Marcine’s journaling forward

[zen_racer]

If by celebrating you mean taking a solo hike in the mountains and crying in the beautiful wilderness and recharging in nature— then yes!

I'd been veering towards stress and burn out. Good to ground out. It is a blessing to feel part of nature.

I did the same thing today, Marcine.  I had scheduled today off, and I had to renew my drivers license today first, but then I did go do the hike I wanted.  It was nice.  I hope your's was as well.

[sanmagic7]

Good to ground out. It is a blessing to feel part of nature.

i totally agree, marcine.  i loved solo walks, especially being surrounded by trees.  it was a vacation every time.  enjoy enjoy!  love and hugs

[NarcKiddo]

For sure, boundary keeping+connection is a set of skills that I'll be practicing for the rest of my life. And I agree with you, that's worthwhile. Even when it feels like a battlefield. A big difference is that now I'm standing for what is right and good, not fighting monsters on all sides just to survive anymore.

That resonates.

I'm glad you were able to take a hike and express your emotions out in nature.

[HannahOne]

Marcine I love how you describe standing for what's right and good, vs fighting off the bad. That's an important distinction in thriving, and not only surviving. Surviving is good, and, thriving has a different focus. We can choose what to focus on. I love that you are focused on standing for the things you believe in and value.

[Marcine]

I woke up with a stiff headache and a distinct feeling of intense guilt. Mucked in an old, polluted, toxic guilt bog.

I am guilty for ____
- everything and anything
- being born, being me, being less than, never enough
- for wanting closeness from the adults
- for saying no
- for having needs
- for not doing things right so the terrifying parents would be nice
- for wanting them to understand
- for needing love
- for not being able to fix things out of my control

I know it's commonly described that shame is "I am bad" and guilt is "I did a bad thing."

These feelings I'm having are guilt— "I should have had no needs."
"It was my fault that they didn't take care of me."
"It was bad that I didn't try harder."

I was literally supposed to fix the unfixable. And since I couldn't, I was guilty of failing at an impossible task.

A question from the CPTSD foundation is relevant: did I actually violate a moral boundary or am I experiencing false guilt from past conditioning?

False guilt being when a child is made to feel guilty when the child did nothing wrong, or made to feel responsible for things that were not the child's responsibility.

Tonight, on this deep, barely conscious level, I realize, squinting and uncomfortably, that I feel responsible for the abuse I endured. I feel guilty that I didn't do more to make it stop. That I should have done more.

I don't feel shame that I was bad and deserved the abuse. I feel guilty that I didn't do more to stop it— to fawn better, to fight fiercer, to run away, to freeze more solid. My fault.

These force-fed, internalized, distorted and wildly unreasonable expectations fed the false guilt. And I see that this false guilt (feeling guilty and at fault when I've done nothing wrong) permeates my adult life.

Long ago, this distorted faulty logic became an unconscious default setting and so, (false) guilt became normalized in me.

I see the guilt bog is blocking the natural flow of love. It's exhausting to slog through the guilt toxic bog.

I see that the (false) guilt setting runs constantly in my subconscious and explains a perverse insistence for me to find things to worry and criticize myself, chasing the mirage that if I did more of the right thing at right time, I would be absolved and proclaimed not-guilty.

When I've made meaningful steps towards self-compassion, there's a boomerang effect and I feel guilty for being kind to myself, like it's morally wrong action.

The guilt shows up as headache, gut tightening, tension at jaw/neck.

I feel anger that I was abused on this whole other unconscious level that established self-criticism, unreasonable responsibility, beating myself up, low self-worth and guilty-like-a-criminal as normal.

I know this is a perfect cult tactic for control— to instill self-abandonment, distrust, utter dependence, guilt, helplessness and brain fog.

In many ways, it didn't work. Here I am doggedly shining a light into the dark recesses of my self with the goal of clarity, despite the intense discomfort and fears.

But this is hard. It's difficult to witness the machinations and programming that was designed to make me devour/destroy myself. And that it's been churning away in the background since forever.

[TheBigBlue]

Yes.



