Guilty Feelings - Mistaken or Helpful?

Health education points out the dangers of over-indulgence in eating and drinking and sitting around. You may take the view that if you really like doing something, you shouldn't feel guilty about it. Or you may think you should moderate your guilty pleasures when they negatively affect others.

Then again you may think you ought to spend less time or money on yourself for the sake of the family. Also remain loyal to your partner despite temptation to carry on behind their back with some other attractive person. Or perhaps you believe that infidelity can be guilt free and harms no one as long as it remains a secret liaison. When you are feeling guilty what should you do? Shrug your shoulders and try to forget the unpleasant feeling? Or deal with it in some other way? Are your guilty feelings mistaken or potentially helpful to you?

Anxiety, shame and guilty feelings

It's difficult to disentangle guilt, anxiety and shame. You may be in charge of a child who has a temper tantrum in a supermarket. Not your fault - but that doesn't prevent you feeling deeply self-conscious and embarrassed by the stares and 'tut tuts' of other shoppers who are assuming it is. It might not even be your child. You've done nothing against your conscience to warrant any guilty feeling.

When the second world-war ended some French women underwent public humiliation by having their heads shaved for sleeping with the enemy. Their conduct had been okay by them as long as it gave them nice things and favours.

Guilt does not apply if only getting exposed to public gaze is the problem. Like the person who has no conscience and thus no guilt about secretly having more than one sexual partner. Only anxiety about being found out.

Mistaken guilt feelings

There seem to be inborn individual differences in conscientiousness. Some people have a tendency towards thoughtfulness and impulse control. They tend to complete tasks. Others are less thoughtful and more inclined towards impulsiveness taking less care of things. The conscientious ones are more prone to guilt feelings.

When you notice a guilty feeling you may be being unfair on yourself. Your guilt may be illogical and mistaken or at any rate exaggerated. But nevertheless you end up going on a guilt trip. So you keep quiet about whatever it is you have a guilty feeling about. You keep it secret because you think you will be judged by it. But you have already judged yourself. You may be afraid to tell the truth as it will be proof that you are unworthy and unlovable.

For many years this was true of Ronda Brittain. She was the middle child of three girls, and was the target of her divorced father's physical and emotional abuse. At the age of 14, she was the only witness to her father shooting and killing her mother and then shooting himself. She tried to commit suicide three times until she realised that she was being unfair on herself.

"I thought the world was going to swallow me whole. But instead, I found that I was the only one who had been judging me." (Ronda Brittain founder of the Fearless Living Institute)

Awakening to a spiritual dimension

But are all guilt feelings based on a mistaken conscience? Those who are starting to awaken to the spiritual dimension of life might well develop a conscience about conspicuous consumption; feeling guilty about spending money on the latest gizmo, a more powerful car, fashionable property, or an expensive foreign holiday.

"Anyone who has a sensible conscience will inevitably feel anxiety of guilt whenever they go against it. It may be going against what deep down one realises is just and fair." (Harry Barnitz, philosopher and Swedenborgian)

Sometimes we act against a heartfelt and deep awareness of what we feel to be right - not acting against a mistaken conscience but against a true one. We rightly feel bad about it even if sometimes we have acted in error on impulse without thinking. Not only feeling guilty about what we have been doing that we know deep down in our hearts is wrong but also what we have failed to do; the so-called sins of omission and unfulfilled potential.

Potential helpfulness of guilt feelings

Sooner or later we all do bad or foolish things that we feel tarnish or taint us.

"Anger, intoxication, obstinacy, bigotry, deceit, envy, grandiloquence, pride and conceit, intimacy with the unjust, this is what defiles one." (Sutta-Nipata, ii, 2,7. - Buddhist tradition)

The existential psychotherapists have pointed out that one cannot reason away those guilt feelings which come from an awareness of actual transgressions. The important thing is to try to disentangle feelings of guilt arising because of a true conscience from feelings of guilt arising from other causes.

