Speaker 1: Pushkin. Nearly every night, before I head to bed, I
Speaker 1: pull out my little red date book and update my
Speaker 1: to do list for the next day. The list is
Speaker 1: usually pretty long, but if I actually put down everything
Speaker 1: I wanted to get done, it would probably sound something
Speaker 1: like this. Meditate for ten minutes, go to a yoga class,
Speaker 1: crept from my happiness course, bring the car in for
Speaker 1: an oil change, think about some cool new guest for
Speaker 1: the podcast, don't get behind on that inbox, get in
Speaker 1: some quality times with my weake, time to have more fun,
Speaker 1: get eight hours of sleep, and so on. Now, when
Speaker 1: I think about it rationally, I realize it's literally impossible
Speaker 1: to get all those things done in a single day.
Speaker 1: But no matter how much do, I constantly feel bad
Speaker 1: about how much I didn't do. And that is the awful, yucky,
Speaker 1: not good enough feeling that we'll be digging into today
Speaker 1: because in this episode in our season on Difficult Emotions,
Speaker 1: we're going to examine guilt. I think guilt shown up
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways for me that I wasn't
Speaker 1: even noticing as guilt. But on one particular morning when
Speaker 1: my son was in kindergarten, I think it was just
Speaker 1: kind of the epitome of guilt taking over. This is
Speaker 1: Valerie Briton. She's the author of Let Go of the Guilt,
Speaker 1: Stop beating yourself up, and take back your joy. She
Speaker 1: hit her rock bottom with guilt over a bowl of cereal.
Speaker 1: We were getting ready and my son always wants just
Speaker 1: some cereal, like he wants dry cereal and a cup
Speaker 1: of milk, which for me is guilt inducing because my
Speaker 1: mother made a full out Southern breakfast grits, eggs, bacon,
Speaker 1: orange shoes, toast, so cereal for me was always just
Speaker 1: a snack. I eat rice crispies after school, so I
Speaker 1: already you know there's this thing of seal, but it's
Speaker 1: what he wants. He doesn't like eggs, he doesn't want
Speaker 1: the other stuff. And so just as we were leaving
Speaker 1: on this particular morning, my son says, Mommy, can I
Speaker 1: eat my cereal at the table today? And immediately, because
Speaker 1: I knew we really didn't have time to do that,
Speaker 1: I felt guilty about the prospect of saying no, and
Speaker 1: so rather than saying what I knew I needed to say,
Speaker 1: I let guilt step in and say, well, we have
Speaker 1: to do it really fast, which you know you're talking
Speaker 1: to a five or six year old and really fast
Speaker 1: is not really fast. So by the time we get
Speaker 1: out of the door, I'm like, we are not we
Speaker 1: are going to be so late. And the problem was
Speaker 1: my son schools across town and there's a bus that
Speaker 1: comes to our areas. I have to get him to
Speaker 1: the bus otherwise if we've missed the bus. It's about
Speaker 1: a twenty five minute drive to the school. And so
Speaker 1: we're racing up the street like my hands are just
Speaker 1: gripping the steering wheel, my shoulders are tight. We get
Speaker 1: to the parking lot where the usually waits, and I'm
Speaker 1: turning in so fast that I hit a curb and
Speaker 1: bust attire. And I still don't stop because I can't
Speaker 1: go that fast, but I can hear like the rubber
Speaker 1: from the tire like smacking the street. As I continue,
Speaker 1: I see the bus and the bus is moving and
Speaker 1: taking off, and I'm like, maybe he'll see me. I'm
Speaker 1: sure not be recognized my car. The bus driver stops,
Speaker 1: I get Alex off, I get him on the bus,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, what just happened? And thinking back on it,
Speaker 1: like when I even tried to explain it to my husband,
Speaker 1: I was like it was guilt. I felt so guilty
Speaker 1: that all he wanted was to sit at the team,
Speaker 1: which would have been fine if he had asked fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes sooner. I felt guilty that I was feeding him
Speaker 1: cereal for breakfast instead of what my mom normally fed me.
Speaker 1: And so what I realized is that so often what
Speaker 1: happens is we allow guilt to get in the driver's seat.
