There are many reasons why a person can come to experience the feeling of guilt and find themselves feeling bad and suffering because of it. However, among the main reasons we can highlight the following:

• Conditioning acquired from childhood. Generally, since we were little, we are always taught that we must behave well and act in a certain way, otherwise we will be failing to do the “right” thing. These conditionings are determined by moral issues dictated by society, religion, beliefs and our parents and/or guardians, among others.
• Need for recognition and approval . Since we were little, we tend to perform certain actions in order to gain approval from our parents, as this way we feel more loved and accepted. All this can be seen reflected in some situations in our relationship with other people, in which that feeling of approval that was created in us since childhood appears.
• Fear of feeling like “bad people”. Most people began to consider that the fact of not feeling guilty ends up turning them into “bad people”, which is why they are feeling guilty all the time.
• We are not responsible for our own actions. Some people prefer to carry the feeling of guilt throughout their lives instead of remedying what they did at some point, as this can result in a huge sacrifice for them.
• Thinking we deserve to feel that way. Many people cannot let go of their sense of guilt, as they really believe that they should be suffering and torturing themselves all the time for what they have done.
• We don’t respect our rules or those of others. Another aspect for which we tend to feel guilty about everything is because we feel that we have not respected our limits or personal rules that we have proposed. We can also feel guilty for not respecting other people’s boundaries.

1. Identify whether the guilt you feel is positive or negative. Remember that positive guilt is the one that invites you to improve, since if things can be resolved, they will be, and if not, you will learn from this situation and we will have a new experience that will help us to grow. Negative guilt is the one that is responsible for torturing us day after day and that leaves us no room for the new learning that life is giving us.
2. Consequences that bring guilt. Reflect on the consequences that came into your life as a result of feeling guilty. For example, among the most common consequences, are living worried and even stressed by constantly thinking about what happened and that can no longer be fixed, punishing yourself and feeling that you don’t deserve anything good in your life, torture yourself, unable to sleep, among others.
3. Why keep blaming yourself? Reflect on why you keep blaming yourself, for that you can consider the following questions: will this help you to improve? Will this bring solutions to the situation? If you blame yourself, do you feel like a better person? Among others.
4. What would happen if you stopped feeling guilty? Imagine what would happen if you let go of negative guilt, accepted only positive guilt, and lived more peacefully without continually torturing yourself. Think about what your life would be like and what you would like to change about it. Close your eyes and imagine yourself for a few minutes feeling free, without guilt, having new learning from every situation you’ve always blamed yourself for.
5. Learn to forgive. Are you ready to forgive? Self-forgiveness is essential in any recovery process. To that end, I highly recommend writing a list of all the things you’ve been blaming yourself for and finally stating that you’ve forgiven yourself. For example, you can put: I forgive myself for (the situation you need to forgive yourself for), the reason why you are doing this and how calm you feel now after forgiving you and released from that environment that was hurting you himself.

stop criticizing yourself

Sometimes people criticize themselves in an exaggerated, even ruthless way, with the result that the guilt we might normally feel is magnified and exaggerated for what it really is. We need to learn to be more merciful with ourselves and, if we are going to criticize, let it be in a constructive and not destructive way. It’s important to breathe and increase our self-respect.

we all make mistakes

When we feel guilty, we can come to feel that we are the only people in the world who have ever made a mistake and that this is the worst thing that can happen to us. As you know, the reality is that each and every one of us has made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes, it’s something we have to accept. Mistakes, if we consider what we should do, help us to continue developing as people and push us to be better and better.

There are situations that we cannot avoid

Another thing we must accept is that we cannot control everything. In fact, we lack control over most situations that happen in life. An example that is very common in this type of cases is that some people tend to blame themselves for things like the death of a loved one, in which we feel that we could have done something because it didn’t happen. However, this is not the case and we have to learn to forgive ourselves.

Offer help to yourself

If you made a mistake and intentionally or unintentionally harmed someone else, you may not be able to fix it. However, there are many other things that can be done to improve it, for example, change your attitude towards this person, help him in what you can, in a nutshell, show him your sincere regret through your actions.