the mountain/thoughts on guilt and shame.

one of my absolute favourite things to do in montreal is to walk up the mountain with a good friend.  i find it so healing that i've taken to calling it therapy.

today, i walked up with a good friend and we talked a lot about guilt and shame.  specifically, we were talking about the guilt and shame that comes after what i'll call "engaging in negative coping mechanisms".  and what i mean by that is those things we do to numb or soothe ourselves when life feels difficult: eat too much, drink too much, do drugs, shop too much, smoke too much, watch too much TV, spend too much time online - you get the idea.

i'm not sure that everyone struggles with this stuff but i know i sometimes do and i know most of my friends sometimes do so i'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a lot of people sometimes do.  if you're not one of these people, this might not be of interest to you.  if you are one of these people: welcome to the club, friend.

anyway,  i was talking with my friend about this guilt that comes after engaging in the negative behaviour and she said something interesting that i wanted to share.  essentially, she just reminded me that guilt is a choice you make.  you choose to feel guitly.  but you can also choose not to feel guilty.  you can just let it be and not label it as "right" or "wrong".  you can simply let it be the choice you made without any of the guilty, shameful afterthought.  which is not to say that you shouldn't hold yourself accountable for your actions but just that you can choose not beat yourself up about them.

so let's say you've had a shitty week and you're PMSing and you're hating your life and everything seems hard... and you end up drowning your sorrows in a pizza and a bag of president's choice chocolate chip cookies, or you go out and get hammered, or you spend the whole weekend in your pyjamas, watching crappy reality TV... well, you have the choice, afterwards, to either beat yourself up about it, feel guilty and hate yourself even more or you can accept that what's done is done and move on from there.  you can refuse to let the guilt and shame creep in.  you can remind yourself that feeling guilty will not get you any further ahead, and that it won't change the past.  you can reframe, and move on from there.  change requires change.  it does not require shame or guilt.

and i knew this to be true but i'd forgotten.
i thought i'd share in case you had too.