When something goes wrong, do you have a niggling sense that it’s your fault?

When someone’s in a bad mood, do you feel like it’s your job to make them feel better or that it’s because of something you’ve done…?

Is it hard for you to say “no”.

Is it more important to you to put other people’s needs first, than to honour your own needs?

If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, chances are you’ve been carrying around guilt baggage for a long time. The thing is, it’s probably been around so long, it’s your ‘normal’. You don’t even question its presence. You don’t even realise that it’s not inherent in who you are.  

Really – it’s not a part of who you are -  it’s just become a part of your identity and way of being somewhere along the way.

That can change.

I know what it is to carry around guilt baggage and not even realise it – until it’s gone. Wow – and how liberating and expansive it feels to be free of it… Believe me.

WHERE DOES IT START?

I remember my first feeling of guilt. We had a BIG bone for Charlie the Jack Russell Terrier – at least, it was big to a 3 year old! Mum asked me if I wanted to give it to him. EXCITEMENT PLUS!!!!!! Ooh goody goody goody, this was just wonderful!

In my 3-year-old uncoordinated excitement, I threw the bone to Charlie and it hit him on the head.  

Devastation.  

I’d hurt Charlie.  

I was a bad person.

Guilt.  

My fault.  

Poor Charlie…

It might sound crazy but until just a few years ago, whenever I thought of that incident, I felt that same sense of devastation and guilt.

Yep, it can become a subconscious programme that quickly. It becomes locked into your system by unconscious core beliefs you then hold about yourself. In this case:

It’s all my fault.

I’m not a good person.

And perhaps: I don’t matter.

The most foundational subconscious programming happens when we’re 0-6, before our critical ability is formed. Those programmes form our identity, form the basis for our behaviours, and inform the way we relate to the world and our place in it.

IT’S NOT YOU. IT’S JUST UNNEEDED BAGGAGE.

Guilt is just baggage. It’s not You. Feeling like everything’s your fault, or like you’re a bad person is just a programme you learned at some point. It’s quite likely you’ll have no idea where it started. That’s ok. The point is - holding onto it doesn’t serve you or anyone else, and your brain can be rewired. You can be free from it.

You can consciously know things aren’t your fault. You can consciously know that Joe’s just in a bad mood and you’ve done nothing to cause it. But that niggling feeling of guilt and fault can still be there, can’t it?

WHY CAN I KNOW IT’S NOT MY FAULT AND FEEL OTHERWISE?

Because it’s a subconscious programme. When we know something, we know it with our conscious mind. Feelings arise from our subconscious beliefs or programmes.

Just like anxiety – you can know you’re safe and feel unsafe.

You can know it’s not your fault, and feel guilty.  

In order to really change these feelings, the cause of them needs to be addressed, resolved and reprogrammed in the subconscious mind, not the conscious mind. The feelings are internal. It’s just that things in our external environment set them off in us. However, they can only be set off if they exist in us to begin with.

JUST IMAGINE…

… feeling centered, strong, confident… not taking on or taking responsibility for anyone else’s ‘stuff’, but standing in your own power. Free… free of the burden of guilt and self-blame. Free of the burden of shame… Knowing that it’s simply not yours to carry. Knowing that you need no one else’s approval to know that you’re a good person. Knowing, inside, that you are a good person, NOT everything’s your fault, and what other people think of you doesn’t matter. You like YOU. That’s what matters…

Feel it. Feel that sense of freedom and lightness. NOT guilty…

WHY NOT ME?

You might feel unworthy of freedom from guilt. It’s not true. You matter. You’re so worthy. You may not feel it yet, but you are.  

I couldn’t have done it alone. If you’re ready to be free of guilt and self-blame and shame, let me take your hand and lead you there. You deserve it.  

If you want to have a chat before you decide, to understand better how this can happen for you, book a time here.

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