If You Struggle with Guilt and Second-Guessing Yourself, This Will Set You Free – How to Stop Blaming Yourself for Things That Aren’t Your Fault
Episode Notes
Do you feel guilty for not doing enough—or take responsibility for things that aren’t yours to own?
Today Dr. Alison tackles the complex feelings of guilt and self-doubt—what guilt truly is, why it can feel so crushing, and how it often stems from taking responsibility for things that aren’t yours to own. She shares from her own journey of overcoming excessive guilt and the life-changing perspective that finally set her free.
Here’s what we cover:
* How to distinguish between true guilt and false guilt, and why it matters
* The #1 most important question to ask yourself when guilt takes over
* 3 buried emotions underneath false guilt
* Why excessive guilt damages your relationships
* 3 steps to help you understand and manage the voice of guilt in your life
Resources:
- Episode 138: Breaking Free from Overfunctioning—Discover the Hidden Costs of Always Being 'The Responsible One’
- The Best of You by Dr. Alison Cook
- Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
- I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook
- 1 Samuel 15:22
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 93: 3 Ways to Stop Guilt-Tripping Yourself, Untangle Complicated Emotions, & Discover the Joy of Clarity
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today.
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I'm so thrilled you're here this week for this episode. It's a little bit of a follow-up to the episode I did a couple of weeks ago. It was Episode 138: Breaking Free from Overfunctioning, where we talked about the hidden cost and the hidden root of always being the responsible one.
Always feeling like other people's emotions are our responsibility, other people's reactions are our responsibility, other people's behaviors are our responsibility. That was the topic of that episode. This last year, I've been on a journey of recovering from overfunctioning.
It manifests a lot as people pleasing in my life. It has a real codependent connotation to it. I've written about that a lot in The Best of You, but as I've been on a new iteration of going deeper into the roots of this in my own life, the ubiquitous, constant feeling that surfaces that I have to deal with in a better way is guilt.
I remember maybe a year and a half ago, saying to my sister, who was one of my closest confidants, I feel guilty all the time. All the time, every interaction, I feel guilty. I should be doing more. I shouldn't have done that. I should be doing this. I shouldn't do it that way. That constant feeling of guilt was with me to the point where I was like, I've got to deal with this. What is this about?
In today's episode. I want to share with you some thoughts on false guilt versus true guilt and what the function of guilt is in our lives, and why it is essential that we begin to notice it, especially if we are people who overfunction, who take on too much responsibility for things that are not our responsibility.
If you think about it, that's the link right there. Why do I take on so much responsibility for other people's emotions, other people's reactions, other people's behaviors? It's because I feel guilty if I don't.
That's the big red warning flag that goes off in my mind. I've had to learn to reorient to that feeling. Now, what really prompted me to want to record this episode today was a friend of mine who reached out. This is a woman who works on the front lines.
She is a woman who is doing more good in the world on behalf of folks who are hurting the most. She works with people who are at risk, at rock bottom, maybe they're homeless. They're dealing with incredible traumas, where they're having a hard time even functioning in life because they've been so beaten down. They've been hurt so much.
This woman tirelessly works on behalf of these folks for very little return for herself. She's a saint. I love this woman. She's one of these people that is truly in the trenches, doing so much good for other people.
She wrote to me because she's had a diagnosis that has prompted her to take some time off of her work. In the midst of a serious medical condition where she could not do the work, where she could not be on the front lines helping all these people, she wrote, I cannot stop feeling this guilt.
Here she is, flat on her back. Literally, she cannot do these things. She's wrestling with this guilt, even though she's aware, “I know this is what I need to do for myself. I won't be able to help anybody if I don't heal and recover. I've got to take care of myself”.
It made me realize how ubiquitous this problem is. I hear it all the time from friends, from family members, from clients–there's this chronic guilt that people feel, and it's confusing because guilt is this feeling of I'm doing something wrong. Most of us who struggle with overfunctioning are sensitive to that.
We don't want to do something wrong. We don't want to do something that would hurt someone else. We don't want to do something that would be irresponsible. That feeling of “I'm doing something wrong” is very motivating. This is why guilt is so important to understand, because we want to feel guilt, we want to feel morally responsible, if indeed we have done something wrong.
We want to be able to name that, we want to be able to make amends, we want to be able to course-correct, but on the other hand, we don't want to feel guilty when we haven't, in fact, done anything wrong.
