“Rub salt into the wound”
I believe most of you have already known the proverb above. Maybe one of you have faced bad thing like in the proverb. You may face bad thing because of the decision you made by yourself or unexpected thing that comes to your life. This condition often triggers the guilt. It can even haunt and disturb the relationship between you and people you love most of all.
One of my clients faced this thing: She was raped and got pregnant. Of course she was very angry with the rapist. Even when the baby was born, she couldn’t accept him as her son and neglected him since she considered that her son was the source of her suffering.
However, when she forgave the rapist, the hate turned into guilt. She felt so guilty since she didn’t take care of her son. She felt that she had missed many moments with her son. Although she has spent her time to play with and take care of her son, the guilt still emerged and haunted her. This guilt impeded her relationship with her son to get better.
Given the case above, we all should pay attention to emergence and development of the guilt and immediately find solution in order that the guilt don’t gnaw us constantly. You can start with…
Finding out the root of guilt because one thing can trigger another one in our life…
Realizing that the guilt that emerges has its own purpose such as to give us a chance to learn something new..
Accepting the mistake as a part of our life and immediately move on by becoming somebody better..
Understanding your behaviour pattern and therefore you can avoid potency of same mistake…
And therefore we all realize and accept the fact that nothing’s perfect in this world.
Someone who bears guilt often considers that she can get rid of the guilt by apologizing. In fact, guilt emerges because we haven’t been able to accept ourselves completely yet; of course not only accepting all goodness and our achievement but also accepting our imperfection and mistake that we made.
The guilt will still exist as long as we cannot forgive ourselves, no matter how much we forgive people and no matter how kind we treat them.
Let’s admit that we also have a dark side that we often hide. Unconsciously, we project the thing we hide constantly to outer world by blaming other people; accusing somebody else to be easily get angry, revengeful, etc. However, if we take a look further, isn’t it us who are revengeful and get angry easily actually? It maybe us who are the root of the problem.
It may take a long time to forgive ourselves; somebody may take 2-3 months, the other may take years even more than ten years. But, one thing’s for sure, it’s never too late.
Of course a case like rape case mentioned above is very traumatic and can affect many aspects of our life. This rape case will affect not only the victim but also the rapist and the baby who was born from the rape. The victim feels that she is repugnant, the baby gets neglected, and it is hard for the rapist to form a quality relationship. It doesn’t surprise us that rape case can affect many things such as how women see men and women’s fear of men.
Now, what about you? Have you recalled important moment that becomes root of the guilt that you feel right now? If it is hard for you to dig into your past or let go of the guilt, please don’t hesitate to ask spiritual coach, teacher, or spiritual companion like me to help you overcome the guilt.