Speaker 1: It's natural to feel any sort of negative emotion, but
Speaker 1: what you don't want to for that emotion to take
Speaker 1: over your decisions. And that's what happened that morning, which
Speaker 1: was fairly expensive, as I called the tow truck and
Speaker 1: waited for an uber to pick me up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love this story because it's so relatable, right, it
Speaker 1: has so many of the features of what happens to
Speaker 1: me when I'm going through this process of guilt, right,
Speaker 1: Like one is that you have this awful flurry of
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough thoughts over and over again, like
Speaker 1: I'm not my mother, what kind of mother? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I pop, that's hire. But the other is just the
Speaker 1: way that gilt can cause these automatic reactions to take over,
Speaker 1: you know, So talk about how this played out in
Speaker 1: You're a scenario and why it's so powerful that we
Speaker 1: need to kind of pay attention to this so we
Speaker 1: can recognize guilt. Well, it happens so fast. I mean
Speaker 1: it was probably not even two seconds before I had
Speaker 1: already answered his question, but a whole movie had played
Speaker 1: out in my mind before I answered it. You know, Mommy,
Speaker 1: can I eat at the table? And immediately like I
Speaker 1: had this flashback to being a kid in Germany and
Speaker 1: one morning my mother fitting me cereal. I thought she
Speaker 1: was just feeding me a snack, and when we got
Speaker 1: ready to go, I was like, where's my breakfast? Like
Speaker 1: all of this played in my head, even my mother's
Speaker 1: own guilt at trying to give me serial because it
Speaker 1: was going to be faster and than me having the
Speaker 1: reaction if I can't believe you're sending me to school
Speaker 1: with no breakfast. I think, particularly women, we are more
Speaker 1: guilt prone. The research shows that what happened for me
Speaker 1: is that I started talking about guilt very casually as
Speaker 1: I would be speaking around the country, and I just
Speaker 1: noticed that women in particular had a very strong reaction.
Speaker 1: It would be like a collective side if I just
Speaker 1: said the word guilt and I began wondering if we
Speaker 1: were more guilt prone, and I realized men also feel
Speaker 1: guilt at Men feel guilty around different things, and they
Speaker 1: process it very differently. So oftentimes, as women, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about our guilt, men are perplexed. There's even some
Speaker 1: research showing that women feel more guilty if we have
Speaker 1: to work after hours. Whether we're married, or have kids
Speaker 1: or anything else, still feel guilty like we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing that. And so when you become more
Speaker 1: aware of your own guilt triggers, you can start to
Speaker 1: be more intentional about really seeing those before they hijack
Speaker 1: your decisions and your actions. And one of the simplest
Speaker 1: things you can do is just label the emotion. Right
Speaker 1: it comes and you go, ah, that's guilt, and it
Speaker 1: just interrupts the thought pattern. There's guilt there it is,
Speaker 1: and you have an opportunity once you interrupted, to be
Speaker 1: intentional about what action you're going to take next. And
Speaker 1: so I think an understanding guilt it might help us
Speaker 1: to kind of define what it is. So give me
Speaker 1: a definition of guilt. What is it? Guilt basically is
Speaker 1: us saying either we've done something wrong or we feel
Speaker 1: like we've done something wrong. Those two things are not
Speaker 1: the same, even though they can feel the same. So
Speaker 1: I've done something wrong. Is very clear you've done something wrong.
Speaker 1: You probably need to atone for it, try to make
Speaker 1: up for it, fix the problem. If you just feel
Speaker 1: like you've done something wrong, you can still behave as
Speaker 1: though you're guilty. And so, because guilt says I owe
Speaker 1: there's a debt that I owe right, we will go
Speaker 1: about trying to pay for whatever it is we feel
Speaker 1: we've done wrong. And so this false sense of guilt
Speaker 1: is very different from authentic guilt, and yet we can
Speaker 1: react in very much the same way. So the single
Speaker 1: parent who feels guilty that their child doesn't have the
Speaker 1: other parent every day, who overcompensates, who knows they're spoiling them,
Speaker 1: who knows they're not disciplining them about something, in the
Speaker 1: same way, but they feel they owe right. Guilt is
Speaker 1: a debt that can try to make up for the
Speaker 1: fact that things aren't perfect. So I'm going to overdo it.
