[Issue #43] The Devastation We Leave Behind
A personal essay on the gift of guilt
“Love yourself, accept yourself, forgive yourself and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.”
-Leo F. Buscaglia
The guilt begins to stack up inside me, like bricks. One layer at a time, I feel my chest caving in and my shallow breaths dry out my throat. This is different than a panic attack. Much different.
Because I’ve been doing intense DBT therapy for several months now, some of the skills to get me emotionally regulated kick in without thought. The first one is always breathing more slowly, more purposefully. So I do that. And for a few moments, the crushing weight of my guilt rolls out like a wave. But just like a wave, it comes back.
And back.
And back.
And then I feel the haze that comes from emotional exhaustion and too much free time. My head spins and swirls and the stories I tell myself…oh, those stories are convincing.
But they’re usually wrong. At least, partially, if not entirely.
It’s taken me years to even begin to understand the effects my mental health has on me. It’s taken me even longer to see how my mental health has affected my family.
Aside from the obvious complications that come with chronic abuse, unprocessed trauma, addiction, and the mental health issues that come along with those, there’s another villain. This villain lurks in the shadows.
The guilt that felt so crushing to me recently came long, long after my internal pain and suffering slowly burned away every thread holding my relationships together, including the relationship I barely had with myself. I felt so much anxiety inside of me, my stomach would be upset and I’d be unable to eat for days. Which then lead to binge eating everything that sounded good, which then fueled my eating disorder. I became convinced I wasn’t worthy of health, or happiness.
So, over the course of years, I let friendships fade away because I couldn’t get what I wanted or needed from those people anymore - I didn’t understand yet that relationships with others could never replace a relationship with myself. I began to turn more inward, but not in a positively self-reflective way. No, this was full blown martyrdom. And it felt awful.
I felt suicidal and angry with the world. Nothing seemed to fully “cure” me. I took all the meds (until I irresponsibly decided to change one dosage, which resulted in a lot of pain inflicted by yours truly), I did things that used to bring me joy but nothing took the edge off. The dark was thick and heavy and I didn’t know it then, but it would be years before I‘d become able to feel empathy and compassion more often (much more often) than anxiety or anger. Back then, I was unable to feel happiness unless it was within the context of someone else’s happiness or joy. As though I had no concept of how to find my own joy, find my own light.
But we all know how to find joy and light. We’re told we’re unworthy of joy, unworthy of kindness, unworthy of feeling sad - and we believe this. I know I did. Unfortunately, though, for any real and meaningful change to occur, it took me finally looking around and seeing the people I loved were exhausted. They were hurt. They were angry. They were afraid, of me, of my reactions. They were confused. They were resentful. They were at times sad - all of this due to my behavior. My terrible behavior over a long period of time. A lot of the time, my bad behavior had me believing I was a bad person. That I was deeply unworthy of goodness, of love, of hope. And worse, that I would never be capable of giving love, of giving goodness, of giving hope to others.
Sometimes my bad behavior was abusive. Not on purpose - I never truly intended, or wanted, to hurt any of these people that loved me so much. Actually, I wanted nothing more than to make them all happy, to make them all feel safe, to make them all feel loved. But because I believed I was incapable of giving anything worth having emotionally, I focused all my energy on cleaning, on producing, on providing, on doing. See, I wasn’t enough as-is. I believed I always had to come with some sort of gift, or act of service (that, obviously, had to be perfect), because just me couldn’t possibly be enough.
And feeling so isolated inside, so lonely, because of this deep mis-guided belief about my own capacity to both receive love and to give love, brought on such incredible sadness. It brought despair and a true sense of hopelessness. Nothing was safe. Nowhere was safe. No one was safe. And I dare not trust myself, how could I? All I seemed to do was hurt people, apologize, and hurt them again, apologize, hurt them again, and the cycle never seemed to stop. I wasn’t sure it could stop. I’d tried to stop it, and yet, I constantly felt out of control and depressed.
I’d done things I never thought I was capable of doing. Today I see this statement to encompass both positive and negative things, but years ago I could only see the negative. So that’s what came out. All the negative self beliefs led to my terrible, embarrassing, incredibly painful behavior. Which directly countered who I was and who I wanted to be. I wanted to express kindness, warmth, love, generosity, respect, hope, curiosity, and wonder. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I believed I didn’t know how.
And one day, not too long ago, my guilt boiled up and I knew I needed to take drastic measures to change my inner beliefs - really change them, at the most fundamental level inside my soul - So that’s what I did.