How deeply that false guilt can hide. The shame narrative ("I was bad") can also exist, but somehow it feels easier to recognize. The guilt narrative ("I should have done more") can masquerade as responsibility, maturity, or accountability for decades.

And I really relate to what you wrote about trying to solve the unsolvable. A child has very little power, yet many of us somehow ended up carrying responsibility for the moods, actions, failures, or abuse of the adults around us. For example, I developed this magical belief that if I didn't worry enough about my mother, it would somehow be my fault if something bad happened to her during surgery. It is such an impossible burden.

The guilt bog makes "perfect sense" when viewed through this lens: if the abuse was somehow my fault, then maybe I could have prevented it. But if it wasn't my fault, then I was powerless, and that's a much harder truth for a child to hold — perhaps even feeling evolutionarily unsurvivable. So it may have been a brilliant survival adaptation back then.

The problem, of course, is that these are neural pathways laid down over years. The adaptation doesn't simply switch off because we become adults. It keeps running long after the original danger is gone.

So exhausting.

What I find myself wondering is: how does it shift? Not intellectually — I think many of us already understand the logic. But on that deeper level where the guilt feels true even when we know it isn't.

Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for shining a light into the deep abyss. 💛

[Marcine]

TBB,
Thank you for the dialed-in response and for furthering the exploration of these questions. I really appreciate it, my friend.

I relate to the superstition in the service of hyper-responsibility that you describe around your mother's surgery.

So good question—- how does it shift, how do we access the root of "where the guilt feels true even when we know it isn't." ?

I don't know the answer but it definitely involves, for me, a dive into the abyss. I have 2 essential tools that will make possible the journey—
1) my ability to recognize and honor my emotions. I've been cultivating this skill for the past few years.
2) holding onto that question from the CPTSD foundation: did I actually violate a moral boundary or am I experiencing false guilt from past conditioning?

So my plan is when I detect guilt showing up in myself (I won't have to wait long), I will ask that question. And collect truth. And as more feelings arise, I will welcome them and take whatever time needed to process.

I think at first I'll only catch the big guilt feelings. But as I become more skillful and start noticing patterns of the false guilt, I'll be tracking the more subtle feelings and more insidious self-sabotaging.

I am a good hunter of truth, highly motivated, very focused, passionate.

And the hunt is on.
 

[HannahOne]

Marcine, I related to your post. Sometimes it helps me to hear that people relate because I know that I would never say someone else ____, I would only say it about myself. In my case I feel like I violated a moral boundary, when I submitted, which I mostly did. I generally just curled into a ball, rarely fought or tried to flee. Sometimes our trauma We are forced to do things that go against our values, our morals, or are given impossible choices. This is a moral INJURY, having to cross a moral boundary to survive. So maybe it's false guilt... and maybe there's some moral injury too. It's not often talked about so I wanted to mention it.

"I see that the (false) guilt setting runs constantly in my subconscious and explains a perverse insistence for me to find things to worry and criticize myself, chasing the mirage that if I did more of the right thing at right time, I would be absolved and proclaimed not-guilty."

This is such an important connection. I too am constantly scanning myself if I'm doing enough of the right things to somehow.... what? Be absolved. Be made not guilty. So that....what? So that I will feel safe and not feel I "deserve" more abuse. Deserving abuse is a way to have control over it, if I deserve it, I can also not deserve it.

This brings me to the feeling I started with, which is compassion and clarity about the truth of these dynamics. I would never think anyone deserved abuse. And I know you would tell me I could not have deserved it. Marcine you could not have deserved it. Although that leaves us vulnerable to feeling the powerlessness, rage and grief. For me that's part of the root, how I was conditioned to agree with the abusers. Those feelings were intolerable, so I had to agree with the guilt that was used to control me. Now I can tolerate them because I'm an adult in a safe situation. This is what allows me to get free of the guilt.

You are skilled at recognizing and honoring your emotions and at hunting down the truth, the ground of reality of the facts. You are strong, clear-eyed, and passionate in the pursuit of truth. This allows you the space to find freedom. Thank you for sharing your experience.

