Anna Mathur shares her thoughts on escaping the guilt trap.
Image credit: Katrina Campbell Photography
How often do you feel guilty about something?
Guilt can permeate our lives in many ways, and it feels as if once we enter motherhood this can increase exponentially. There appears to be a fine line between balancing the joy of having children with the day-to-day trials that can test our patience and it can be difficult to exist in this space when it’s so loaded with guilt.
Often, the guilt that we feel is completely unjustified. The guilt is tied to the ‘I should’, and the ‘I could’ whilst making comparisons with other people lives as we perceive them to be rather than the reality.
To help us with this we invited highly renowned psychotherapist, author, and mum of three, Anna Mathur to talk about how to overcome the guilt trap in everyday life.
Anna explained how when we repeatedly let our guilt morph into shame, we risk damaging our self-esteem, our confidence, and our identity. When you feel mum guilt, you can explore what happened and what you might do next. When you let guilt move into shame, instead of seeing a problem to explore, you believe YOU are the problem.
However, guilt also has a purpose, it prompts us to learn, to apologise and to accept that we are ultimately only human and trying our best.
Image credit: Katrina Campbell Photography
If this is something you feel affected by, here are some tips from Anna on how to handle it.
So much of the guilt we carry is completely unjustified. It's around circumstances, it's not around fault. How would you react if what is making you feel guilty happened to a friend? Would you respond in the same way you are talking to yourself?
When you feel guilty, address it. What is it? What are you really feeling guilty about? Then bring in some compassion because your response stems from somewhere, otherwise it feeds into further feelings of low self-worth.
Use the sense of guilt to prompt you to tweak something. That is not to shame you, but just to remind you that perhaps there is an alternative way to react to that situation and this can be as simple as picking up the phone to someone or maybe putting the phone away altogether.
If this sounds like something you would like to explore in more detail, check out Anna’s book Know Your Worth as well The Therapy Edit podcast, where she discusses tips, insights and reflections to support her listeners’ mental well-being. Copies of Anna’s books are available to purchase via the Mother+ shop.