Because I couldn’t keep causing harm like I was. At this point, it seemed as though I was causing a deep amount of pain nearly everyday, either to my family or friends or to myself. I was self-harming, though the frequency had reduced. I was saying critical things to myself, as though shaming and berating myself would get me to, what? Shape up? Suck it up? Get over it?
Then, because I made the conscious decision to become the person I want to be now (why wait?), my wiser self took the reigns and strapped my 6 year old self into the backseat. I started throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to figure out who I really authentically am without all of my emotions clouding my personality and my view of the world.
And this has been one of the single most difficult experiences of my life. A lot of things got triggered inside of me when I upended lives without warning (as it was triggering, or at least difficult, for others), made big decisions without communication (adding to the already present ire from my bad behavior and putting people into emotional corners). When I had the sobering realization that not only was I deeply loved, but I also broke a lot of hearts and never apologized (because I never noticed because trauma can make you weirdly self-absorbed and yet so obsessive about other people or what they think), the guilt stacked up. But, I just kept pushing through each day, crossing my fingers and doing my best.
But my best was not even close to good enough.
And there is never a justifiable excuse to act aggressively or behave in an abusive manner to anyone, or make other people feel unsafe in any capacity (physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually) unless your life is truly at risk. Which, unfortunately for those of us with a lot of pain or trauma, we often believe our life is at risk. But it’s not. That’s just our brain trying to keep us out of harm’s way, based on some partial (and faulty) information from our past.
And when we act out - or become paralyzed because - of fear (fear of abandonment, fear of judgement, fear of loss of control, fear of our emotions, fear of ability to cope), it’s pretty much impossible to make other people feel safe. Because we don’t feel safe when we’re in an emotional state. And if you’re in an emotional state all the time, well, that causes a lot of stress - in the brain and the body, in relationships. And I don’t know about you, but stress makes me cranky, and sometimes a real asshole.
The guilt, the regret, of behaving so poorly, of treating my family in a way that’s toxic and unsafe, was tremendous. It was hard to hold. I couldn’t hold it alone, not if I wanted to remain sober and not burn down my entire life (metaphorically speaking) with old (and familiar) maladaptive coping strategies.
So, everyday the past many, many weeks, has been a lot of practicing holding this guilt for what I’ve done, and what I wish I would’ve done. I fell asleep crying, in a ball, wrapped in pillows and books, alone. I woke up crying from the depression of feeling so lonely, still alone. I screamed at myself and I felt the shadow creeping up behind me.
But this time, because I cannot, in my soul, continue on that same path, I did different things. Harder things. I filled the hours upon hours at the lake, watching the trees change from bright green to various vibrant orange hues. I lifted a lot of weights and walked tons of miles. I stopped drinking and smoking and took up breathing exercises and meditation.
I started fucking praying. I hadn’t prayed since I was a child, and long since felt abandoned by whoever God was. But, over the course of many years in recovery (and because of my wife), I began praying for things like the ability to give warmth to others, to feel the gratitude of having friendships, to give me the strength to get through my day and enjoy at least some of it, and to give me the self-compassion to feel all my feelings without judgement.
The regret isn’t so big, now. And the guilt isn’t crushing. They are both motivating, though. I don’t know that I’ve worked this hard in therapy in my life. I feel some semblance of curiosity and awe that it took me nearly severing every deep, intimate fiber in my life (not on purpose) for me to finally reach inside and pull out my Self from my past. It’s taken a lot of self-compassion to begin the process of self-forgiveness for the hurt I’ve caused. The amount of hurt I’ve caused.
And to recognize the true fact of my reality, because of the amount of pain and how deep it cuts - that I may end up divorced and have to figure out what that would look like, that’s a hard one to hold, too. And martyrdom could make a home on this and stake a claim (and it did for the first few weeks), but the point of guilt is not to cry over what’s already happened.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve come to see my personal situation and the guilt that comes with it as a sort of gift. To me, a healthy amount of guilt when we’ve gone against our values or morals, is a gift because of the ways it makes us more willing to become our better selves. Not for others, but for us.
After all, it’s entirely possible to feel a healthy amount of guilt while also being able to stay self-compassionate while also holding a love for others. The trick to having self-compassion is recognizing that, like guilt, it too rolls away like a wave. But like a wave (and like guilt), self-compassion, love, empathy, hope - they always roll back in.
“If I hadn't forgiven myself, I wouldn't be strong enough to love someone this much.”
― Dawn Lanuza, The Hometown Hazard
BEEN a while since you posted anything? Keep on keepin on Adiran!