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                   Guilt, identity and being stuck

I’m writing this in response to a counseling session I had a while back, and I feel it is important to express my thoughts on it. It concerns feelings of guilt and how damaging it can be, and how we can move on from being stuck in our “illness stories.”

Firstly what is our “Story”? Our “story” is our how we see ourselves and our life, it is our identity. And that can include all kinds of things from what we do as a living, to any illnesses we have both physical and psychological. It is true to say that it is quite normal to think that all of these things are who we are, and that without them….who would we be?

We are all searching for an identity, something to say “look, this is me, this is who I am”.  And when we have been a certain way for pretty much most of our lives, or even just a few years then this becomes integrated into our psyche as part of our true self and even cannot imagine being any other way….so no matter how much we say we want to change and to be free of the burden of depression, or lack of confidence or whatever it is, our sub-conscious minds will usually over ride that conscious desire. Why is this? It is simply because it our sub-conscious minds sole purpose to protect us and keep us from harm whatever the cost. It is a very primitive part of the brain, and is basically reactive, and behaves just like an animal would when under threat. So at a sub-conscious level we see being free of these things as a threat to our survival, our issues are somehow providing us with protection, and/or with an identity, and we would be vulnerable or even invisible without them. So as long as we feel vulnerable or lacking confidence in ourselves, how the hell can we be expected to just drop our defenses?

The conflict within comes from wanting two opposite things at once, and feelings of guilt. On one hand we want to be free of depression, but on the other we are scared to be free of it. And while we are in this depressed and angry state, we might do or say hurtful things to loved ones which we regret, but can’t help. So of course this brings up feelings of guilt which compound the already angry feelings. My client feels exactly this way, just the thought that they may have been sub-consciously keeping themselves depressed brought up huge feelings of guilt about things they regret doing while in that angry state, thinking that they had wanted to be depressed therefore it was all their fault.

This is so far from the truth, and when we can understand the nature of the sub-conscious and how it behaves, we will no longer blame ourselves, for we behaved in the only way we could considering our view of the world at that time.

We can begin to change when we face our fears, if we run away and blame ourselves when we realize we have been holding ourselves back, we are not understanding ourselves and can’t change. Coming to this realization means that we have gained a deeper insight into our fears, and can use this as a tool to heal them. If we regret our past, we cannot learn from it. If we feel guilt, we cannot move on to the next level because that too will hold us back.

So how can this help us change and become free? We have to realize that who we really are is not our life story, it is not our job, it is not the depression how we are feeling at any given time. All these things are temporary, they change all the time, one day we might not feel as depressed as the day before, our feelings are always changing. Our true selves never change, the “I” that is our being NEVER changes. You always experience yourself as ‘I” in the now no matter what happens to you. What you once considered your identity are really just events that happened to you in the past. They are just your experiences and labels. So if you are diagnosed as being clinically depressed, just realise that this is just something YOU are experiencing. To change you must know that you, your real identity is safe, it is perfect all of the time, no matter how you feel about yourself and whatever you are experiencing.

The regretful things you did in the past were not the real you, that was your sub-conscious. Once you know that YOU will always be YOU, confidence will come because you know that nothing can harm that. How can something be harmed if it is permanent?

Mark Turnbull