Relationship First Aid, Part 3: Four Things That Just Make It Worse

We are all works in progress, being shaped by a lifelong learning process.
Guilt is an integral part of that — an inner compass and a healthy motivation.

No one likes to feel guilty. Our bad choices are painful to remember and admit, so we avoid facing our guilty feelings. But beware! Guilt should not be dismissed or ignored. It is our friend and true ally. It calls us into closer and closer alignment with the goodness that we are and want to share. It prompts us to live in a way that would truly satisfy ourselves and others.

Our guilty feelings are the natural response of our heart, drawing our attention to our wrong turn, asking us to correct it. Like physical pain, which tells us there’s a problem to correct or a danger to avoid, guilt tells us something we need to know. It calls us to meet our own inner standards, so that we and all will be pleased. And like a loyal friend, it doesn’t stop calling until we do.

Instead of shunning guilt when it comes and doing things to minimize its pain, we should take its message to heart. For that, we need to change our attitude about guilt, and the strategies we’ve used to reduce our guilt.

Wrong responses to wrongdoing are common, because people often choose to reduce or avoid their guilty feelings instead of facing their guilt and repairing the damage they caused. If that’s our choice, we avoid the person we hurt. We hope time will heal their feelings toward us. Meanwhile, we attend to our own inner pain with consoling self-talk, compensatory good deeds, or self-punishing actions.

We’ve all seen them, and done them! But we don’t realize that these wrong responses actually hurt us and others even more.

• Hurtful behavior erodes the affinity and understanding we previously shared. We can’t get back on the same page if we don’t address it.
• Wrongdoing shakes people’s trust. We need to actively restore trust for others to feel safe opening up to us again.
• Until we examine and understand our wrong choice, we are likely to inflict the same pain again. We really don’t want to keep doing that, and our friends don’t want us to either.
• Avoiding responsibility for our effects hardens our heart. When we deny or ignore our effects and how they feel to others, our willful indifference to our effects makes us thick, uncaring, and clueless.
• Ignoring our own feelings and sensibilities obscures our inner moral compass, and we lose its clarity and direction. When our actions bother us, there’s usually a good reason. Our discomfort can help us self-correct — if we don’t deny or ignore our feeling.
• All this makes us feel even more guilty and uncomfortable, creating a vicious cycle.

Bottom line: Wrong responses to wrongdoing obstruct loving, open connection with those we hurt, AND reduce our comfort in relationship altogether. For the good of all, implement the right response to wrongdoing!

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

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