Speaker 1: And so we can see how the false guilt can
Speaker 1: cause us to make decisions that are productive. And this
Speaker 1: idea of false gill is really powerful, right, because it
Speaker 1: kind of explains why we're going through so much guilt nowadays.
Speaker 1: Right you know, you talked about going to give talks
Speaker 1: to so many people and you ask about guilt, and
Speaker 1: you have a whole audience of thousands of people nodding like, yep,
Speaker 1: I have guilt too, And it doesn't feel like we're
Speaker 1: all doing actual harmful things to other people, right, you know,
Speaker 1: And so talk about the prevalence of this false guilt.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's kind of everywhere right now. So
Speaker 1: false guilt can occur from successes, false gilt can occur
Speaker 1: from guilt trippers in our lives. Right. So people will
Speaker 1: use guilt to manipulate you. But you can't be manipulated
Speaker 1: unless in some way you might agree or you might
Speaker 1: not have come to terms with your own values of
Speaker 1: what really matters. Now you are kind of participating in
Speaker 1: that and allowing them to get you to do things
Speaker 1: you wouldn't normally do because you're feeling guilty. So it
Speaker 1: shows up in a lot of different ways. And what
Speaker 1: I found is that oftentimes we don't even realize that
Speaker 1: it's guilt, even if it's just that feeling I'm not
Speaker 1: doing enough, I'm not doing enough oftentimes that's a sense
Speaker 1: of guilt somehow I'm not working hard enough for I've
Speaker 1: been given more than I ought to be entitled to.
Speaker 1: And so that sense of guilt can really cause us
Speaker 1: to take actions or not to take actions that if
Speaker 1: we didn't feel guilty, perhaps we'd make some different choices.
Speaker 1: And so you've argued that even this false guilt might
Speaker 1: be there to teach us something that is kind of
Speaker 1: giving us an important message. What do you mean by this, Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's really important for us when we are
Speaker 1: feeling guilty and we label that guilt, Ah, that's guilt,
Speaker 1: that we kind of peel back the layers and we
Speaker 1: ask ourselves, did I actually do something wrong? Again? Guilt
Speaker 1: is indicated you've done something wrong or you feel like
Speaker 1: you have. And oftentimes if we get really honest with ourselves,
Speaker 1: we discover now I have it. Actually, I've found for
Speaker 1: a lot of people that resetting their expectations is a
Speaker 1: big part of this process. So oftentimes expectations are put
Speaker 1: upon you, right, so people tell you what they're expecting,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have a strong sense of your
Speaker 1: own expectations of yourself, others expectations will then guide what
Speaker 1: you are saying is right or wrong, and so some
Speaker 1: of this requires getting quiet, asking yourself some very basic
Speaker 1: but profound questions, Why am I doing what I'm doing?
Speaker 1: Am I actually doing something wrong? Does this line up
Speaker 1: with my values? When you do that work, there's a
Speaker 1: freedom that begins to come. Feeling guilty doesn't just feel crappy.
Speaker 1: You can also lead us to get stuck in the
Speaker 1: past and to make bad decisions in the future. We
Speaker 1: wind up caught and that happiness sapping cycle of rumination.
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll learn more ways to identify when
Speaker 1: our guilt is faults and some strategies to feel better
Speaker 1: when it is. We'll also hear how we can handle
Speaker 1: guilt in cases in which we did actually do something wrong.
Speaker 1: The happiness lab will be right back. Some days I
Speaker 1: feel like I can't get out from the way of
Speaker 1: my own guilt. I get remorseful about the things I've
Speaker 1: done and all the things I didn't do. I feel
Speaker 1: guilty for letting myself down and for not doing the
Speaker 1: best for others. And then I even start to feel
Speaker 1: guilty about feeling guilty all the time. For me, this
Speaker 1: guilt upon guilt upon guilt cycle can feel really overwhelming.
Speaker 1: So I was surprised to hear from author and guilt
Speaker 1: expert Valerie Britain that being a guilt prone person may
Speaker 1: have some benefits. Look, there's actually an upside to guilt
Speaker 1: that I was pretty excited about. Made me feel better
Speaker 1: about it all. So when you are a person who
Speaker 1: number one cares about what other people think, right, you
Speaker 1: can overdo that. But it's actually a very good thing
Speaker 1: to care about other people and your impact on other people.
