Addictive Thinking Produces Self-Imposed Guilt

No one has to be Christian to understand this quote. Our Higher Power knows the worst about each of us, and yet our Higher Power loves us endlessly. Many of us understand this, but our addictive patterns of thinking keep us from feeling that great love of a God, or our Higher Power.

As a result, many of us suffer from self-imposed guilt. There are two forms of guilt: 1) the natural guilt we feel when we have done or said something hurtful or wrong; and 2) self-imposed guilt that results from our inability to forgive and love ourselves. Natural guilt exists to tell us we have caused harm to someone, and to prompt us to take responsibility for what we have said or done that was harmful. Once we make amends, natural guilt subsides.

Self-imposed guilt persists after we have made amends. It’s a biproduct of the addictive personality’s inner-critic, which is that internal voice that is constantly telling us we are worthless mistakes. As children we learned to believe that most everyone else was “good enough,” but not us. We were unacceptable human beings who could never make life right. We listened to our inner-critic, and we came to believe that we didn’t naturally deserve the goodness in life. If we deserved any goodness we also came to believe we had to earn it.

And if we made mistakes, heaven forbid that we be forgivable. I grew up feeling like every sin or mistake I committed drove me further and further from paradise, or redemption. There was redemption for others, but not for me because I wasn’t acceptable, or good enough.

Although I know this is all false, I still suffer from the terrible feelings associated with self-imposed guilt. Last week, in Rome, I didn’t enjoy myself as much as God wanted me to because I felt worthless guilt. I felt guilty for being able to experience Rome, I felt guilty about eating delicious food, buying a bottle of Italian cologne and having a wonderful time. I also felt guilty for not knowing enough about the new job responsibilities I was taking-on, even though it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have all of the information I thought I should have.

To a certain degree, this self-imposed guilt messed up my trip, and so I’m determined to not allow it to happen in the future. When the old, heavy guilt feelings began to surface, I didn’t know what was really going on, but I came to realize it was self-imposed guilt. Awareness is the key. Once we are aware of what we are feeling, we regain some power over it. We are then able to let the bad feelings exist until they are gone without giving all of our personal power away to them.

I am determined to be free, eventually, of all self-imposed guilt. It is NOT from God. It is an addictive creation and what addictive thinking has created, I can erase by the grace of awareness and my Higher Power.

If my Higher Power knows all the worst parts of me and still loves me immensely, I can learn to do the same.