No longer can the individual comfortably rely on such alibis as 'I didn't mean it', 'It was an accident', 'I couldn't help it', and 'I followed an irresistible impulse'. Instead, acknowledgment of guilt arising from a true conscience is helpful if it can lead to a change of behaviour. It is easier to feel a sense of forgiveness when we change our actions for the better. Change get rids of that guilty feeling and encourages forward thinking.

"I'm just going to say it: I'm pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it's about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we've done - or failed to do - with our personal values." (Brene Brown, professor of social work)

http://ezinearticles.com/?Guilty-Feelings---Mistaken-or-Helpful?&id=9826245

Loving Yourself When in Conflict (By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.)

One of the questions I often receive is about how to manage conflict. If you think back to the role-modelling you received regarding how to manage conflict, you will likely remember that your parents or other caregivers fought, complied, withdrew in anger, blamed or resisted, or just shut down and ignored the conflict. Do you have any images of your role models loving themselves through conflict, and of healthy conflict resolution?

Lissel asked:

"When I'm in a conflict with someone I start to feel anxious, angry and withdrawn from the person. Then I start to think about the conflict, what I said, what the other person said, and it goes on and on. It makes me feel nervous. What to do in these situations?"

Lissel, you feel anxious and angry and you withdraw because you are abandoning yourself rather than loving yourself. There are only two ways of managing conflict that are loving to you.

If you are capable of opening to learning about how you see things and how the other person sees things, and you think that the other person will open to learning with you, then it's loving to yourself to open to learning, which can lead to win-win conflict resolution.

If you can't open or you know the other person won't open, then loving yourself means lovingly disengaging, which is very different from withdrawal. When you withdraw, you are angry and punishing the other person by withdrawing your love, but when you lovingly disengage, you are loving yourself by getting yourself out of range of the conflict. Then, do your Inner Bonding work and come back in 30 minutes to see if resolution is possible. If not, you need to decide for yourself what is loving to you in the face of the other person being closed to resolution.

We all need to accept that we can't hear each other when we are angry, so there is no point in saying anything when one or both are angry.

Lissel, if you were loving yourself through the conflict, you wouldn't ruminate. You ruminate when you abandon yourself.

Maureen asked:

"How do I talk reasonably with my husband when he gets so fired up over any question that challenges his way of thinking?"

Maureen, it's not possible to talk reasonably with your husband when he's fired up. When we are angry, we are operating from the lower part of our brain. The reasonable part of us isn't even online. This is the time to lovingly disengage, and perhaps try to talk about it later, when he is calm.

Shelly asked:

"My boyfriend can get mad and scold me like a child and uses an angry and intense tone. I ask him to please not talk to me that way and he often continues. I bring it up later and he does not seem to understand how hurtful this is and he does not apologize. I feel so disrespected and abused. It is damaging our relationship. I know that I should just leave when he behaves that way and if I do he will then ignore me for several days then he calls me. We are caught in this terrible cycle. I feel like we are at the end of our relationship. Any advice?"

Shelly, there is no point in continuing to ask him not to talk to you that way because you have no control over how he talks you, or whether he will talk about it later or apologize. The only thing you have control over is you. By trying to control him rather than lovingly disengaging, you are allowing yourself to be disrespected and abused, and are disrespecting yourself. You are staying and being abused to try to control him into not ignoring you for days, but you need to accept that this is what he sometimes does. When you show up for yourself and choose to love yourself rather than continue to try to control him, things might improve between you.

Loving yourself, including in the face of conflict, can have a major impact on all your relationships!

Download 25 Most Powerful Motivational Quotes

http://ezinearticles.com/?Loving-Yourself-When-in-Conflict&id=9569494

3 Fast and Easy Ways to Improve Social Self-Confidence

Believing that you are unacceptable or unlikable socially can be painful. Lack of self-confidence can make you get afraid to interact socially. When in situations where you will be observed by others or where you need to speak in front of a crowd or to strangers you might feel anxious. This might cause you to act awkward. You might avoid eye contact and behave too cautiously. The idea that you are socially unacceptable might get reinforced to you when you feel that other people react strangely towards you.