In today's episode, I want to tease out this emotion of guilt so that we can understand when we're feeling what I'm going to call true guilt, a clear conviction of the Holy Spirit that we are in fact doing something wrong, versus when we're feeling false guilt, which is actually not guilt at all.
So the first thing I want to do is define guilt. When we say the word guilt, according to the dictionary, it's the fact of having committed an offense. So guilt has this connotation that we have, in fact, done something wrong. If you're guilty of a crime, you've committed the crime. You've done it. You've in fact done something wrong.
But when we're talking about guilt in the realm of our emotional lives, when we're talking about it psychologically, we're talking about a feeling of guilt. It's an emotional experience where we feel like we've done something wrong. In the psychological sense, that feeling of guilt is very different from the actual fact of guilt.
Just because we feel guilty does not, in fact, mean that we've done something wrong. I love how John Townsend and Henry Cloud talk about it in their classic book Boundaries. They say it this way: “Our conscience isn't God”.
Our conscience, the part of us that cues us to right and wrong and to being sensitive, to not wanting to hurt someone or not wanting to do something wrong or not wanting to commit an offense against God or someone else, that conscience is actually, as Cloud and Townsend say, part of living in a fallen world.
It develops, with the rest of us, psychologically. Our conscience can develop in a way that doesn't align with the facts of reality. For many people who were parentified as children (we talked a lot about that in Episode 138), where you were maybe raised to feel more responsible for your parents or your caregivers than was your actual responsibility, that conscience can get skewed.
You can have a really sensitive conscience and feel more responsible for other people or for things than is actually your responsibility. So again, I'm going to say this several times in this episode, the bottom line is that the presence of a guilty feeling or guilty conscience does not necessarily mean you have done something wrong.
It is so important, especially if you're someone that over-functions, who pleases others, who tends toward codependency, that you begin to take a look at the feeling of guilt when you feel it and unpack it so that you can get to the root of what's actually going on.
From a psychological perspective, guilt is not considered a primary emotion. Instead, it's a secondary emotion, which means it's an emotion that arises from a combination of other primary emotions.
Guilt often serves as a signal that we believe we've violated our own moral code or our own conscience. It prompts us to reflect on our actions. That's not all bad. It's not all bad. That cue is a signal to reflect. However, guilt is often, in many of our lives, disproportionate or misplaced, especially if you've been through trauma, if you've been wounded, if you've been parentified.
Guilt so often masks deeper, harder to access feelings like shame, like fear of someone else's anger, and sometimes guilt even masks our own justified, exiled anger at someone else. Sometimes we guilt trip and blame ourselves because it's harder and more uncomfortable for us to take that blame that was never ours to hold and place it somewhere else.
This is why it's so important to pause and get curious about what's underneath your guilt. Because when you understand the root emotion, it will help you respond in a healthier and more balanced way instead of through over-functioning or being stuck in self-blame.
Understanding guilt involves getting curious about it, as you would any other feeling. If you feel really hurt or you feel really angry, you have to get curious about it and ask yourself, what's really going on here? What does this really mean? That's what happened to me in my life.
Like I said, about a year and a half, two years ago, I started going, this isn't normal that I feel guilty this often. I went on this exploration, and what I have come to discover is that almost always at the root of the feeling of guilt in my life is fear.
So let me give you a quick example. This literally happened this week. It took me a while to get there, but now that I understand it, I see it so much more quickly. I had to break up with someone. Now, when I say break up with someone, I don't mean in a romantic way. Sometimes we have to break up with an employer or we have to break up with a friend or we have to break up with a hair cutter or a therapist or a church group.
Any kind of situation, no matter how small or how big, when I have to set a boundary, when I have to say no, when I have to create distance, when I have to get out of a relationship, even if it's a relationship with someone I barely even know, I've barely even worked with someone, but I've maybe talked to them two or three times on the phone and I'm actually not going to proceed further with working with them, it feels like a breakup to me.
That's the stakes that it feels like in my soul. So I had to do this. I had to break up with someone and I really didn't want to do it. But the facts were so clear that I could not proceed in this relationship. I needed to end the relationship. Now, for those of you listening who are over-functioners or who struggle with people-pleasing or codependency, this can be almost insurmountable for us.
I've been working on this for a long time, but to execute a breakup can be so painful for me. It stirs up that feeling of guilt. I just, I feel it in my being. “You can't do that. You're doing something wrong. You're going to hurt someone. How could you do that? This is bad.”
