The G Word
There was definitely a theme to my client sessions, friend conversations AND the way I was feeling last week (which I take as a sign that I’m supposed to blog about it 🤣). It is a 5 letter word that is powerful enough to stop us in our tracks, bring us to our knees and send us reeling into a spiral of self-doubt and a barrage of self-directed hateful words.
You aren’t good enough. There you go again, flipping out on your kid. Why can’t you control yourself? You are a horrible person/mom/partner/human. Of course you’re going to go eat all those cookies, don’t worry, I’ll be waiting here to judge you more and remind you how much you suck. You feel...
GUILT.
Looking at it from a logical perspective, it is INSANE that we do this to ourselves. That our very OWN brain has the capability to convince our SOUL that we aren’t worthy and ALSO HAPPEN TO BE the most horrible human on earth.
I don’t know at what point we learned that making ourselves feel bad is the best motivator for change but...oh wait...yes I do, peep this quote and let it sink in.
“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” - Peggy O’Mara
When you were younger, did you ever experience someone convincing you to do something by making you feel bad or guilty? You do it (even though you may not want to but don’t want to disappoint the person) and then get celebrated for being a “good boy or girl”? In these very early interactions is where we subconsciously began to learn that using guilt is a GREAT motivator**...except it isn’t.
What DOES WORK is getting more curious about where we learned to motivate ourselves by using guilt. Doing this may help unlock some of the reason WHY some of us have this tendency and perhaps give us some more power to respond to the yucky 5 letter G word with a more appropriate and kind 5 letter G word…
GRACE.
So we messed up and didn’t handle a situation the way we would’ve liked. We ate 50 packages of cookies out of emotional distress. We drank a bit too much. We freaked out on our kid who was just standing their super cute asking for help. We bought something that we didn’t need to help us feel better. We started crying for no reason and screamed at our partner about how they’ll never understand.
Ya’ll, it happens! We will have bajillions of opportunities in our lifetime to try out different ways of approaching situations. I could literally make a HUGE list of all the times I wish I handled something differently (you are not alone!). As long as we take these moments and work to flip GUILT TO GRACE, learn what we would do differently next time and try it out when the opportunity arises, WE ARE DOING A GREAT JOB!
What won’t work is steamrolling through life in a cycle of being explosive and feeling guilty. So that next time something doesn’t work out the way you’d like it, take a moment, soothe yourself with grace and try again next time. We will never be perfect, it just doesn’t exist (plus, think of the pressure that would bring, no thank you!).
Another technique that I sometimes employ, if I’m able to catch myself before I jump off the cliff of self-sabotage, is taking some deep breaths (exhale double the length of the inhale) and just I tell myself over and over (usually in my head, but sometimes, I just go for it out loud) to STOP. There is an intriguing chain of chemical events that this triggers in our nervous system, but ultimately, it helps to bring us out of fight, flight and self-sabotage and into letting our body know everything is going to be ok and re-approach the impending feeling of guilt with logic and grace.
To sum it up, it’s ALL ok and it will all be ok. I’ve always believed that when we do things with good intentions and good heart, everything will work out as it should and sometimes, we don’t handle things the we wanted, it is part of life. The good news is, we are presented with opportunities to learn and do things differently next time on a daily basis.
I’m *pretty* sure I’m not alone in this, so please reach out to me if you’d like to share some more about your experience. If this doesn’t resonate with you, I’d love to hear how you navigate the times that didn’t go the way you hoped!
**Please note, I am not placing blame on our caregivers, school teachers, etc. As adults, I believe that we all do the best we can given the tools and resources we were given throughout previous generations. We cannot change the past, but we can choose to acknowledge, learn from it and change it for our future and the future of our family ❤️
Lindsey is an encourager, optimist, health + life coach, and yoga teacher who helps caregivers live fuller, healthier, vibrant lives through exploring all aspects of their life and health while helping to cultivate simple, sustainable fun-size habits, so that they can continue to make a meaningful impact in themselves, their loved ones, and the world, for generations to come.
