Community Update (12/16/24)

Wellness

VHC Health fitness & healthy lifestyle

VHC Health fitness and healthy lifestyle classes begin a new session the week of January 6. In-person classes are held at VHC Health, Faith Lutheran Church and McLean Baptist Church. Plus, there are a variety of virtual classes to help you kick off a healthy 2025. Check out Menopause Yoga, Tai Chi, Functional Fitness and much more.  To view the full schedule and register, please visit their website or call 703-558-6740.

‘Tis the Season to Feel Guilty…. Or Not    by Joan Smith                                               

The coming season can be one filled with joy, optimism, fellowship and contentment.  But, it may also push our guilt buttons, because of past seasons in which we perhaps behaved badly to others. Or, we FEEL like we did, despite others telling us we did not. 

According to Judith Burdick, psychoanalyst “a lot of us hold ourselves accountable for everything that’s gone wrong with our lives” (Washington Post Tuesday 10/19/024).  She continues “but if you over focus on your faults and can’t forgive yourself enough to practice self-love, you won’t be able to really give or receive love from someone else”. 

We may all have suffered the guilt tug-of-war, when someone asks us for something and we say no; not wanting to hurt their feelings, we may avoid them, or capitulate and say yes despite not having the time or energy to do the request.

In her Ask a Therapist column in the Post (Tuesday 11/ 12/ 2024), Juli Fraga distinguishes between normal guilt and maladaptive guilt. Normal guilt is what we feel when we lose our temper, fib, or break a rule, and it serves an important purpose to provide a moral compass and help maintain relationships. If we did not have this, we may hurt others or fail to make amends for wrongdoing.

Maladaptive guilt is what we experience when we have NOT hurt or wronged another person, but we feel that we have. This type of guilt often stems from our childhood, Dr. Fraga says, such as if were shamed anytime we expressed a need, we may feel guilty for asserting ourselves. Or if guilt was used to motivate hard work, we may feel guilty whenever we relax!

Both types of guilt can make us feel miserable, and researchers have found a connection between guilt and symptoms of depression. Other researchers take this a step further to point out that chronic stress and depression increase the risk of heart disease and cancer.

If you can relate to this, you are not alone, and, on the upside, there are many different actions to take to work through this emotion.

Where to start? Well, a great first step is to cut yourself some slack and work toward self-love. We are often much harder on ourselves, with much higher expectations, than with other people. This seems to be truer of women than men, in part because women tend to experience more self-doubt and take greater responsibility for relationships generally.

Susan Shapiro (WAPO 10/19/14) outlines ten strategies for forgiving your toughest foe, yourself. I will list a few of those here:

• Treat yourself like you would a loved one. To get over a mistake you made, imagine how you would forgive someone close to you who did the exact same thing. This increases compassion.
• Consider anonymous restitutions. For example, if you stole a library book, buy replacements and donate to the library. You can’t change the past but you can do good in the world in the present and future.
• Get a different perspective, and know that you did your best. Maya Angelou was quoted: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, you do better”.
• Make amends. Call the person, admit “I messed up. I am sorry for (whatever you did). No “buts”. Heartfelt apologies can ease normal guilt, and also cultivate closeness, making relationships stronger.

Others recommend some introspection action, such as writing a list detailing our worst offences. By acknowledging our guilt, we recognize its existence (rather than covering it over but still feeling miserable). Normal guilt can point the way for us to make amends.  Maladaptive guilt points us to work on self-love and doing reality checks in the future (example: am I really responsible for what happened?). Using methods such as deep breathing, meditation to calm our “accuser self”, and writing out all our intense feelings (but especially guilt, and forgiveness) in a “feelings journal” can help us de-stress. This last suggestion also helps us to focus on our “wins” so we can applaud the steps we are taking and see the progress we are making.

One personal recommendation is to use methods that are included in the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. She explains how to write “morning pages” which consist of writing without thinking about it nor editing for 20 minutes immediately upon awakening. This means keeping a legal pad and pen beside the bed, and perhaps after a quick trip to the bathroom, writing away! The idea is to use your just-waking-up-brain, rather than your rational, editing brain to write whatever comes to mind. One amazing finding (and I validate this) is that, over time, the anxiety and anger and guilt decreases in the writing! (Interpret this as you will!). This can be a useful template on helping to identify guilt feelings, as well as determine whether the feelings are normal or maladaptive.

So, don’t be snowed by the holiday gift you gave (or didn’t give) to someone last year; acknowledge and move on, so “when you know better, you do better”.

Happy Holidays.