There's this tape that plays and this part of me shows me all the ways it's going to hurt this other person. Their life is going to fall apart. They're never going to be the same, and it's all because of me. I am ultimately responsible for their wellbeing. If I end this relationship, their whole life is going to implode.
That's what this part tells me. Now, in this case, it was laughable because that was not going to happen, but that's what this part of me feels. It feels like if I end this relationship with this person, their life is going to go off the rails and it will be all my fault. That is what this part of me feels. It feels so real.
It feels so real to this part of me that it is almost painful and it is almost debilitating. I almost cannot do the thing I need to do, even to this day. I noticed that this part of me was very active, but I'm so familiar now with that feeling, with that onslaught of “you can't do this”, and the parade of images about this other person's demise if I am to execute this very simple breakup.
That this isn't going to work out for me if I need to go in a separate way. It's so painful to this part of me now, as I have done this work. What I have noticed is that the presence of that kind of guilt in my mind is nine times out of 10, maybe even 10 times out of 10, but I'll say nine times out of 10 to err toward being conservative, that's actually a cue that I actually should and need to go forth with the breakup, that I need to do this hard thing.
I've learned that over time, but it doesn't mean I don't feel that reflexive emotion of, oh my gosh, you can't do this. You can't do this. This is bad. This makes you a bad person. You're hurting someone. You're ruining their life.
That whole onslaught is still there. It's that I've learned that when I notice that, it's actually a cue that I'm about to do something brave. I've recast that in my mind because what I have come to understand about that part of me is that it masquerades as guilt, but it's really rooted in tremendous fear. That part of me is terrified.
How can you let someone down? How can you honor what's right when someone else might be disappointed or might be displeased or might be uncomfortable because of you? This goes right back to what we talked about in Episode 138 about parentification, because that part of me has never had anybody step in and go, listen, it's not pleasant to let someone else down, but it's also not the end of the world. It happens.
Sometimes we have to go separate ways. Sometimes I can't keep going to the same therapist or to the same hairstylist or to the same vendor or to the same church community,. Sometimes I do need to pivot away from a small group or even from a friendship or a relationship because it's the right thing to do before God.
Yes, maybe it is going to cause some discomfort for this other person. I do not wish for that to be true. Also, I have to be brave. That fearful part of me needs to learn now what it never learned when I was young. It needs to learn that I will be there for that part of me through the fear.
That even if we let someone down, I can be the adult in the room. I can re-parent myself in that way. God is here with me now. We've got two parents now. We've got God and we've got adult me to help that fearful part of me to be brave. This is what we have to teach our children.
If we were not taught that as children by loving parents, we have to do that work of being the adult in the room for those fearful parts of ourselves now. I have learned that when I feel that onslaught of guilt, it is almost always an invitation to be brave.
In fact, if God is inviting me to be brave in this way, God will not only show up for me as I take those brave steps, God is also going to show up for those other people that I have to walk away from. He will also meet them in this place where he is not calling me to be. God is a big God.
God can be there for the part of me that is terrified and anxious about losing attachments. Because that's what it is when we fear losing someone's approval, when we fear losing someone's love, when we fear disappointing someone, even when we know we have to do the thing we need to do. We're stirring up our old attachment wounds.
God is good and so kind to these parts of us. He takes us by the hand and he leads us through it. I know for a fact that God is doing that for me. He is also going to do that for the other person.
Now, listen, this is a journey. It's a process of retraining yourself and re-parenting your guilt and allowing it to become a cue that some other part of you needs your loving attention.
On the front end of this journey, seven times out of 10, eight times out of 10, nine times out of 10, you're probably going to default to what feels most comfortable to your system, to the path you've always chosen, which is to please the other person, overfunction, take responsibility for what's not yours to take, stay with the boss longer than you should, do more for a toxic parent than God is actually calling you to do, stay in a relationship longer than God is actually calling you to stay, do more for a friend or for a child or for a community than God is actually calling you to do.
It's okay. I want you to be kind to yourself in that process, because most of us who struggle with false guilt already have a built in propensity to want to be good, to want to be kind, to want to be pleasing, to want to help others, to always want to be responsible, to want to keep the peace.
This is a built in propensity that got exploited to where our guilt meter got knocked out of whack. I visualize it kind of like an old fashioned set of scales. When the scale is balanced, they're level. You can also imagine one side of that scale taking responsibility for everything, and the other side of that scale is taking responsibility for nothing.
