Guilt and Burnout

Guilt is a massive driver of burnout among those of us who were programmed to people-please and take responsibility for the well-being of others.

I feel compelled to write about guilt and how it contributes to our susceptibility to burnout as I go through the motions of the aftermath of Winston, my dog, having another seizure recently. Every time, my inner critic tries to find ways to blame me for his seizures and find fault in the way that I care for him. He was diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy earlier this year, which means there’s no particular cause for his seizures that shows up in any of the regular screenings the vet can do for it.

In the case of epilepsy, you’re supposed to keep a seizure log and mark down all the different factors surrounding the seizure, like his medication dose, anything different he’s been exposed to recently, time of day, and so on. The only correlation I can see between his seizures is that there seems to be a significant change in air pressure overnight, then the seizure always happens first thing in the morning. That, and the fact that I have been processing something emotionally heavy in the weeks leading up to it…

Neither of these things are actually the cause of Winston’s seizures. Sure, they might contribute to whatever it is that’s going on. But the seizures are cyclical and they don’t happen every time there’s a change in air pressure, or every time I’m dealing with a life problem.

Yet, the day that it happened, I spent hours in inner dialogue with my guilt-tripper inner critic, trying to convince it (i.e. myself) that “it wasn’t my fault”. I got there eventually, but wow did it put up a fight!

I realised afterwards how draining the entire experience had been.

That being said, it was far less draining than it would have been several years ago when I was completely unaware of my critic, let alone how to dialogue with it. Back then, the critic would drive me into a multi-day spiral, disrupting my sleep, work, confidence, and so on. This sometimes even led to emotional burnout or a period of low mood or depression that would last even longer.

And yes, it is tiring to hear the critic wittering on like it does. But my guilt tripper critic has gotten quieter over the years of conscious awareness and practice countering it.

The guilt-tripper critic is common. It’s an internalised version of, in my case, my guilt-tripping parents. It guilts me much more overtly and harshly than even they ever did though. That’s because this critic’s role has always been to protect me from my parents’ guilt-tripping, by guilting me into taking whatever action was required to prevent them ever needing to guilt me in the first place. 

More broadly, the guilt-tripper critic, like all inner critics, is stuck in the past. It’s essentially beating you up for something you already did, or for being a certain way that others won't approve of. It focuses on mistakes and ruminates on all the consequences of those mistakes. It is highly concerned with the well-being of others, the underlying belief being that the well-being of others is more important than your own. Therefore, the guilt-tripper will try to guilt you into sacrificing your own needs in order to meet the needs of others.

Feeling Guilt = Taking Responsibility

When we feel guilty about something, it’s because we’re taking responsibility for it. Often, that responsibility is not even ours to take. We are only responsible for ourselves and our dependents, such as children or pets. We are not responsible for the well-being of our other loved ones, friends, co-workers, and so on. Yet, so many of us take responsibility for the well-being of those around us, e.g. believing their bad mood must be because of us.

Feeling Unwarranted Guilt = Our Programming

Feeling guilt around the well-being of others is typical if we were programmed early in life to believe that the well-being of others is our responsibility. I was programmed by both of my parents to believe that their contentment or well-being was my responsibility. I therefore spent a lot of my life feeling guilty when they were displeased, until I learned as an adult, through therapy, that I had actually been parentified by my mum and abused by my father, and that actually, their mood or well-being is not my responsibility at all.

Parentification Programs Guilt

Parentification can be instrumental and/or emotional. Instrumental parentification is where the child assumes a role of responsibility within the family, such as taking care of their sibling/s or a sick parent. Emotional parentification is when the child provides emotional support to their parent/s (which they should have been getting from their parents, not the other way around). Emotional parentification includes things like the parent treating their child like a therapist, over-sharing their problems and dumping their concerns on them, and the child consoling or advising the parent. It also includes using their child as a confidante, a messenger between other family members, thereby involving them in family drama irrelevant to the child, as some kind of mediator. 

So, because I was programmed this way, when my beloved Winston had a seizure and one of the only two explanations I could muster happened to be that he was feeding off my negative energy…I spiralled into self-blame and momentarily beat myself up for all the things I could, or “should” have done to protect him.

This type of emotional spiralling is not only completely exhausting but also completely unhelpful and therefore an utter waste of valuable energy.

But that energy can be saved if the spiral is avoided altogether, or at least, nipped in the bud.

