‘What seems to be the problem officer?’
Do you ever feel guilty when you see a police officer even though you’re innocent?
Apparently, this is quite a common occurrence. You may have done nothing wrong and yet your nervous system is making you uncomfortable.
Guilt is an interesting and complex emotion. When I have clients who feel guilty, I sometimes ask them to consider splitting their guilt into helpful guilt and unhelpful guilt. Or ‘healthy’ guilt and ‘unhealthy’ guilt. Guilt can be useful. Perhaps we have said something to a beloved family member and it upset them. We know what we said was wrong, or we said it in an unhelpful way. We feel guilty. This guilt then can guide us. It can tell us to apologise and make amends. We can then consider how to improve our communication with this person, or perhaps the relationship overall.
We acknowledge that we have broken one of our values such as ‘treat your loved ones with respect and kindness’ and we feel guilty because of it. The guilt is specific, proportionate and constructive. It prompts us to take action which then helps dissolve that guilty feeling, this could be considered useful guilt.
However, there is another type of guilt. It is more confusing. It could be an uncomfortable feeling we have carried around with us for a long time. It can hold us back, make us question our judgements and impact our relationships and the boundaries within them. It can be long-term and more pervasive. I’ll put a few examples below:
- A working parent who works to a tight deadline and misses their child’s football match.
- Someone feeling guilty when they practise being assertive. They say no to a request but then feel bad.
- Someone not saying goodbye to a friend they never see again.
We could feel guilty for many different reasons, some will be within our control, some outside our control and some perhaps somewhere in between. It will not always be obvious whether it is ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ guilt.
I encourage clients to write things down. A few helpful questions could include:
What exactly am I feeling guilty about?
Be as specific as you can. What did you do or not do? What happened, what was the outcome?
Was my behaviour inconsistent with my values?
The example of the parent working to a tight deadline and missing a child’s football match, may hold competing values or be something of a grey area for some. The parent has the value that they want to support their child, but they may also highly value their job, their ability to provide for their family and their ability to set an example to their child that parents can work hard and be good parents. That will be their decision and they will need to make the potentially difficult choice around that. I can’t do it for them as it needs to align with their values and not mine.
What is actually within my control?
You can only control your thoughts, actions and feelings. While you can influence others, you cannot control them. It is also helpful to remember we cannot predict the future. We cannot know if that missed football match was the one we really should have watched, or if that work project was not going to be successful anyway. Alternatively, perhaps the project went really well, the parent got promoted, and family life became more enjoyable.
We could not have predicted that the friend who travelled to Australia was going to stay out there.
What advice would I give to someone I loved or cared about?
We are often our own worst critics, resulting in unhealthy and unproductive thinking and behaviour. If we could find kind words and attitudes towards others, we need to do the same for ourselves. The energy drain from putting ourselves down or feeling some vague pervasive guilt is unhelpful and ultimately means we have less resources to help others.
What have I learned?
If there is a lesson here, give yourself permission to take it and then move on (yes, I know, easier said than done).
Am I still punishing myself after I’ve done what I reasonably can?
If the answer is yes, it may be time to consider whether the guilt is still serving you and how you can learn to let it go.
How Coaching May Help
If guilt has become deeply ingrained, will-power alone will probably not help you let it go. We can get used to feeling a certain way, even if that way is having a negative impact on us. Our brains can feel threatened by change, so can hang on to emotions that are no longer serving us simply because they feel familiar.
Additionally, our emotional responses are influenced by our beliefs, habits, and experiences, particularly from our formative years. We are not always aware of them which then makes it difficult to know how to change them.
Coaching can provide a calm, safe space to explore some of these patterns and develop a different relationship with thoughts, beliefs, emotions and ultimately our actions.
We will not try to eliminate guilt altogether, but recognising when it is useful, taking positive healthy action and releasing unnecessary, unhealthy guilt can be a good place to start. Sometimes with negative, unhelpful emotions we dial down their intensity, rather like you would dial down a thermostat in a room that is too hot. That gives us more energy to focus on the positives, form strong, healthy relationships with clear boundaries and build on those values that really are important to us.
If you would like to know more, please do get in touch.
The To Do List
Do you ever add an item that you have recently completed to your ‘To Do’ list, just so you can cross it off? When I confess that I sometimes do this to my students, quite a few admit to doing the same. If you are now rolling your eyes and thinking ‘how pointless’, well, bear with me. We will all have our reasons for why we do things, everything we do will make sense on some level to us. It gives me a sense of satisfaction when I look back at the tasks I have completed. It’s said that we get a little hit of dopamine (the reward chemical) when we’ve achieved something and I like rewards, no matter how small.