I'm not going to take responsibility for anything. I'm not going to care about anybody else at all. I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to do as I please. A guilt meter that's really in line with the Holy Spirit is balanced. It understands how to take responsibility for what is ours to take responsibility for, and also understands what is absolutely not ours to take responsibility for,, for what absolutely and 100 percent belongs to other people.
The scale balances when our guilt meter is in line with the Holy Spirit. We're like, yeah, I can honestly look at that and say, I should take responsibility for that. On the other hand, I can look at that and say, that's not mine. I don't wish that person harm. I don't want them to feel bad. Also, I'm not responsible for those things that I either feel responsible for, or they're asking me to feel responsible for.
So it's having that guilt meter be right in line with the Holy Spirit. This is a process. It doesn't happen overnight. We have to work at it. For many of us, we're tilted to that side of taking responsibility for everything. Our job is to tilt that scale back.
Initially it's going to feel like we're being cruel. It's going to feel like we're being harsh. It's going to feel really, really hard, but all we're doing is bringing that scale back to the center where we're in line with the Holy Spirit.
So how do we do that? How do we understand what is true guilt? What is ours to actually own versus false guilt, what is actually not ours to own?
This was the key question I had to start asking myself. Okay. What am I feeling guilty about, number one? What am I actually feeling guilty about? What did I actually do, or what am I actually about to do?
As I thought through, what is actually happening here? What is the thing I'm feeling guilty about? What is the behavior that's occurring or that has occurred? That has led me to this key question that is foundational to understanding the role of guilt in your life.
It sounds so simple, but it's been transformative for me. The question is this, have I actually done something wrong? Is it in fact wrong to turn down a favor that someone has asked of me or to decline an invitation? Is that in fact wrong? Am I doing something wrong when I do those things?
Is it in fact wrong for me to prioritize my own health or my own body or my own self-care when I'm sick or tired or run down or on a day-to-day basis? Is that in fact wrong? Is it in fact wrong to step back from a toxic friendship or a toxic relationship when someone is not changing their behaviors?
Often when I really get to the root of those questions, the answer is no, it's not, in fact, wrong. When you begin to ask yourself that question and get down to the root of it, you build self-trust. You begin to rebalance those scales. I'm willing to answer that question with yes, if I have done something wrong, but if I haven't, then it's false.
The truth is, if you're feeling true guilt, you will, in fact, be able to name the thing you did wrong. For example, I yelled at my kids. I lied to my friend. I betrayed someone's trust. I went behind their back and I shared confidential information that I shouldn't have shared. Or I was cruel to that person when I needed to depart the relationship. I said unkind things.
Or maybe I ghosted that person because I couldn't figure out how to tell them, so I disappeared. So those are things we can say, maybe there is some guilt there. Maybe there is a prick of the conscience from God inviting me to take a look at that behavior.
On the other hand, the messages of false guilt show up when you haven't done anything wrong. You'll feel this vague sense of feeling bad about yourself and feeling uncomfortable and feeling like you've done something wrong.
But when you really go to try to pinpoint what it is that you've done wrong, it's something along the lines of, well, I feel guilty that they're going to be hurt, or I feel guilty that I can't be always available to my kids 24/7, or I can't be always available to my aging parents 24/7, or I feel guilty that other people are suffering and I'm not doing anything about it.
That's a very genuine feeling, but here's the thing I want you to know. In this case, I believe the word guilt is actually a misnaming. We're putting the word guilt on it because of that overfunctioning, because of that hypersensitivity. In these cases, I believe guilt is actually masquerading to keep us from a more primary vulnerable emotion, such as fear or sadness, even.
So, for example, I feel really sad and genuinely bummed out that I'm not going to work with this therapist anymore, that I'm not going to work with this church group anymore. I feel sad about that. That's valid. That's a valid emotion, but that's very different from guilt.
Or I feel fearful and scared that I am going to hurt my kids, that I am going to hurt my relationship with this person. I feel fearful about that. Sometimes it's hopelessness. I feel helpless, like I actually can't do anything to make this person feel better. I can't do anything to fix their problem. I can't do anything to fix their pain and I’m guilt tripping myself.
Taking on the blame for that is actually a way I've learned to cope with that feeling of helplessness, and what is actually more true at the root of this guilt is I am hopeless. Nothing I can do will make this person change and actually take accountability and responsibility for their own life.
