TRUTH

Healing Guilt, Shame and Regret, Part 4: Permission to Feel

Posted on September 11, 2019 Updated on September 8, 2019

The following truth is significant. It’s okay to feel guilt, shame and regret. You have my permission. In fact, you can’t live life in the physical without experiencing them. But what is imperative to a healed life is not to get mired in your feelings. Don’t be ashamed of your emotions. Feel them! But even when the pain wrenches so deeply within you that you doubt you’ll ever be free of it, there is still something for which to be grateful, and that is –

Gratitude you feel emotions, even when painful.

Some people, like charming sociopaths, don’t feel emotions. Can you imagine not feeling love, or even remorse and guilt? I’m not a psychological expert, but my belief is that these people have hardened their hearts like concrete, encasing them in an invisible protective barrier to keep from feeling long-ago early childhood hurts from people they trusted, and in self-protection  have vowed to never allow anyone to hurt them again. These are people who seem incapable of feeling love, joy and compassion.  I’ve worked with a few of them who contacted me through this site, and they ask really tough questions, like…

• What does love feel like?
• What does regret feel like?
• What is sadness?
• How can I feel something when I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like?

I promise you, you don’t want that emotionless wasteland for you. If that happens to be one of your personality challenges, you are invited to contact me and I’ll try to help connect you with a better, more meaningful life-path – a feeling path. Addressing your personality issue takes courage. No matter on which side of this challenge you are, turning your life around takes courage. But you can do it.

What I’m saying is that if you feel, guilt, shame and regret, you are blessed. Emotions are there for you to experience. They are part of who you are. As someone told me one time, our sensitivities are part of our poetry.

If you don’t experience any sensitivities, you can’t relate to others who do feel them. But as I stated before, the trick is not to get stuck there and allow them to negatively impact your life. However the first challenge is that you can’t move forward if you don’t acknowledge them. Choose to work on this issue until the next post where we’ll discuss how to forgive – ourselves and others.

(To be continued)

Next: Healing Guilt, Shame and Regret, Part 5: How do I forgive when I’m still hurt and angry?

Previous Posts: Healing Guilt, Shame and Regret

Healing Guilt, Shame and Regret, Part 1

Part 2: Important Differences

Part 3: Me Worthy? But my mistakes!