, we do need to treasure the special attributes that God has given us and use them wisely.

I encourage you to become aware of your own girlish guilts. Listen to yourself respond when something goes wrong. Do you readily accept the blame, feeling that somehow, someway, you should have been able to resolve it? If you will begin to tackle these smaller guilts that come your way—by changing your thought patterns and your verbal responses—you will be teaching yourself a most important principle in dealing with false guilt. It is a matter of recognizing wrong thinking and substituting right thinking, which will, in turn, help you to replace wrong responses with right ones.