Letting Go of Subconscious Guilt Requires That We Let Go of the Lies We Were Told About Ourselves as Children

I have a hard time forgiving myself. Part of the problem may have to do with my codependency and the fact that, as a child, I was led to believe that I was fundamentally bad. My parents didn’t make a distinction between the person and the behavior. It was never a matter of you’ve done something bad, but I still love you. It was simply you are bad. It was never simply a matter of you’ve made a mistake. It was all about you are a mistake.

My Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) undoubtably contributes to the problem of often feeling like a bad person to this very day. When I make a mistake, or am lax about doing something by the rules, or am tired of dealing with everyone else’s problems and place them on the back burner, I feel bad and guilty— obsessively.

It’s a horrible feeling in my gut. It feels like death wrapping its boney fingers around my heart and squashing me from within. It’s actually how I feel today. And the difficult thing is that, although I’m guilty of negative thinking today, that thinking hasn’t been about me. This can only mean then that I’m suffering from subconscious negative self-thoughts that are replaying the past, and producing horrible feelings inside of me.

The subconscious mind is a vast mystery. It can rule our present moment and determine our feelings. It can keep us from forgiving ourselves and we aren’t even aware of what it is doing to us until we can acknowledge that we feel really bad, but have no conscious reason for feeling that way. The only conscious reason I’ve had for feeling so horrible today is the state of our poltics in the USA, which is deplorable. But that’s not enough of a reason for me to be feeling the deep-seated anguish that’s tearing my heart and soul apart right now.

When we are suffering from old negative subconscious thoughts, the best we can do is allow the feelings to be there till they exhaust themselves and fade away. We also need to realize that yes, we have made mistakes, but we are NOT mistakes ourselves. And we have to turn to our Higher Power. The Serenity Prayer is a good place to start. Then we need to talk our feelings through with a trusted person, and work at forgiving ourselves for our mistakes—and forgiving ourselves for still believing the lies our parents told us about ourselves as children.