Getting Rid of Guilt

Roughly one in ten American adults lives with some form of depression, and about 80 percent of them never seek medical help for it (Faris, 2012). Therese Borchard, who wrote "Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes," describes a small voice that would nag at her during her own depression, insisting she was a horrible person (Tartakovsky, 2013). She felt guilty about a messy house, about the kids eating too much candy, about eating too much herself, even about sharing too openly with her readers. The blame always landed on her. That pattern is more common than people realize: guilt and depression tend to travel together.

So why does guilt show up when someone is depressed? A depressed brain doesn't read situations the way an unaffected brain does. The chemistry is off, and that interferes with how feelings get processed. Take something small. Losing a pair of lucky socks might annoy most people for a minute. For someone who is depressed, the same thing can feel crushing, and the mind jumps straight to a verdict: I can't find them because I'm stupid, because I'm an idiot. The missing socks get tied to a sense of personal failure and low self-worth. Guilt follows, and the guilt feeds the depression further.

A 2012 study on depression and guilt found that depressed and non-depressed people react to the same events in different ways (Tartakovsky, 2013). People who are depressed often carry guilt for things that were never in their hands to begin with, while people who aren't depressed usually don't. If this sounds familiar and you want ways to loosen that grip, keep reading.

One of the sharpest tools is a question: why do I feel so guilty? Try to trace the feeling back to its source. Is the guilt just the depression talking? Does it surface almost every time your mood drops? Did you actually do something, or are your emotions running the show? What set the feeling off in the first place?

If you genuinely hurt or offended someone, apologize, then forgive yourself. Let it go and keep moving. Should that person refuse your apology, forgive yourself anyway and carry on. When you can, make it up to them, partly for their sake and partly for your own. And when the guilt comes from other people's words or behavior, decide consciously to shrug it off. No need to throw their faults back at them; just remind yourself that they fall short too. Give yourself room to be human and imperfect, and the guilt tends to fade.

Who you spend time with matters here. The quickest way to lift your mood and quiet the guilt is to keep company with people who accept you exactly as you are. Let in the ones who love and support you. Keep your distance from people who belittle, blame, degrade, embarrass, or pick you apart, the ones who leave you feeling wrong even when you've done nothing. Tolerance toward others is worth having, but not when the cost is your own self-esteem. Stop stewing over what people think, and trust your own gut. Good company does more than brighten a bad day; it rebuilds how you see yourself.

Dwelling on old bad calls keeps the guilt alive, so step away from it. Pull the lesson out of a mistake and aim for better choices today and down the road. Remind yourself, often, how much you've grown and are still growing. Put your attention on what you've managed to do and what you want to do next. The things you can't do will pull your focus if you let them; steer it toward the things you can.

Reframing is the last piece. Cut off the negative self-talk, the running commentary about how worthless or hopeless or helpless you supposedly are. Quit tearing down your own worth. Stop replaying what you should or shouldn't have done. Don't measure your life against everyone else's ideals, either; chasing society's standards leads nowhere good, because those standards tend to be unrealistic and out of reach. Be who you are, and don't let depression be the one deciding how you feel about yourself. Negative self-talk sends self-esteem into a nosedive and it drags self-blame and guilt right behind it. Set aside a few minutes each day to run through your good qualities, and when doubt and guilt start creeping back, meet them head-on with a pile of compliments aimed at yourself.