Speaker 1: You're going to be more guilt prone in those who
Speaker 1: have the trait of conscientiousness, which is a very strong
Speaker 1: feeling about right and wrong and how you ought to
Speaker 1: do things. Those people tend towards guilt, as people also
Speaker 1: tend towards being better managers, better t in relationship with
Speaker 1: and so it's important for us to not say, you know,
Speaker 1: guilt is bad. Guilt is actually a guide. It's a
Speaker 1: really important guide to help you do what's right, to
Speaker 1: help you avoid what is wrong. So when guilt comes up,
Speaker 1: it's not like I shouldn't feel guilt, because again, authentic
Speaker 1: guilt is actually a guide for you in terms of
Speaker 1: doing what's right and wrong. And then one of the
Speaker 1: big benefits. It seems like we can get from understanding
Speaker 1: our guilt better is that when we experienced guilt, it
Speaker 1: can tell us when our actions are really misaligned with
Speaker 1: our values and our expectations. You experience this a little bit,
Speaker 1: I think in the scenario you talked about with Breakfast,
Speaker 1: So talk a little bit about why that guilt was
Speaker 1: a misalignment with maybe expectations and values that weren't really
Speaker 1: good for you at the time. You know, I mentioned
Speaker 1: the guilt with that little incident with my son, that
Speaker 1: I had a lot of guilt that came up around motherhood.
Speaker 1: I was over forty before I became a mom. I
Speaker 1: had this vision at twenty that I wanted to have
Speaker 1: my own business. I wanted to write books, and that
Speaker 1: that would give me the flexibility and freedom to have
Speaker 1: a great career and also have a family. I found
Speaker 1: myself finally reaching my vision, having the career, being an author,
Speaker 1: having a family, and yet still feeling oftentimes guilty. So
Speaker 1: even when I would be out speaking, I would feel
Speaker 1: guilty for being away from home, even if it was
Speaker 1: just overnight. So one of the things I did, and
Speaker 1: I did it through journaling, was I started asking myself
Speaker 1: what are you feeling guilty about? Exactly? Okay, what are
Speaker 1: your values around this? And what I discovered is I
Speaker 1: had these very old fashioned thoughts and voices that were
Speaker 1: playing in my head about what it meant to be
Speaker 1: a mother, what it meant to have a career, what
Speaker 1: it meant to be a woman. And I had to
Speaker 1: get really clear, is this what I believe that I
Speaker 1: should be home with my son. My husband was the
Speaker 1: one that actually reminded me of my own vision that
Speaker 1: that was never my vision. My vision was always having
Speaker 1: a business and having a family so that I could
Speaker 1: have flexibility. So when I began to own that and
Speaker 1: really peeling back the layers meant saying, so what harm
Speaker 1: do you think you're doing to your son or to
Speaker 1: your family? And I was like, actually, when I'm gone,
Speaker 1: especially when my mother decides she's going to come over
Speaker 1: and help, and my son isn't even missing me. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: Grandmammy's here, he's excited. I realized when I really peeled
Speaker 1: back the layers that the things I was feeling guilty
Speaker 1: about were basically non existent. And so that helped me
Speaker 1: clarify my values around entrepreneurship, around living a life of
Speaker 1: purpose around contributing to my family in a very significant
Speaker 1: way and showing our children what's possible. So I had
Speaker 1: to slow down and really push back. My mother was
Speaker 1: at home when I was a kid, and then when
Speaker 1: I went off to school, she started working. She never
Speaker 1: suggested that I needed to follow her path. And yet
Speaker 1: when I got really honest with myself, I realized I
Speaker 1: was looking around me. I was in a neighborhood with
Speaker 1: a lot of stay at home moms. People would make comments,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, you're gone so much, and I actually wasn't
Speaker 1: gone that much, but that was their perception. And if
Speaker 1: you're going to take back your joy from guilt, at
Speaker 1: some point you really do have to say, is this
Speaker 1: what I believe too? Or do I have a different
Speaker 1: set of values for my own family. Another thing you've
Speaker 1: argued we need to look into more deeply, and this
Speaker 1: was really helpful for me reading the book, was we
Speaker 1: sometimes have expectations that aren't necessarily helping us. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite ideas that you talk about in the book
Speaker 1: are cases where we have what you might call vague expectations.
