Guilt is a funny thing, honestly. You could be lounging about, doing absolutely nothing and feeling quite relaxed until it comes out of nowhere and sneaks into your skin. And just like that, you go from feeling normal to feeling like you’re the most horrible person on the planet.
It’s safe to say that this feeling of deliberating guilt isn’t exactly fun. Most times, it’s not even necessary because this guilt just comes in at the worst time to ruin your personal happiness. And it’s time you stop letting it — we’ll tell you how.
But first we’ll need to talk about why we feel this guilty and the different types of guilt that are present in life
Since guilt is an emotion constantly present in life, it’s not surprising that a lot of people have spoken at lengths about it and even divided this guilt into types, three types to be exact.
The first type of guilt is the pretty basic kind. It’s the kind of guilt you feel when you do something bad, like break a promise to a friend or miss out on a deadline you should not have missed out on. This type of guilt is actually semi-healthy in a way because at least it shows that you care.
However, this type of guilt can also fester into something ugly if you do not keep it at bay. At that point, it turns into the second type of guilt, the toxic kind that will rule your life if you let it roam free. With toxic guilt, you will never spend one full day from start to finish without feeling like something is wrong with your life or you, specifically.
This kind of guilt will let you believe that you’re a bad person who doesn’t deserve anything good when that is never the case. It’s this subsection that involves other subsections like survivor’s guilt (when you feel bad for things like having a roof over your head or succeeding at something when others didn’t) and religious guilt (self-explanatory).
The third type of guilt here is existential guilt, which is exactly what it sounds like. There’s no real cause for it — you just feel guilty all the time, to the point where guilt has become one of your core personality traits.
So why do you even feel guilty when you’re happy?
Well, that can be because of many, many things. For one thing, you don’t feel like you, personally, deserve this happiness. Maybe because you’ve done something bad once or you keep messing up and thinking that your mistakes should cost you your happiness. Maybe it’s because the people around you are sad or experiencing a loss of some sort and you feel like you should be experiencing that same feeling with them instead of any type of joy.
Whatever the case, you just don’t think you should be happy and if you must be, then you shouldn’t be happy right now — you should only be happy when everyone around you is happy and that is one incredibly toxic idea that you need to let go of.
See, many people will try to sell you in on this type of guilt. They may tell you this type of guilt, where you can only feel joy when others feel it, is selfless and noble and you should hold on to it. But that’s just a bunch of lies with a lot of ulterior motives hidden beneath them.
The person telling you this is using your guilt to use you as an emotional crutch or a punching bag. They could also just be borderline abusive or manipulative and utilize this guilt as a measure to gain control over you and you should not let it.
Within your circle, you should be responsible for your own happiness and no one else’s. We’re not saying this as “cut all emotional ties, live only for yourself” kind of deal — you can still help and offer emotional support, just don’t let it turn into extreme emotional labor that changes your outlook on life afterwards.
Now, how do you stop feeling guilty for being happy when others aren’t?
Here’s the hard part — you’ll have to consciously work on this next part, so you can overcome unnecessary feelings that cloud your deserved happiness. There are about 4 tips that will aid you in this overcoming process.
The first tip is the most important: look within yourself first. Yes, that’s it. When you feel guilty, there should be a reason why you actually feel guilty. If there’s nothing (usually there isn’t), then you know that you haven’t done anything wrong. But if you still feel like a bad undeserving person, then remind yourself that you actually aren’t. Remind yourself of everything you do, for yourself and others on a regular basis.
And this leads us to the next bit, which is actually appreciating the things you do and write them down, in your Notes App or on a piece of paper, and regularly look at what you’ve written. Give yourself the affirmation you need.
For the third tip, try to get out of the box a little and think about what you would do if the roles were reversed. What would you do if someone you dearly loved told you they felt like they didn’t deserve any kind of happiness? And naturally, you know the answer to this rhetorical question, you would have told this person that they do deserve happiness regardless of anything.
The final we tip we have here is that you should think about your needs and accept the conclusion that it’s okay to focus on them, to focus on your happiness for the time being because you cannot spend all your time focused on everyone else.
