Wracked with Guilt: What’s a Parent to do?
Have you ever found yourself feeling guilty about something you did or didn’t do for a child? If you’re a caring, responsible parent or teacher, likely you have. There are endless opportunities! We feel bad when we don’t measure up, when we can’t prevent something bad from happening to a child, or when we’ve done something we know is wrong. This is healthy! Yet most of us would rather not feel guilty, because it is uncomfortable.
We can also feel guilty when someone criticizes our child’s behavior or gives us unsolicited advice about our parenting, or when we read the latest parenting literature. Feeling guilty is not a choice: it happens to us. We can’t will it away. We can agree or disagree with the feeling, but we feel guilty nonetheless. It comes with the territory of being a caring and responsible parent.
We live in a guilt-phobic culture. Often we want to defend ourselves against guilt, wash our hands of it, or numb our vulnerable feelings. There are many temptations to avoid guilt: There is often an impulse to shift the responsibility to someone or something else, a hunt for validation from others, or the drive to be a perfect parent. We want to avoid guilt because it hits us to the core. We don’t want to feel bad, yet guilt is an important emotion that evokes powerful impulses to try to make things right.
When we try to ignore or push away any emotion, it tends to demand more of our attention. Emotions need to move for our well-being and it is crucial that guilt “moves” through us so that we can get back to being the parent or teacher our children need. Sometimes we get stuck in guilt and wallow in our self-deprecation. To avoid being immobilized by our guilt, it often needs to be put into words that can move us to our tears. When we feel the sadness of things not going the way we wanted, we allow guilt to do its intended work.
If you have been avoiding feeling guilty lately, or you’ve been pushing that feeling away, I hope to inspire you to invite it in and let guilt bubble to the surface, bubble over in tears and move you to renew your intentions to become the parent or teacher you want to be.
References
Gordon Neufeld, The Power to Parent, Neufeld Institute Vancouver BC, Canada.
Heather Ferguson is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and a Clinical Counsellor in private practice in the Cowichan Valley, B.C.
