Guilty of Caring*
The pang in the chest when leaving a child at daycare
The worry for an ageing parent we can’t be with all the time
The sick feeling when we have success but someone we care about doesn’t.
Guilt.
On social media you’ll find all different kinds of guilt: parent guilt, caregiver guilt, Catholic guilt, survivor guilt, success guilt, doctor guilt…..the list goes on. And in my psychology sessions, so many of my clients talk about the guilt they feel about what they have or haven’t done. Or the things they’re avoiding because they don’t want to feel guilty.
Neuroscience and popular culture teach us the importance of labelling our emotions. “Name it to tame it” is a catchphrase I use often. But that needs to come with a warning. If our labels aren’t accurate, we might end up feeling worse than ever.
Back in hunter-gatherer days, survival involved teamwork. Sourcing food, cooking, building shelter, looking after the children, keeping watch for danger – too many tasks to do alone. Being part of the group was critical to survival. Guilt was a protective mechanism to keep us aligned with the group’s values. Abscond from our duties to lounge by the river, and guilt could remind us that we’d let the group down and drive us to work extra hard the next day. Through the guilt–behaviour pathway, we hopefully made amends and avoided being kicked out of the group to fend for ourselves in the wild.
Guilt feels bad. It offers an internal signal that we’ve acted out of alignment with our values or morals. The guilty feeling drives us to make things right so we’re back in line with our values. Cut someone off while driving and the pang of guilt might have us mouthing “sorry” and being more mindful in the future. Guilt is helpful.
But we’ve become very skilled at describing many bad feelings as guilt. And when we do this, we are driven to apologise and act differently in the future. But if our initial actions weren’t out of alignment with our values, it can be hard to know how to make it right. So we tend to either:
Do nothing differently. However, in labelling our feeling as guilt, our brain might rev in neutral, looking for what to do differently. And then we end up feeling anxious and a bit helpless too. I suspect we can get so used to this guilt–rev-in-neutral response that it might even make us less likely to act when we are actually guilty.
We try to make it right. But if our initial action was aligned with our values, and we’re planning to continue the action, how do we make it right? If we “feel guilty” for dropping our kid at daycare, do we then apologise to our child and get them an ice cream on the way home? After a few weeks, the child learns all kinds of unhelpful lessons and the parent adds “food guilt” to their list of burdens.
So, if guilt isn’t accurate, what is that bad feeling? We can have many feelings all at once. But a great first guess before guilt is empathy. Empathy is the feeling we get when we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Just like guilt, empathy can feel painful and it drives us to act. But rather than “I’ve done something wrong and I need to make it right,” empathy drives, “I can see something is wrong and I want to help.” This is kindness or compassion. Compassionate action can be varied: validating, sitting with, listening, a hug – all compassion in action. And because empathy can feel painful, we also benefit from turning that compassion inward.
When we start to accurately name our feelings, things can shift. The bad feeling doesn’t magically disappear, but rather than tying ourselves in knots, we see the feeling as a sign we care, that someone else’s experience matters, that we’re connected.
Guilt has its place. It keeps us aligned with our values and nudges us when we’ve genuinely slipped out of step. But not every uncomfortable feeling is guilt. Often the feeling is, in fact, empathy; a signal of human caring, not failure.
In noticing the difference, we give ourselves grace and space to respond in ways that actually help.
*Guilty of caring is not really guilt at all.
