Feeling guilty when you make a mistake is a completely normal and healthy response. Guilt is one of the driving forces behind our desire to improve and grow by helping us recognize we’ve done something we shouldn’t have. However, there’s the potential to carry too much guilt or fall into patterns that make us feel guilty for things we shouldn’t.
If you find yourself wondering “Why do I feel guilty all the time?” it’s time to pump the brakes and take a good, hard look at where this guilt is coming from and how it’s impacting you emotionally.
How Feeling Guilty All the Time Impacts Emotional Well-Being
Experiencing persistent feelings of guilt is often referred to as a guilt complex, and it can be incredibly damaging to your self-worth if not addressed. Consistent worry that you have done or will do something wrong can be difficult to manage while navigating day-to-day life. When feelings of guilt begin to take over, they tend to overinflate any perceived or anticipated mistakes and increase their impact on your emotional state.
It’s normal to feel guilt about hurting someone’s feelings. The appropriate response would be to learn from the mistake, apologize to the person you hurt and take appropriate steps to ensure it won’t happen again. For someone with a guilt complex, however, the act of hurting someone’s feelings becomes evidence of a deep-rooted flaw in the guilty person’s character. The narrative changes from “I hurt someone” to “I always hurt the people around me.” This changes a momentary mistake into a permanent condemnation of who they are as a person. It’s no wonder these feelings often lead to struggles with anxiety and depression over time.
In fact, while one study showed guilty feelings were present in just over 8% of participants overall, that percentage jumped to 37.4% for respondents who were also suffering from major depression. Over time, guilt breaks down your self-worth, making you more susceptible to damaging thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
Recognizing Unhealthy Guilt Patterns
When you find yourself feeling guilty for seemingly no reason, it’s a sign you’re probably holding on to unhealthy guilt. Unhealthy guilt is when you feel responsible for things that aren’t your fault or can’t let go of the guilt over something you did, even if you’ve already made up for it. Taking on others’ mistakes and hanging on to guilt that should be resolved can very quickly become an unbearable burden to your mental health.
Unhealthy guilt can be sneaky and disguise itself as things we believe to be positive traits, such as accountability or honesty. This is one reason it can be so difficult to identify — because we want to be good people, and taking responsibility for our mistakes is an important part of good character. It’s okay to feel guilt for the mistakes you’ve made, but you must take care not to live in that guilt once you’ve taken steps to right the wrong.
It’s also important to be honest with yourself about whether the mistake was yours to begin with. If taking responsibility for a mistake means also taking responsibility for someone else’s actions, unless you held the power to force or coerce those actions, this is unhealthy guilt. If you still feel guilty about things that happened long ago or things you’ve already made amends for, that’s unhealthy guilt. Guilt should always be a tool to propel you into action. When you feel healthy guilt, you take corrective action, process it and move on.
Techniques to Address and Reduce Guilt
If you find yourself stuck in an endless cycle and want to learn how to stop feeling guilty, there are a few techniques you can try to acknowledge your feelings and work through them. These generally involve reframing the way you see the situation, taking action that was avoided and giving yourself permission to let go.
Whenever you feel those guilty feelings creeping in, acknowledge them by pinpointing what’s making you feel guilty. Then ask yourself the following questions:
- Did this thing already happen?
- How am I responsible?
- What action did I take?
If the thing you feel guilt about hasn’t happened, you may still have the power to change it. Find out what steps you can take and follow through to prevent the situation.
If it’s happened and you’re assuming fault for something you couldn’t control, you need to practice some self-love and reassign that guilt where it belongs.
If you truly are responsible but you made amends, forgive yourself for the mistake and allow yourself to move on.
If you haven’t taken corrective action, do so now.
Through all of this, eliminate any negative self-talk and show yourself grace and compassion. Imagine the person responsible is someone you love, and don’t say anything to yourself you wouldn’t also say to them. Chances are you’d show much more compassion to someone else than you do to yourself, so recognize that and correct it.
Seeking Therapy to Manage Guilt
Sometimes working through your unhealthy guilt is too much to do alone. Qualified mental health care providers, like the ones partnered with Mental Health Hotline, have the training and experience to provide you with useful tools that can help you find your way out of the unhealthy guilt cycle. These caring professionals can guide you through identifying what’s behind your tendency to take on and hold the guilt that’s hurting you and show you how to process it so it no longer affects how you feel each day. Call us today if you’re ready to take the next step in managing and reducing your guilt.