Nothing I can do will solve this person's problem, because they are refusing to take responsibility for their own pain, for their own life, for their own poor choices. I cannot affect change in their lives. I feel helpless about that. I hate that feeling. One of the ways I've learned to cope is I beat myself up for it.
If I did more for them, maybe they would finally see the error of their ways and change. If I found one more way to go to them, maybe they would finally go get therapy. If I did one more nice thing for them, maybe they would finally feel the happiness I so long for them to feel. The truth is, they're never going to feel what they don't take responsibility for feeling in their own lives.
We are helpless to affect that kind of change. We have to recognize that those feelings of guilt are actually misplaced. That feeling of guilt is actually a misnaming. I'm not actually guilty in this situation. In fact, I'm helpless. There's nothing I can do. That's a hard feeling to face.
We don't like facing the limits of our own humanity. That in and of itself is a really hard thing to face, but it's so much more honest than taking responsibility for what is not ours to take. In those instances, that guilt tripping part of us is actually trying to play God.
It's telling us we have more power than we actually have, and it's actually a lie. In that case, you are essentially feeling guilty for being human. You're feeling guilty that you're finite. You're feeling guilty that you're not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent, that you don't have all the power in the world to affect change in other people's lives.
In other words, you feel guilty that you're not God. But the truth is, you're not God. You are human. You are finite. You are limited. You exist within boundary lines. You do not have the power to affect change in someone's life who is not taking responsibility for the changes they in fact need to make.
The antidote to false guilt in these cases is the acceptance of your own human limitations. This is what we mean when we talk about the word surrender. This word keeps coming up on different podcast episodes. There's a podcast episode coming up with a hero of mine and of so many of yours in this work of integrating Christianity with psychology.
We talk about the fact that so many times at the end of the day, what we are doing is surrendering to the fact that we are not God, that our power is limited to change ourselves, let alone to change someone else. When you surrender, you reframe your expectations of yourself.
You bring your guilt meter in line with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Guilt says, I'm letting everybody down, but surrender says, I am limited, and I am a beloved child of God. Guilt says, “I should be perfect for everybody else”. Surrender says, “I will never be perfect, nor will I ever make everybody happy. God's grace is enough”.
Guilt says, I should have done more. I should do more. But surrender says, I will give my best and I will let go of the rest. I have to trust God with what's not mine to own. I have to trust God with that other person's reactions to my healthy boundary. I have to trust God with my spouse's decisions, with my parents' decisions, with my adult children's decisions, with my co-workers' decisions.
All I can do is my best within the limits of what God has called me to. Everything outside of that, I have to let go of. I have to trust God with the rest.
The antidote to guilt is a radical acceptance of your dependence on God. It's learning to bravely suffer the reality of our human limitations. Man, if I could be God, I would wave a magic wand and make everybody in the world happy, but I'm not. I'm not. I have to make hard decisions.
I have to walk away from this relationship. I have to leave this commitment. I have to say no to this person over here. I wish I didn't, but it is, in fact, irresponsible for me to play God. it is irresponsible to take responsibility for things that are not mine to take.
Braving radical acceptance and radical dependence on God, who is the one who actually holds all things together, is the work of developing faith. Allowing God to bring that guilt meter back to true north, back to the center, back to that balanced scale. Where with confidence before God, and with conviction, I can say, God, that is not mine to take.
I am not taking on responsibility for that person's feelings, for that person's disappointment, for that person's reactions. In this situation, I am going to keep my eyes fixed on you and do what I know is mine to do and let go of the rest.
So how do we do this? I've already talked about how this is a journey of healing and course correcting that guilt meter. Here's a simple exercise to help you on that path.
I'm going to use the framework from my book, I Shouldn’t Feel This Way. The tagline of the book is “Name What’s Hard, Tame Your Guilt, and Transform Self-Sabotage into Brave Action”. There's a lot more in the book, but the first thing you have to do when you notice guilt, kind of like what I was saying in my own life, is you have to name it.
You have to start becoming aware of what that feels like in your body. Because where we get into trouble is where we don't name it. We act reflexively out of it. We're not even aware of that feeling. We are doing the pleasing, perfecting, and taking responsibility when it's not ours to take.
