I don’t know why I feel guilt so often. If someone is upset, I feel as though it is my fault. Not only do I feel guilty, I feel as if I am responsible to resolve the situation. This is an exhausting and daunting task. I’m trying to fix this by not responding to someone when I know I am not at fault. I can say, “I’m sorry you are struggling.” However, I don’t need to take over their situation. I think my husband was the first one that pointed this out to me. I ignored it for a while because I thought he was wrong. However, I’m starting to realize that he is right. It’s not necessarily about what I say to others about feeling guilty, it’s about how I feel internally.
The feeling of guilt is overwhelming and onerous. Does anyone have other suggestions? I’m open to any ideas.
My Side of the Pole 
I used to say I feel guilty for everything. I joked about it that I have Jewish guilt. One day when I was at my psychiatrist he handed me a dictionary and had me look up the word guilt and read it to him. The definition was ” feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined”. He asked me what my offense, crime or wrong (real or imagined) was and I couldn’t answer. His suggestion was that I am feeling responsible, for things that may or may not be my responsibility ( that was another session or 20!) but not guilt. It made sense to me and was a real eye opener for me. Might not click for anyone else – but for me, when I feel guilty, unless I have DONE something (real or imagined) to feel guilty about I figure it must be another feeling and I try to explore what that is. Might not be easier to deal with but some feelings make more sense to me than others.
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That is an eye opener. My problem is that I just assume I did something wrong. When someone is upset, I just think I screwed up. I’m going to work on reminding myself of the definition the next time my feelings of guilt arise. I shouldn’t just assume everything is my fault.
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I recently discovered something called hyper-responsibility and I think it may be what you are describing here. If you google it you can find more about it. Long story short, I am the exact same way. I feel responsible for everything, guilty for everything, and it all fuels my anxiety and OCD behavior. I hope you can find some peace from this.
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I read up on hyper-responsibility, and a lot of it sounds like me. Thanks for showing me that. Now, maybe I can help myself resolve it. I’ll talk to my therapist about it.
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Your right it isnt your fault. and it isnt your responsibility to make other peoples lives better you are only responsible for you. I’m glad you took hubbys advice on bord. xxx
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You said, “it isn’t your responsibility to make other peoples lives better, you are only responsible for you.” That is my biggest struggle. I keep trying to make everyone else feel better and I ignore my own emotions. I really need to work on that. Thank you
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