[sanmagic7]

So my plan is when I detect guilt showing up in myself (I won't have to wait long), I will ask that question. And collect truth. And as more feelings arise, I will welcome them and take whatever time needed to process.

marcine, i believe this is an excellent way to begin the reprogramming process.  practice and repetition is how we reconfigure those neural pathways that have been adulterated (i looked this up to make sure it was saying what i wanted it to say -  to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element) by those in charge of us and our welfare. 

a foreign or inferior substance or element - their views, their intents, their perspectives, etc. were thrust upon us when we had no power to fight back, to think logically, to stop taking what they were giving.  it just breaks my heart for all of us.

keep going - you're doing great!  love and hugs

[Marcine]

Thank you for highlighting more of the unspoken nuances and complexities around all this, Hannah.
Personally, I don't struggle with whether or not I deserved to be badly treated. I'm grappling with a close, but distinctly different, feeling of being conditioned to feel guilty for not doing anything wrong.

[Marcine]

Thank you, San for the accurate words and your encouragement!
 

[NarcKiddo]

This all resonates, and I have seen many reasons given in books for why this happens. Hannah's point that it gives control (or feels like it does) speaks to the reasons I have read. I  have also seen suggestions that when an infant does all the things it is programmed to do to get needs met, and they are not, the infant is left with a horrible dilemma. Either the infant redoubles its efforts or tries new ones in the hope that the needs will be met, or it accepts they will not be met, the infant does not matter, and maybe doesn't even exist in any meaningful sense. That's too awful and unfathomable for anyone to cope with, let alone an infant or child so we follow the only other avenue left. To take the blame. By the time the child grows it is already programmed to take the blame.

I hope you can trudge your way out of the guilt bog.

[zen_racer]

These feelings I'm having are guilt— "I should have had no needs."
"It was my fault that they didn't take care of me."
"It was bad that I didn't try harder."

I was literally supposed to fix the unfixable. And since I couldn't, I was guilty of failing at an impossible task.

...

Tonight, on this deep, barely conscious level, I realize, squinting and uncomfortably, that I feel responsible for the abuse I endured. I feel guilty that I didn't do more to make it stop. That I should have done more.

...

Long ago, this distorted faulty logic became an unconscious default setting and so, (false) guilt became normalized in me.

...

When I've made meaningful steps towards self-compassion, there's a boomerang effect and I feel guilty for being kind to myself, like it's morally wrong action.

Marcine, what you wrote is so dead on.  The parts I quoted above, I relate to so much I feel it in my soul.  I've been particularly struggling recently with feeling guilty for being kind to myself.  I am starting to make progress.  The letter I wrote to myself helped, but it also made me feel bad for a couple days.

Thank you for writing that.  I'm not exactly the same, but it's so close.  I feel so seen and validated that I'm not alone.  That also means I wish you didn't know how it feels, for your sake.   

Thank you also for your follow up to this post.  I've learned so much from you today.  You have a very solid path forward with your plan on accessing the root of the guilt.

[Marcine]

Thank you everybody for your responses on this complex topic. I am certain that undertaking this deep dive is only possible for me with the support of my forum family.

I detected several internal flares of guilt today. They were quickly triaged by asking myself "would an objective 3rd party say I did something wrong?"

So, all guilt that I felt today was deemed false guilt. Ah. Interesting. Strange.

Current map:
False guilt is no actual wrongdoing.
It's over-drive, toxic responsibility for things outside my control.
It's distorted beliefs/programming not based in reality.
This leads to pressure to meet unrealistic expectations and feeds negative self-view.
This illusion my parents cultivated in me that I should be able to control everything, to be all knowing.
This impossible horrible position led to my feeling guilt and disdain for being human.
But I am human!
I am not a god. Whew! What a relief.
All those implanted lies.
The antidote is truth. A radical acceptance of my humanness (embracing my emotions, honoring my limitations, being patient and kind with my foibles...)

I can't/ won't live under the pressure and the emotional weight of the false guilt lies anymore.

My body feels willing to relax a tad. A new doorway opens.