Listening to this episode is a huge step in and of itself, of going, yes, that is me. I feel that all the time. Begin to notice it. Oh, I feel really guilty. I'm about to go to a different store in town and I feel guilty about that because I don't want my friend who owns this other store to see me. It could be that simple. Begin to notice the feeling. Oh my gosh, that's it. That's that guilty feeling. I'm feeling it right now. That's the first step.
Number two is to frame it. You've got to start getting curious about it and asking yourself the following questions. Number one, that magic question. Did I, in fact, do something wrong? Now, if you're having a hard time answering that because your guilt meter is so overweighted, go to part two of that question.
Would an objective third party agree that I did something wrong? If you need that help, ask somebody, especially on the front end of your recovery journey. Pull in some people and say, I feel so guilty about this. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. Am I in fact doing something wrong? Because you really need to get that fact check.
What are the facts here? Am I in fact doing something wrong?
If you're not sure, here's the next question to ask yourself. Did I hurt someone else as a result of cruelty, of impatience, of selfishness, or did I act out of anger? If so, there might be true guilt.
Maybe I was harsh. Maybe I was selfish. Maybe I came down hard on my kids. I can name the thing I did wrong. I can tell a third party, no, no, no, I was harsh in that moment. I really was. And that other person, when they look at the facts, agrees with me.
Or did I hurt someone else as a result of setting a healthy boundary, of honoring my own needs, of honoring my own human limitations? So notice the difference. The first part of that is, did I hurt someone else as a result of cruelty, impatience, selfishness, or anger?
The second part of that is, did I hurt someone else as a result of setting a healthy boundary, honoring my own need, honoring a limitation that I have? I can't be in three places at once, I'm so sorry. If you start to notice a pattern of the latter, you are likely feeling false guilt.
You're feeling that thing of, I feel sad that I have to hurt this person, or I feel bummed out that I can't meet all the needs around me. But that is not in fact guilt. I have not in fact done something wrong. It is so important when you're considering these questions to be relentlessly honest with yourself. Look at the facts. Have I actually done something wrong?
It's really important to get to the root of this. Otherwise, you're going to continue in a pattern of enabling other people and taking responsibility for things that are not yours to take. That's not only not good for you, it is also not good for other people.
It's really important to begin to tip that balance of your guilt meter back toward alignment with the Holy Spirit. God, am I actually doing something wrong here or am I honoring your call? Am I honoring your call?
This brings us to step three, which is taking a brave step. If you are not, in fact, feeling true guilt, then the invitation is to be brave and do the thing that makes you feel uncomfortable because that's how you build up confidence in yourself, confidence that you can face the discomfort.
Confidence that you can face those feelings that no one ever taught you how to face and you can grow and you can gain resilience and you can gain inner strength. It feels fantastic. It's liberating. It's like, oh my gosh, I can do this. I can say no, I can get out of this relationship.
I can not do this thing that I don't feel called to do. You're aligning yourself with God's Spirit. There's a verse that has been so helpful to me in this journey of realigning my guilt meter with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It's powerful. It's from 1 Samuel 15:22.
Here's what Samuel says: “To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”
This is about obedience. If we are listening to false guilt, it's false. We're listening to a lie. We are not listening to the voice of truth. We are not listening to the voice of God. So this really comes down to obedience. God values a heart of obedience more than he values our pseudo-sacrifices that aren't really about honoring him.
They're about our fear. I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to be a bad person. I want other people to like me. Now, listen, we can be compassionate toward those parts of ourselves, but we cannot let those parts of us drive.
We need to honor first and foremost, the call of God before us. What is the truth of this situation? God, what are you calling me to? If you're calling me away from this person, away from this relationship, away from this responsibility, away from this habit, I have to follow you. I have to be brave.
That is what's most important to me. These fearful parts of me, they can be here. I get it. It's scary, but I will not let them lead me any longer. To obey is better than to sacrifice, to heed your way, God, is better than the fat of rams. I want to join you in this journey of aligning my conscience with your will, because that is the path where freedom, not only for myself, but for everyone around me, truly reigns.
This journey of learning to align your guilt meter and your conscience with God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit is crucial. It's crucial to not only our spiritual health, but to our emotional health, our mental health, and to the health of our relationships.
You can do it. God wants this for you, to learn to engage your conscience to the fullest of how God designed it to function. You will learn to release what isn't yours to carry, and you will learn to trust God to hold it instead. Obedience to God's call, not fear, not people pleasing, not misplaced responsibility, is what leads us to the joy of true freedom from the shackles of false guilt and over-functioning.