On getting off the guilt merry-go-round

One of the things I have struggled through this past year after the event that screamed “enough is enough” for me, is guilt.

I’m not talking about legitimate guilt resulting from one’s own bad behaviors. I’m talking about the guilt disordered people try to engender in their prey in order to deflect attention away from themselves, the disordered.

I read of it here in the many ways victims are prone to obsess over our actions in the bad relationship, wondering “If I just hadn’t done _______________, he/she wouldn’t have _____________” as if the relationship is merely a cause and effect situation. Would that it were that easy to decipher and then fix.

Both kinds of guilt, legitimate and not, can be powerful behavior-shaping mechanisms, only the first kind, the kind we deserve, can serve a good end, prompting us to stop the offending behavior, getting help if needed.

The kind used by an abuser to control us does not have a good end, prompting us to constant introspection and self-focus leaving little, if any, room to discern what’s really going on.

The false guilt abusers want us to feel serves their end to shut us up, to make it “all about our bad,” and so rarely if ever about theirs.

False accusations (and their attendant false guilt) also keep us striving to “do better,” “stop the causal event,” and keep us on the abuser’s hook.

This kind of guilt is like acid to the spirit. And even after the relationship is over, it can still seep into the mind and bring us right back into the black hole of “shoulda, coulda, woulda’s.” …

Anybody relate?

Here is what has helped me through the past year, what helps me today:

-Making lists: my guilt/not my guilt

-Determining what I need to do to ameliorate the legitimate guilt and letting the other wash out of my mind

-Leaving the past in the past, working on today

-Remembering the positive efforts I did make to correct my legitimate guilt

-Remembering the positive efforts I did make to improve the relationship

-Understanding guilt as a control mechanism

-Understanding little is ever ‘black and white” in this world

-Understanding that even the “just” fall “seven time seven,” but can still “rise up again,” with God’s help, and move on (Proverbs 24:16).

I hope this is of some help to you, too.

Blessings and hope,
Abigail