As the result of the challenges you face you might end up avoiding social contact even though you know being in social places and interacting with others is a big part of any persons' life. We cannot always avoid social situations in living our daily lives. You might get invited to parties where friends are celebrating or by colleagues at work celebrating their birthdays. It is not always possible to avoid interacting socially.

So how do you improve social self-confidence when you do not have it? Before I tell you how, let me start by telling a little story about a rat.

When you have a rat in the house that eats up your tomatoes and messes up your fruits. To catch it, you would need to know how and when and where it operates. You would want to catch it when the house is quite with a piece of cheese in the mouse trap or place a rat poison in places where the rat is likely to hang around.

A similar approach is applicable to improving self-confidence. You need to understand how your mind operates and what patterns you go through so that you can interrupt those patterns and form new ones.

The first trigger is mentally, you get images of you doing something that will cause you embarrassment. What you think is what you feel. Your thoughts cause you to feel anxious. When feeling anxious you respond by avoiding interacting socially and the result is that you lack social self-confidence. To overcome social anxiety therefore you need to influence this pattern. Let's draw how the pattern looks like:

social situation (environment) - images of embarrassment (thought) - anxiety, fear (feelings)- avoidance (response)

We do know that we cannot change the external environment (sometimes you will be in a social situation whether you want to or not). We can only influence ourselves internally in terms of how we respond to the external environment. Constantly trying to avoid social situations may serve as a temporary solution. However, this cannot guarantee long-term success towards improving how you interact socially. What you can change is the thought process, your feelings as well as your responses.

Past failures might have conditioned you to view every social situation that you need to interact in as anxiety triggering. We are human after all human, once we are burned we never want to move near a lit candle. So to help you improve social self-confidence you might first need to forget past failures and try to change how you view social situations first. Here are the 3 ways that I have developed to help you overcome social anxiety and improve social interaction.

1. View social situations as opportunities by recalling past success

Some successful sport teams have a tradition in which they take players through past successes before a cup final. The players get shown previous cup finals before the match and get taken through all the trophies that the team has won before. The past success of the team helps players get motivated to win another cup final for the team. If you ever had past successes interacting socially use this as anchors for yourself. Remember how you successfully delivered a presentation in front of an audience and interacted very well with a stranger. Have you ever been in a situation where you delivered a public speech and did well despite your fear? This is the time to have these memories fresh in your mind. Remembering your past successes and celebrating past victories can help you believe in yourself and be able to overcome present anxiety feelings toward social interactions.

2. Use visualization to empower yourself for social situations

Access the power of your subconscious mind by constantly picturing yourself interacting well socially. This need not take long. Just spending 5 minutes seeing yourself approaching a stranger and having a pleasant conversation or picturing yourself delivering a great presentation publicly can help. Once our mind has been where we want to be, our bodies just need to support us in getting there. By mentally picturing yourself having social self-confidence, you will be able to give yourself better strength to play out your mental images in real life when the situations calls for it. Be careful though, visualization needs to be done before a social interaction. Doing this actively as you are interacting socially might be problematic because it will force you to think about what you are doing. When thinking about what you are doing you are more likely to get anxious. So visualize before social interactions and try as much as you can to remain natural when in social situations.

3. Make social interaction a challenging game of exposure

Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously and this does not help. Improving social anxiety requires you to occasionally have a playful attitude. Use a playful attitude to expose yourself socially. Exposure is scientifically proven to be very effective when it comes to improving social anxiety. I know this is the last thing that you might want to hear because when you are uncomfortable interacting socially the immediate response is to avoid social interaction. However, the more exposure you get interacting socially the better you will become. Aim to start a small conversation every time you are in a social situation with a stranger. This can be as simple as saying hallo to a cashier each time you pay for items in a store or when shopping. Just asking the cashier his/her name and thanking him/her for the service is enough to get you going.

Few of us remember to appreciate cashiers when shopping, you will make their day just showing appreciation and equally improve yourself. Try as much as you can to expose yourself.

