Still Thinkin', Part 3

Continuing on with my thoughts on some of the behaviors and attitudes so common to those who suffer from the Disease…

Guilt and Shame

I have an old friend who likes to say when someone tries to make you feel guilty, imagine they’re serving you a shit sandwich—all you have to do is say, “No thanks, I’m not hungry.”

Not too long ago, I got a new sponsor and started another round of the steps. I’m currently in Step 4, and there are some good questions in there about guilt. My favorite part about them is how they distinguish between earned guilt (which comes from things we ourselves have done) and unearned guilt (where we feel guilty about things other people have done/said/felt/etc.)

For the longest time, I carried around a lot of unearned guilt. Thanks to my working the program (and a lot of additional outside therapy), I’m able to recognize the source of it now: not being accepted or loved for who I was, just as I was, by the other people in my life when I was growing up. I remember once, when I was around ten years old, some bullies taped a sign to my back. It read ‘sorry I was born!’  And while that incident is horrible, the more horrible part is how that really was how I actually felt.

At an early age, I internalized the idea that I had to apologize for everything—especially for just being me. As I got older, I learned to hide who I really was and instead pretend to be who I thought others wanted me to be. The irony there is that I still saw myself as an honest person. I railed against people who didn’t trust me and wailed at how people were always accusing me or whatever they happened to be accusing me of. People called me secretive, assumed I was up to something, or hiding something, and I was—me.

You’ll hear people in the rooms talk about how they’ve become comfortable in their own skin. And with the 1,300+ one-days-at-a-time I have in Recovery, it has happened to me as well. I’ve learned that I don’t have to feel guilty about just being me, that it’s okay to be me, that there’s nothing wrong with being me at all. I don’t have to apologize for being who I am anymore.

Earned guilt, the guilt we feel over the things we have done or said, is something that needs to be addressed. And we have a step for that. We can make our amends, admit the things we have done and try to make it up to those we hurt. 

Unearned guilt, however, that to me is the real evil shit. Why? Because that’s guilt we’ve taken on for things we have no control over and can’t affect. We aren’t responsible for other people’s feelings, or for the things others have done. So many people use guilt as a manipulation tool, and we have to learn good boundaries in order to insulate ourselves and learn not to be affected by it. 

Learning those good boundaries that the program teaches us—that we’re not responsible for others, only ourselves—helps to fight that unearned guilt. Nowadays, when sometime tries to take me on that ride I can see it, recognize it for what it is, and think to myself, “aw, you’re trying to make me feel guilty for something I had nothing to do with. You’re trying to control me, what I think, how I feel and what I say and do. You know, that is so thoughtful. What a delightful shit sandwich you’re offering me! But, you know . . . I’m really not hungry.”

Guilt, and unearned guilt especially, is a reaction. The program teaches us how to stop being people who react, and instead we learn how to be people who take action. I’m responsible for me and how I feel, and no one else. No one else gets to make me feel guilty anymore, not for who I am, and especially not for something that isn’t mine.