Speaker 1: You know, so talk about vague expectations. This is something
Speaker 1: that plagues me a lot, I think. So the vague
Speaker 1: expectations are, you know, I'm going to lose weight, I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat better, work more, or whatever it happens
Speaker 1: to be. It's not defined, and so no matter what
Speaker 1: we do, there's a possibility that we haven't quite met
Speaker 1: the expectation because we never defined it. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to work out more, Well, maybe you did. Maybe last
Speaker 1: week you didn't work out at all, and this week
Speaker 1: you worked out twice, but you feel guilty because you
Speaker 1: still haven't done enough because you never clearly defined what
Speaker 1: enough is. And so when you find yourself in the
Speaker 1: hole I'm not done enough or I need to do more,
Speaker 1: ask well, how much would be enough? How much is more?
Speaker 1: Because oftentimes we've never clarified that and the guilt that
Speaker 1: we feel, you can nip it in the bud by
Speaker 1: defining what that means. So if working out twice this
Speaker 1: week is enough, great, you don't need to feel guilty.
Speaker 1: And another thing I think that crops up with these
Speaker 1: vague expectations is that we tend to have them in
Speaker 1: every domain. Right. You know, we feel like I should
Speaker 1: do more as a parent, I should do more at work,
Speaker 1: I should do more in terms of my personal life
Speaker 1: and my health. But then when you add these things up,
Speaker 1: you simply can't do more in all of these different domains, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, is this something you see coming up with
Speaker 1: your clients too. Yeah, we are living in a society
Speaker 1: now where we're constantly looking at what we think everyone
Speaker 1: else is doing right, But no matter what we're doing,
Speaker 1: the upward social comparisons really can not only dampen our
Speaker 1: joy but bring more guilt. And so being very intentional
Speaker 1: about setting those expectations in a reasonable way and noticing
Speaker 1: when they're harmful. When you have unrealistic expectations that cannot
Speaker 1: be met, or maybe they can't be met in this season,
Speaker 1: give yourself permission to change that expectation. You know, when
Speaker 1: I married my husband and suddenly was a bonus mom
Speaker 1: to two girls. Leading up to that time, in the
Speaker 1: prior five years, I had written a book a year.
Speaker 1: In those previous five years, I had gone through divorce,
Speaker 1: I was single, I didn't have anyone else to take
Speaker 1: care of. I didn't even have a dog anymore. It's
Speaker 1: just like, so oftentimes I was writing late. I might
Speaker 1: write on weekends because I'm a recovering procrastinator. So I'm
Speaker 1: pushing to those French times, right. And we got married,
Speaker 1: and so the first book was due and I found
Speaker 1: it really hard to write it. I got it written,
Speaker 1: but it was hard. And then the next year my
Speaker 1: son came along and I couldn't do it, and I
Speaker 1: just had to call the publisher and say, I cannot
Speaker 1: get this to you. I'm going to need to take
Speaker 1: a year off. I just like I've been waiting my
Speaker 1: whole life that this might happen, right, that I might
Speaker 1: get to have a child, And here I am, I
Speaker 1: can't do it. I had to change the expectation in
Speaker 1: that season. Great, I wrote a book a year, but
Speaker 1: I can't do that anymore. And that's really this idea
Speaker 1: that you talk about of outdated expectations, right. You know,
Speaker 1: those might have been expectations that work before, maybe pre pandemic,
Speaker 1: they worked maybe at a different time of your life.
Speaker 1: But it can be really hard to be compassionate enough
Speaker 1: with yourself to update these expectations. It can. We're also
Speaker 1: good at beating ourselves up. Self compassion is absolutely critical.
Speaker 1: Outdated expectations often lead us to I did it before,
Speaker 1: I did it before, but before you didn't have these
Speaker 1: other responsibilities or these other circumstances that are very real.
Speaker 1: How do you want to show up now? What's reasonable
Speaker 1: now and what's important now? That's the other very critical question,
Speaker 1: And so I had to decide in those early years.
Speaker 1: My son is still a baby. I don't want to
Speaker 1: miss this time because I'm stressed out about a deadline.