Petrol attendants are also good people to interact with in a non-threatening environment to start a conversation. This is better done playfully so that you see it as a challenge instead of getting too serious and reading too much on the results. The more you bring it to your awareness to interact with others the better you will expose yourself and improve how you interact socially.

Spending time with a friend who is not afraid to interact socially might also help in this situation. Human beings learn by seeing also. If your anxiety is specific such as falling in a public place then get a friend to pretend falling in a public space so that you can visually see that the results are not as worse as you thought they would be. Expose yourself without emotional attachment. Use a playful attitude with any friend who is comfortable interacting socially and have fun doing so. Practice makes perfect, this is also true in getting rid of social anxiety.

http://ezinearticles.com/?3-Fast-and-Easy-Ways-to-Improve-Social-Self-Confidence&id=9448989

7 Ways to Deal With Negative Thoughts

Learn how to tap into the positive and manage the negative.

Most of us spend a lot of time inside our own mind — worrying about the future, replaying events in the past, and generally focusing on the parts of life that leave us dissatisfied. While common, negative or unwanted thoughts can prevent you from enjoying experiences, distract you from focusing on what's important, and drain your energy. They can also make you feel anxious and depressed.

The good news is that with dedicated practice, you can replace negative thinking patterns with thoughts that actually help. This can make a huge difference in your day-to-day happiness and comfort.

Try these 7 ways to manage (and decrease) your negative thoughts:

1. Recognize thought distortions. Our minds have clever and persistent ways of convincing us of something that isn't really true. These inaccurate thoughts reinforce negative thinking. If you can recognize them, you can learn to challenge them. Here are four common thought distortions:

• Black and white thinking. Seeing everything as one way or another, without any in between.
• Personalizing. Assuming you are to blame for anything that goes wrong, like thinking someone did not smile at you because you did something to upset her. (It's more likely that person is having a hard day and her mood had nothing to do with you.)
• Filter thinking. Choosing to see only the negative side of a situation.
• Catastrophizing. Assuming the worst possible outcome is going to happen.

2. Challenge negative thoughts. Whenever you have a distorted thought, stop and evaluate whether it is accurate. Think about how you would respond if a friend spoke about herself that way. You would probably offer a good rebuttal to his or her negative view. Apply the same logic to your own thoughts. Ask yourself if you are assuming the worst will happen or blaming yourself for something that has not gone the way you wanted. And then think about other possible outcomes or reasons that something turned out differently than you hoped.

3. Take a break from negative thoughts. It is possible to learn how to separate from negative thoughts. One way to do this is to allow yourself a certain amount of time (maybe five minutes) with the thought. Then take a break from focusing on it and move on with your day.

4. Release judgment. We all judge ourselves and others, usually unconsciously. Constantly comparing ourselves to other people or comparing our lives to some ideal breeds dissatisfaction. When you are able to let go of judgment (not easy, but possible), you will likely feel more at ease. Some ways to take a break from judgmental thoughts include recognizing your own reaction, observing it, and then letting it go. Another helpful technique is to "positive judge." When you notice you are negatively judging a person, yourself, or a situation, look for a positive quality, too.

5. Practice gratitude. Research shows that feeling grateful has a big impact on your levels of positivity and happiness. Even when you are experiencing a challenging time in your life, you can usually find things (even small things) to be grateful for. Noticing the things that are going well and making you feel happy will keep you in touch with them. Keeping a gratitude journal and writing a few things in it every day is one easy and effective way to do this. 

Source: PathDoc/Shutterstock

6. Focus on your strengths. It's human-nature to dwell on the negative and overlook the positive. The more you can practice focusing on your strengths and not dwelling on mistakes you've made, the easier it will be to feel positive about yourself and the direction your life is taking. If you find yourself thinking harsh thoughts about your personality or actions, take a moment to stop and think about something you like about yourself.

7. Seek out professional support if you are unable to manage your thoughts or find they are interfering with your ability to meet your daily responsibilities or enjoy life. Counseling and therapy can help you weather life changes, reduce emotional suffering and experience self-growth.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-s-mental-health-matters/201509/7-ways-deal-negative-thoughts