We all have to find ways to motivate ourselves and get through our many tasks. I encourage my clients and students to reward themselves, particularly when they have reached a significant goal or outcome or taken the first steps towards this. The reward does not have to be expensive, it could be something simple like a coffee with a friend, but that reward can keep us repeating the same good behaviour we want to encourage in ourselves. A simple kind word or ‘well done’ can be a reward. I have seen people walk away from a conversation taller after someone paid them a compliment. It may seem odd, but I encourage clients to say ‘well done’ to themselves. It is easy to criticise ourselves if things aren’t going our way, but how often do we catch ourselves saying ‘well done, you got round to doing that’ or ‘well done, you handled that well’. If you don’t do it, you might like to give it a try. You might find your brain gets you to do that ‘good behaviour/helpful action’ more often. Rewards encourage and if you catch yourself doing something right, you may find you end up doing it right more often.
Now where’s my ‘To Do’ list? I can cross off ‘write that blog’….. 😊
‘So much to do, so little time’
I’ve worked with many CEOs over the years, and while they all had very different personalities, they often had similar problems in common. One of those key problems being; they never had enough time. In some ways this was a good problem to have. They were respected and their opinions were highly sought after. Others had to wait on their decisions. They were powerful and had influence. However, all this meant their working days started very early and finished very late and often there was no distinction between work and home.
When looked at initially, it was sometimes difficult for them to see how coaching could help. There were simply too many demands in their modern, busy work-life and not enough time. After a while though, with a little examination and effort, things started to shift. It could be a change in the way they prioritised, delegated, communicated, or tackled their work. It could even be ensuring they took some time away from their to-do list.
We can easily underestimate just how important that time-out from work is, in terms of productivity. Why we can sometimes have our most brilliant ideas in the shower, or when out for a walk. We all have a part of our brain that is hard-wired to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. The part of the brain that is all about survival, the flight/fright/freeze part. It is proud of the fact that we are still here and wants us to keep doing things the same way. To come out of that and go into our creative brains, can involve us moving away from tackling challenges with our usual methods. Sometimes we have to let our subconscious come into play or even out to play. With coaching there is time between appointments to allow this creative process to happen.
Additionally, many of our beliefs and world-views will have been formed in our early years. If we want to make significant changes, we occasionally need to challenge how we see ourselves and our roles.
Through clarifying current priorities, goals and values, combined with allowing the creative subconscious to come up with answers, clients are often amazed at just how effective and efficient their creative solutions can be.
A coach who helps you give yourself permission to occasionally take some time away from the day’s planned activities, may help you unlock some truly imaginative solutions that align with your objectives and values, those of your organisation and ultimately make you more productive.
Change then can feel subtle, but it can yield powerful results.
Procrastination
I have a friend who is terrible at prioritising. Back in a time when we were using letters more than emails, he used to keep a pile of papers beside his computer and he would aim to work through this pile of papers at various different times. At the top of the pile were some papers relating to registering his details for a loyalty card at his local supermarket. Somewhere in the middle of the pile, was a demand for payment of an outstanding bill. Due to the sporadic nature of his tackling of this paper work and the fact that he was easily distracted, he never got round to dealing with the bill. When the reminders came in, he put them to the bottom of the pile. You can probably guess what happened. It eventually led to bailiffs turning up at his house.
We can all procrastinate at various times in our lives over different decisions and we will have our reasons for doing so. I think for my friend he didn’t want to deal with the pain of having to pay a large bill. Of course the small relief he got from not paying the bill in the short-term led to a much larger pain in the long term and certainly a lot of stress over many months. For some it may be a fear of failure, trying something and not succeeding, and therefore feeling foolish. For others it can be fear of success. For example, if we do apply for that job and get it, we might need to stretch ourselves and push ourselves out of our comfort zone. That can be an uncomfortable feeling we want to put off. For those who are easily bored, phones and the internet provide the perfect excuse to put something off. There is always something more fun or interesting to be looking at.
Whatever your reasons for procrastination, coaching can help. We don’t necessarily analyse why you are procrastinating, but we do focus on what you want. When you have that clarity, we set some goals. Clarity is what the brain needs. Once you tell your brain exactly what you want, you may be surprised at how much simpler and often easier things become. Your picture of what you want has now gone into your mind’s eye and that will help keep you on track. Additionally we will have broken the goal or goals down into smaller, more achievable steps which gets the momentum going and means you hit smaller targets more quickly, thereby increasing your motivation and chances of achieving your final goal or dream.
Many years on, my friend has sorted his finances and is doing fine. But sometimes, when I get a text from him, I can’t help but smile and wonder what kind of administrative task he is trying to put off.