How guilt interrupts grief and delays healing

The role of guilt in grief is profound, and while some of it is productive, most of it’s both unproductive and misplaced.  

Guilt is misplaced because those of us who feel guilt — yes, it’s us empaths again! — really either ought not to feel so guilty OR we’re doing exactly what would exonerate us from guilt — we’re FACING what we could have done differently or better.

Guilt is also unproductive, because if we’ve done the business of FACING what we could have done differently or better, what’s the use in continuing to cruel oneself?

Grief is good in that it’s the channel markers to healing if only we’ll enter into the tremulous waters of lament and find our safety there.  Lament always threatens to be a hellish experience, but the paradox is it’s only through FACING in lament that we can process the hellishness of grief.  Otherwise, we stay in it — in the hellishness, or we cannot face it and therefore live a shell of existence.

But guilt interrupts grief, like so many other things interrupt grief — emotional and spiritual bypassing, being harassed, enduring other stressors, denial, addictions, etc.

Guilt interrupts grief because it consumes all thought and energy on the wrong (and unproductive) material.  Once business is done in guilt — and that’s a five-minute job for a sincere heart — all is forgiven.  It’s the way the Divine works.  After this is the wasteland of going around and around the mountain of a cycle you can’t get out of.  It’s like the Israelites going around the desert for 40 years.  It’s hopeless.

When guilt interrupts grief, the time, effort, and energy that could go into lament and being present with our sorrow, pouring out our tears, receiving comfort, etc, goes instead to time, effort and energy that’s invested in what will give a person cancer, heart disease, anxiety, depression, and a host of other health and medical issues.

If there’s one thing my Mum taught me and all of us who would watch her life is, there’s no stock, advantage, or sense in staying in a bad situation, and that forgiving oneself is vital if we’re to be free to love and serve others.  Thank you for living that life, Mum!

So what do we do if guilt is an issue preventing the resolution of productive grief?

We need to find the truth that will free us, and secondly, we need to believe it so we can live it.

Finding the truth that frees us of our guilt is simply a matter of committing afresh to the ideal that the truth matters that much that we’ll live its way no matter what it costs.  And it costs nothing!  It’s a freebie.

The truth is you understand what you could have done better or differently.  Understanding is all that’s required to receive forgiveness.  So, there’s a position to lock down.  Guilt is now inappropriate.  It doesn’t belong.  This motivates you to believe you’re worthy of living guilt free.  This is a holistic thing that will motivate whatever is needed to make the steps for great heart change to occur.

Having dealt with our guilt (a secondary emotion) we can then focus on dealing with our grief (the primary emotion).  Once the guilt is dealt with, there is no impediment to processing grief through the sacred means of sitting in the truth of our lament.  The only way is up from there.