Speaker 1: It'll be there, I'll still right. But right now my
Speaker 1: focus is really here. And so we have to give
Speaker 1: ourselves permission. We have to show ourselves some grace. So
Speaker 1: go easy on yourself. How do we deal with it
Speaker 1: when the guilt is real? We've forgotten someone's birthday, you know,
Speaker 1: we've said something inappropriate to our spouse or something like that,
Speaker 1: because sometimes, you know, we really have messed something up.
Speaker 1: That's a really great question, because sometimes we really have
Speaker 1: done something wrong right, and we need to deal with it.
Speaker 1: And that takes some courage because it depends on what
Speaker 1: you say to yourself about being guilty of something, and
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, it's a sense of denial,
Speaker 1: which is the worst approach. So being able to one except, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did something wrong and I'm going to take responsibility
Speaker 1: for it. So I give six a's in the book
Speaker 1: around when you really are guilty. So one is just admitted, right,
Speaker 1: you're just acknowledging, Hey, I did something wrong, I caused
Speaker 1: harm in some way. The second is just to assess it.
Speaker 1: You know, what is the harm that I caused? And
Speaker 1: this can be hard to look at, but be willing, kescourage,
Speaker 1: be willing, and then apologize and it's that real apology,
Speaker 1: right Who do you owe an apology too? It might
Speaker 1: be more than one person, And what specifically would a
Speaker 1: sincere apology sound like? Not only stating what's wrong, but
Speaker 1: acknowledging the impact on that person and apologizing for your
Speaker 1: contribution whatever that happened to be. And then whenever you
Speaker 1: can atoning for it, how can I make amends? Some
Speaker 1: things you can't undo, but you can certainly at least
Speaker 1: try not to make the situation worse. And if there's
Speaker 1: a consequence of a way that you could pay back
Speaker 1: in any way, Again, it just depends on the circumstance,
Speaker 1: do what you can. And that's where this fifth one
Speaker 1: comes in, which is just a just your behavior. That's
Speaker 1: a big one. It's not okay to apologize and just
Speaker 1: keep doing the same thing, right, and then lastly accept forgiveness.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times we withhold the forgiveness from
Speaker 1: ourselves and so being able to accept it from the
Speaker 1: other person to be thankful if they're willing to give it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're not going to give it. Sometimes there's not
Speaker 1: an opportunity. I mean, it might be someone who's moved on,
Speaker 1: who's passed away, and that's when you really do have
Speaker 1: to do the work of being able to forgive yourself
Speaker 1: for your own humanity, for things she can't change, so
Speaker 1: that she can eventually just move forward. Feeling guilty can
Speaker 1: be an honest signal that we've screwed something up and
Speaker 1: that we need to take steps to make it right.
Speaker 1: But once we've done that, we can forgive ourselves and
Speaker 1: let that guilt go. Case closed. But sometimes guilt isn't
Speaker 1: really about having done something wrong. It's based on outdated, vague,
Speaker 1: or even unreasonable expectations about the kind of person we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be. We'll talk about some concrete strategies we
Speaker 1: can use to reset these not so good expectations and
Speaker 1: lose the unhelpful remorse that goes with them. When the
Speaker 1: happiness lab returns in a moment life coaching author Valerie
Speaker 1: Burton argues that we can learn something from our feelings
Speaker 1: of guilt, but only once we've determined whether our guilty
Speaker 1: feelings are actually warranted in the first place. One of
Speaker 1: the big opportunities that happened for me was recognizing that
Speaker 1: my guilt was actually it was fear happiness as a risk,
Speaker 1: and guilt is safe. I realized that I never allowed
Speaker 1: myself to fully be happy. Guilt was the thing that
Speaker 1: dampened my happiness, and it was a tool I was
Speaker 1: using out of fear that my happiness wouldn't stay around,
Speaker 1: that something was going to come up that wasn't going
Speaker 1: to go my way. And so if I get too happy,
Speaker 1: that's really risky. But if I put a little guilt
Speaker 1: in there, things aren't. I mean, they could be great,
Speaker 1: but they're not that great. I felt safe that way.
