14 Reasons You’re Not Letting Yourself Heal

12. I Deserve This Guilt; It’s My Fault Some of the Survivors struggling most with even the notion of their own recovery are those, often unknowingly, struggling with a considerable degree of guilt as well. And while guilt can result in any particular circumstance, regardless of the relation, this incremental component of devastating loss seems to be most common in two specific scenarios: a parent (particularly a mother) who loses a child, and in the case of the suicide of a very close family member or friend. So, if you currently happen to be struggling with perceiving yourself as guilty and being undeserving of anything better in life, know that, by far, you are not alone. Unfortunately, in the case of Survivors and outsiders alike, too often debilitating guilt and its downstream impacts are overlooked, or even ignored, in lieu of more obvious incidents of deep sorrow and grief. This, regrettably for many, leads to a lack of awareness of a significant component of the agony and pain they are saddled with—and the degree to which it is affecting them. That is to say that this lack of recognition only ultimately serves to increase the duration and degree of suffering simply because we, humans, are not generally in the habit of seeking to resolve problems that we do not even know exist. And in the end, whether a response is non-existent or inappropriate, as it is a remedy for the wrong ill, the impact only grows stronger and even more daunting. Only causing one’s will to fight to commence losing steam, and eventually wane. While the tendency is to simply lump guilt along with seemingly everything else, under the umbrella of grief, what’s clear from my work with Survivors is that not delineating between guilt and grief, and addressing each accordingly, is very much detrimental to the timeline of recovery. As the process of working through the two tends to be different, endeavoring to address them both in a consistent manner won’t likely yield the successful results. Additionally, what I’ve found is attempting to undertake the harrowing enough grief without first addressing the considerably more personally corrosive guilt usually turns out to be a formula for failure. Instead, it is most often vital the two are delineated, and the guilt neutralized first. In terms of where the guilt tends to come from, what I can tell you is it’s the result of a familiar tactic in which our minds are guilty of regularly engaging. That of highlighting certain factors and circumstances, while readily diminishing, or even completely ignoring, others. And it’s during the more self-judgmental initial stages of grief management that we are most susceptible to this mental realignment of factors and circumstances associated with the loss taking place—typically, in a manner that serves only to emphasize the events and results producing the maximized guilt. I’ve personally carried my own heavy burden of guilt, from perceptions about decisions made and not in the months and years immediately following the loss of my mom. And, along the way, I’ve witnessed the deep suffering of others, not realizing the extent of guilt’s stranglehold on them, at a complete loss as to why their respective paths to recovery continued to prove to be so stalled. What I can also tell you is that, in every instance of such corrosive guilt encountered, what I have found is there are always relevant factors and circumstances that need to be reintroduced to the client’s memory and perspective. And it’s the reintroduction of these that most decidedly generates the much needed more balanced and considerably less guilt-ridden, self-incriminating recollection of what, in fact, took place—and their associated decisions and actions at the time. A revised, more accurate recollection that usually, believe it or not, allows all of that, previously overwhelming, yet undeserved burden being carried on the Survivor’s shoulders to abruptly and decisively essentially melt away.