Guilt and family estrangement

Estranging from family is complex, difficult, and emotional. One of the overriding emotions we often deal with is the feeling of guilt. In this article, I'll try to break down the different types of guilt we may feel, and how to manage these when we are dealing with estrangement.

Healthy guilt

Firstly, let's distinguish healthy guilt from unhealthy guilt. As with all emotions, guilt has a purpose and a use. Healthy guilt functions as a bit of a moral compass. It lets us know when we have violated a personal belief or standard. This is useful, because it acts as a guide around appropriate, socially-acceptable behaviour, helping us maintain healthy relationships. Feeling the harsh stab of guilt is part of the uncomfortable emotional feedback loop that helps keeps us cooperating within our social groups.

Healthy guilt lets us know when we have violated a personal belief or standard.

Unhealthy guilt

However, sometimes guilt can distort and become unhealthy. When this happens, our guilt is no longer guiding us towards healthy behaviour, but rather we become stuck, acting through feelings of fear, perfectionism, confusion, or compulsion.

Unhealthy guilt occurs when we are holding ourselves to standard that are unfair, unrealistic or that are true to other people, not us.

Shifting standards

This can often happen in narcissistic families, where the narcissist dominates the rules and ideals of those around them. In order to coexist with the narcissist, we are forced to adopt their standards, rather our own. This becomes difficult when the narcissist has rules that protect their interests at the expense of others. Often there are double standards, where a narcissist and/or their chosen favourites have special privileges that others are not allowed.

Narcissists will also change their minds about rules and ideals according to what suits them in the moment. This means that something that was acceptable last week, may be different now. These constantly shifting goalposts mean that those who are trying to keep within the rules can be caught off guard. We can suddenly have offended or violated the rule that we didn't know was there.

Unhealthy guilt occurs when we are holding ourselves to standard that are unfair, unrealistic or that are true to other people, not us.

Unhealthy guilt can occur when we are trying to live by someone else's ideals.

Guilt and estrangement

When we are considering or finally get to estranging from family, the guilt can feel overwhelming. We may be stuck with questions such as, what if I made a terrible mistake? How will this affect my kids/siblings/parents? What will other people think of me?

One way to try to untangle the guilt web is to see whether we are dealing with healthy or unhealthy guilt. Are the feelings we have centred around what we believe, or what other people believe? Are we judging ourselves against societal expectations, or family rules written by people with an agenda, or are we acting to the best of our ability according to our own beliefs and ideas?

If we find it is healthy guilt, we can seek to make amends, by having difficult conversations, apologising and adjusting our behaviour going forwards. When it is unhealthy guilt, it may be harder to shift.

Easing feelings of unhealthy guilt

When we are struggling with unhealthy guilt, there are a few things it is important to keep in mind.

• Our inner critic voices can often keep us in the guilt loop, especially when the voices come from family members or people who have influenced us for a long time. Seeing the voices for who they represent, and turning down the volume on those voices can help ease the guilty feelings.

• Practice kindness to ourselves. We are all human and make mistakes. We have strengths too. Being imperfect does not mean we have to live a life of shame and misery.

• Keeping supportive people close to us is key. There will always be people who want to bring us down, criticise, or profit from our insecurities. Truly loving relationships are centered around supporting the other person to be true to their own values, not our own.

• Prioritise downtime, fun and self-care. The act of showing love to ourselves has similar benefits from feeling love from others. It shows we are worthy, appreciated, and have value. This directly combats guilt.

Finally.... a word on shame

Guilt and shame are common bedfellows. Shame often creeps in after guilt. Instead of us feeling bad about our behaviour, we turn it into a judgement on our own character. Shame makes us feel flawed and unacceptable as human beings.

Shame can become a toxic place to be, because instead of pushing us to make amends and improve, we hide away, spiralling into feeling incurably different and undesirable. We believe we are so unpleasant that we isolate from other people. But we need other people to break out of this cycle.

So, if you are feeling guilt or shame, the scary, but most powerful way to break out is to confess. Tell someone- a trusted friend, teacher, partner, family member or professional. When we share our darkest thoughts and fears with supportive people, we find that they aren't as bad as we feared. When we are not rejected for them, but instead we are supported to find solutions, make amends or rethink our perspectives, the shame has been proven wrong. And then it can't persist.

Please take care, wishing you all the very best.

Much love,

Chess xxx