Speaker 1: That for me was a real eye opener. I had
Speaker 1: never thought of guilt as something that was safe for me,
Speaker 1: that I was choosing when I didn't have to. And
Speaker 1: so the first step of embracing this opportunity really is
Speaker 1: to notice and allow that you're feeling guilt. Talk about
Speaker 1: the science of how it can be powerful to label
Speaker 1: our emotions. Ah, well, there's something that happens when we
Speaker 1: have an emotion. This happens even when the emotion is
Speaker 1: quote unquote positive emotion. Right. One, It's our thoughts that
Speaker 1: lead to our emotions, and so those thoughts of guilt,
Speaker 1: I've done something wrong, I am wrong, whatever the case
Speaker 1: might be. Or really what leads to the feeling the
Speaker 1: emotion of guilt. It relates back to cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1: Right what are you thinking and what does that lead
Speaker 1: to in terms of your actions and your emotions. The
Speaker 1: real key is to practice thought awareness, to practice noticing
Speaker 1: what you're saying to yourself that's leading to the guilt
Speaker 1: and having the discipline to discern whether it's valid or not.
Speaker 1: Have I actually done something wrong or am I just
Speaker 1: feeling that I've done something wrong? If it's just a feeling,
Speaker 1: how might I change the thought so that it leads
Speaker 1: to a new feeling? You know? I gave an example
Speaker 1: in the book of a woman who had had a
Speaker 1: child very young. She'd gotten pregnant in her senior year
Speaker 1: of high school, which she number one felt guilty about,
Speaker 1: but even more she felt guilty because her daughter didn't
Speaker 1: have a father. Later she married and she had a
Speaker 1: second child. Wonderful husband, great dad to both girls. But
Speaker 1: the continual guilt was the guilt that the younger child
Speaker 1: had a different and more stable experience than the older child.
Speaker 1: And so it was very interesting as I did that
Speaker 1: particular interview of the things that this mom had never
Speaker 1: even asked herself or really thought about just her hardness.
Speaker 1: She was very hard on the older one of You've
Speaker 1: got to do this, and then this, and then this,
Speaker 1: and so anything that went wrong, even if it wasn't
Speaker 1: anything really wrong, she blamed it on well, if I
Speaker 1: had not had my child so young, if she had
Speaker 1: had this better experience in her early years, if I
Speaker 1: had not been trying to go to school and work
Speaker 1: at the same time. And what we realize is she's
Speaker 1: saying to herself that, Okay, my daughter got to see
Speaker 1: because because of all of these things. We start talking
Speaker 1: it through, Well, what about her friends that didn't have
Speaker 1: that experience, are they all doing perfectly? Well? Well, no,
Speaker 1: actually she's doing better than there. So then what really
Speaker 1: are you saying to yourself? A lot of times we
Speaker 1: don't really question our thoughts and how our thoughts are
Speaker 1: leading us to feel things that may or may not
Speaker 1: actually be rooted in the truth. One method that you've
Speaker 1: given folks to kind of think about their thoughts better
Speaker 1: is this peel method. What is the peel method? Yes,
Speaker 1: so peel is just an acronym and it's really simple,
Speaker 1: and it's really about you being able to peel back
Speaker 1: the layers to see is this authentic guilt or false guilt?
Speaker 1: So the first P and peel is simply PenPoint your
Speaker 1: guilt trigger. What is it that's really triggering you're guilt?
Speaker 1: And for a lot of people, they know what that
Speaker 1: guilt trigger is. Right, for me, it's often been something
Speaker 1: with my son. Whatever, you it may be something else.
Speaker 1: The E the first EAT is examined the thought, so
Speaker 1: what am I saying to myself about this guilt trigger?
Speaker 1: What am I saying that's causing me to feel I've
Speaker 1: done something wrong? The second eas exchanged the life for
Speaker 1: the truth. So each time you notice that there's an
Speaker 1: inaccurate thought, you're asking what would be a more accurate
Speaker 1: thought about the situation. So in the example of the
Speaker 1: woman who's saying, and my daughter doesn't have straight a's
Speaker 1: because I had her young and blah blah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: A more accurate thought is, you know, she just has
Speaker 1: a hard time in that subject. We need to get
Speaker 1: her some help. I don't have to give this whole
Speaker 1: explanation that may or may not have anything to do
Speaker 1: with the real reason why she doesn't have a higher
Speaker 1: grade in this class. And then the alice list your evidence.