I struggled with it this time because I was unwell already and therefore under-resourced. That’s an important thing to note: progress with your inner critics is not linear. Had I not been unwell for three weeks in a row, perhaps I’d never have spiralled at all.

It’s possible to nip a guilt spiral in the bud because you can catch your guilt-tripper by noticing some of the common statements it might be making.

The first step towards acheiving this is gaining awareness of your critic when it rears its ugly head.

What to listen out for when you’re spiralling with guilt

Here are some common generic phrases the guilt-tripper critic might be saying to you:

“After everything he’s done for you, you owe him”

“It’s your fault”

“You could have done more to prevent this”

“If you didn’t do X, then Y would never have happened”

“They’re suffering because of you”

“How could you do this?”

“They’ll never forgive you”

“You’re selfish”

“You’re a spoiled, ungrateful brat”

These statements can also be referred to as core beliefs.

Core beliefs are beliefs that were ingrained deeply into our psyche early on in life, and have played a part in shaping who we are today.

But core beliefs can be rewritten. 

They are just particularly strong neural pathways. New neural pathways are created all the time. The more you use new pathways in your brain and avoid using old ones, the weaker the old ones get, and the stronger the new ones get. Your brain will always try to take the path of least resistance, so the new belief system will eventually become the more habitual one.

Ways to catch and work with your critic

If you’re feeling in your power, safe, and resourced, you might like to try the following. 

However, if you’re feeling vulnerable to any potential emotional triggers, I suggest saving this kind of work for a one-to-one session with a professional, e.g. a trauma-informed coach, somatic healer, or therapist.

My suggestion for those who feel centred in their power is to read each one of the above common guilt-tripper statements, slowly, and notice how you feel as you do. If you feel a visceral response to one in particular, go with that one.

If you’re unsure why you’re having the visceral response to a specific statement above, sit with it, with eyes closed. Focus on the sensations and emotions that arise, and notice if any images come to mind. Often these images might indicate either the root or present-day trigger. Then you can go from there.

The next step would be to try to re-write that statement more specifically to the context that it’s relevant to.

For example, in the context of Winston’s seizure, I would choose “if you didn’t do X, then Y would never have happened”. And I would make that more specific by re-writing it as “if I had continued with weekly energy healing sessions then Winston wouldn’t have had another seizure”.

The third step is to come up with a realistic counter-statement. I must emphasise realistic, as in, realistic to you. If you don’t believe the counter-statement at least a little, then it won’t resonate as strongly or be as powerful. So, for example, I could counter the statement I just wrote out with “even the vet agrees that there’s no obvious trigger for Winston’s seizures, and there’s no evidence to suggest that energy healing would have prevented this one anyway”. I could also counter it with "it's not my fault" but my brain prefers my counter-statements to be a bit more specific.

The more often you can catch your critic in action and counter it on the spot, the stronger your new narrative will become and the weaker the critic’s narrative will become.

Finally, the best way to overcome guilt is to vocalise it. If you don’t have someone you feel safe sharing your thoughts and feelings with, try journaling about it. 

If you do have someone you feel safe to share with though, then voicing your guilt to another person can truly take away its power.

Of course Winston’s seizure wasn’t my fault! Of course more regular energy healing sessions weren’t guaranteed to prevent another seizure. Of course the entire scenario was outside of my control.

But when we’re in a spiral, it’s not that clear.

And the thing is, there are always going to be triggers in life. You cannot live in a bubble and guarantee a trigger-free life. That just wouldn’t be…life!

What you can do though is maximise your self-awareness so that when the triggers do arise, you either catch yourself mid-spiral, or better yet, with time and practice you notice in the moment and prevent that spiral altogether.

And in the long-run, this is going to save you a lot of energy and reduce your risk of emotional burnout.

Don’t try to "get rid of" your critic altogether though. It is a part of you and it’s only trying to help. I wasted so much energy over several years trying to get rid of mine before realising that. If you can learn to love and even feel gratitude for your critic/s good intentions, they’ll learn to relax and get quieter over time.

But these things don’t happen overnight.

If you need support, I’m trauma-informed but I’m a coach, not a therapist. If you have a lot of unprocessed trauma, the notion of this work likely feels daunting. In which case, I strongly suggest working with a trauma-informed therapist on this as it tends to be very nuanced.

If you feel safe doing this work but would like support moving forward because you’re feeling stuck, or you're feeling like your critics could be contributing to your burnout, then don’t hesitate to reach out.

You can send me an email, message me on Instagram, or book a free 20-minute strategy session with me.

Take care xo