Speaker 1: What's the evidence that supports the truthful thought about this situation.
Speaker 1: So as I just gave that example, what is my
Speaker 1: evidence that it's not about the past? Well, the evidence
Speaker 1: is that a lot of kids are having a hard
Speaker 1: time in this class, and my daughter isn't expressing anything
Speaker 1: that tells me that she's struggling with these things I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. So you actually start listing the evidence. It's
Speaker 1: not just telling yourself that there's a different truth. It's
Speaker 1: actually telling yourself the truth and then listing your evidence
Speaker 1: for that truth. I'd let this process because it allows
Speaker 1: you to do something that we know is so powerful
Speaker 1: when you're trying to switch your thoughts around, which is
Speaker 1: that you're really harnessing curiosity. You know what am I
Speaker 1: really thinking here? But also what's the evidence for that?
Speaker 1: Not judgmentally, but just kind of being curious about where
Speaker 1: this stuff came from. I mean, have you seen that
Speaker 1: this pl technique can really work? Do you have examples
Speaker 1: of this being really powerful? Resolutely? I am amazed at
Speaker 1: the things that people are able to let go up.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's the mother daughter guilt. I was amazed at
Speaker 1: how many stories of that I got as I began
Speaker 1: writing the book, researching and then hearing from readers. I
Speaker 1: won't go into detail about like why is there mother
Speaker 1: daughter guilt? But there seems to be a lot of,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling like you've got to live up to
Speaker 1: these certain expectations. A lot of times our upbringing from
Speaker 1: a religious standpoint can have all sorts of expectations that
Speaker 1: somehow you need to be perfect, you need to be
Speaker 1: so very good in every way. Inevitably you're going to
Speaker 1: fall short and the guilt is going to come in.
Speaker 1: So I really believe that the biggest outcome is when
Speaker 1: you're able to just accept where you are. And it
Speaker 1: really does require a bit of humility to say I
Speaker 1: won't always get things perfect, and that's okay because I'm human.
Speaker 1: I don't have to beat myself up. Beating your self
Speaker 1: up literally is about you feeling that that guilt, that
Speaker 1: debt that you owe, and if no one else is
Speaker 1: going to make you pay, you're going to make you pay.
Speaker 1: And when you realize I don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: I can give myself some grace. I can let go
Speaker 1: of the guilt. I can literally just say it is
Speaker 1: what it is. Now, how am I going to grow
Speaker 1: from it? What can I learn from it? But beating
Speaker 1: myself up does not need to be a part of
Speaker 1: the equation, and so getting comfortable with that, I think
Speaker 1: can be a big step for many people who are perfectionists,
Speaker 1: who feel like they have to get it all right
Speaker 1: or they fail completely, instead saying I don't have to
Speaker 1: get it all right, and in fact I can't, and
Speaker 1: here I am still trying. When we start to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves the right questions, we can come to see false
Speaker 1: guilt for what it is, false, fake, simply not warranted.
Speaker 1: In addition to making us feel less guilty, this process
Speaker 1: can also help help us connect to what our true
Speaker 1: values really are. So whenever I start to go into
Speaker 1: guilt overload, I'm going to plan to use Valerie's Peel method.
Speaker 1: I'll try to pinpoint my triggers, really examine my thoughts
Speaker 1: exchange all those lies for the truth and start to
Speaker 1: list the evidence. And when all those unchecked boxes on
Speaker 1: my to do list make me feel like I'm not
Speaker 1: good enough or doing enough, I'll just add one more
Speaker 1: item to the list, give myself a little grace, and
Speaker 1: I'll plan to check that one off right away. I
Speaker 1: hope you've learned some strategies that you can use to
Speaker 1: reset your relationship with guilt, and I hope you'll come
Speaker 1: back to hear the next episode of The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you love this show
Speaker 1: and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
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Speaker 1: As a special gift to Pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be
Speaker 1: sharing a series of six guided meditations to help you
Speaker 1: practice the lessons we've learned from our experts. Pushkin Plus
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Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. The Happiness Lab is
Speaker 1: co written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Anne Vaughan,
Speaker 1: and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver,
Speaker 1: with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Milabelle Heather Fame, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Brant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and Nate Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts,