I Just Let Go of Guilt I've Carried for Months

Are you feeling weighed down by something you did in the past? Try this simple ritual to help you let go.

Nuggets of the element osmium, by photographer Ludya. Source: Depositphotos

Hi, I’m Caroline Ferguson, psychotherapist and mindset trainer. Welcome to ‘Something More’, where we explore proven ways to help you stop self-sabotaging and build a better mindset. Paying subscribers get to join our monthly group-coaching sessions, where I show you exactly how you keep getting in your own way and how to stop doing it.

What’s the heaviest material on Earth?

The metal osmium is part of the platinum family and vies with uranium for the title of heaviest naturally occurring substance on earth. Osmium wins as it’s much denser than uranium (and twice as dense as lead). A 4cm square cube of osmium weighs one kilogram — if you had a few of those in your handbag, you’d know about it.

Squirrel-chasing moment: out in space, one of the densest substances is neutronium — the material that makes up a neutron star. Just five milliliters of this stuff weighs 10 million tons, so a teaspoonful is nearly twice the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza (weighing in at a paltry 5.75 million tons!).

How much do guilt and shame weigh?

A lot. The reason I know this is because I’ve been lugging around a few bits of mental and emotional baggage for quite a while.

One of them has been in my psychological suitcase for nearly 50 years. Another is more recent.

These feelings of guilt and shame might be remnants of times when we:

• did something we believe was morally wrong.

• should have stood up for someone and didn’t.

• failed to keep a promise.

• shirked a task or project.

• went against our values.

• behaved in a cowardly, bullying or unkind way.

• let someone down or let them take the blame.

I’m sure you can think of a few examples of your own.

They don’t go away on their own, those bad feelings.

You might think you’ve left the shameful memories behind but they’re still there, festering in the tarry pool of ‘stuff’ at the bottom of your unconscious mind.

Every so often a bubble will ooze its way out of the tar. You can try as hard as you like to push the bubble back down but it still has the power to leave you feeling a bit shit about yourself, regardless of how long ago the ‘thing’ happened.

These toxic teaspoonfuls of guilt and shame weigh a lot in terms of the impact they have on our self worth and our perception of ourselves as decent people. That we still feel guilty about particular memories means they run contrary to our values. The stronger a value is for us now, the more uncomfortable the memory of the ‘bad’ thing we did.

(By the way, our tarry pools hold other difficult memories too — ones that involve profoundly uncomfortable emotions like fear, rage, hurt, humiliation, grief, inadequacy, despair and powerlessness. A lot of the work I do with my one-to-one clients involves braving the tar and exorcising those mental and emotional ghosts.)

What can we do to neutralise old memories that hold us hostage to shame and guilt?

As we’ve seen with the toxic rising bubbles, avoiding a memory doesn’t get rid of it. The key to making peace with a past event is quite the opposite — we need to confront it.

Here’s a 5-step ritual that can help you release those feelings for good (along with my recent experience of doing this):

1️⃣ Deliberately coax the memory out of your tarry pool.

Reflect on your past and ask your mind to help you remember events that still hold feelings of guilt and/or shame. When you find one, and discomfort hits, don’t try to push it away — sit with it and get curious.

Explore the angles and contours of what happened and work out exactly what it is about your part in the event that you feel guilty or ashamed of.

My story: When I did this last week, I thought of two situations — one that happened a few months ago and one several decades old. Both made me feel queasy. In the more recent event, someone gave me an hour of her time and expertise for free. I’d promised to leave her a detailed positive review in return, but, despite good intentions, several months had passed and I still hadn’t prioritised doing it.

2️⃣ Reflect on your most strongly-held values and how your behaviour went against them.

What’s important to you? What do you stand for in your most authentic moments? How did your behaviour during the event betray those values?

My story: HONOUR is deeply important to me — it’s one of my top five values and a big part of the conscious compass that guides how I live. To me, honour means being truthful, respectful of myself and others, and behaving with integrity. Breaking a promise conflicts massively with this world view.

3️⃣ Identify what beliefs you’re holding onto about what you did.

It’s your stories that are, mostly likely, pinning the uncomfortable feelings in place.

My story: “I must not fail to deliver on a promise, especially when someone has been so helpful. The fact that I’ve done that is bad, and it means my promise was a lie and I’ve behaved dishonourably.” (Ouch. No wonder I felt guilty and ashamed of myself.)

4️⃣ Work out what you can do to make amends, then carry out an atonement ritual.

If it wouldn’t cause further harm, you might want to think about apologising to whoever was hurt or inconvenienced by your actions. But first it’s vital to put yourself in their shoes and think about what the impact would be of having this event stirred up for them. If it happened in the past and they’re no longer in touch with you, it may cause more harm than good.

If it’s appropriate to apologise, do so genuinely, leaving pride (but not your dignity) at the door. Don’t beg for forgiveness; express regret and remorse for any impact the event and your actions may have had on them. Say, “I’m sorry”, and mean it.

Always keep front of mind that this is an apology, not a defence. Mitigating circumstances are not an excuse for poor behaviour. This isn’t an opportunity to rehash an old grievance or settle a score, so monitor your emotions. If you feel residual anger, hurt or any other antagonistic emotion, you may want to carry out a private forgiveness ritual (such as the beautiful Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono — thanks for the reminder, Katrina) before you tackle an apology.

Also if you’re sending a written apology, it can be useful to have another trusted set of eyes on it before you send it, to make sure it doesn’t sound grovelling or carry a whiff of passive agression.

If a direct apology isn’t advisable or even possible (a previous client felt guilty about the way she’d behaved towards her mother, who has since passed away), you can still write a letter. Pour your heart into it and give a detailed account of what happened, how you felt, then and now, what you’ve learned, your remorse and apology, any forgiveness that’s due, and how you would do things differently. Then go to a peaceful place and burn the letter in a private ceremony of atonement.

AGAIN, PLEASE NOTE: if this situation is well in the past and you no longer have contact with the person(s), reflect hard on whether they would be helped or harmed by hearing from you. Your redemption shouldn’t come at the expense of their peace of mind.

My story: I wrote a positive review for the person I’d let down, praising her expertise, detailing what I’d found helpful and expressing my gratitude. I then emailed her and apologised for my lateness in fulfilling my promise, fully owning up to the failure. I also offered her a session with me with no conditions attached. Her response was very gracious.

5️⃣ Forgive yourself (and them, if need be).

Stand in front of a mirror, make eye contact with yourself and say out loud, with positive, genuinely remorseful energy:

“It’s time to make this right. I’m whole-heartedly sorry for [what happened and the part I played] and I take responsibility for the effect I had on [person/situation]. My behaviour didn’t live up to my core value of [name value], or reflect my true self.

I forgive myself fully for this lapse [and I also forgive xxx, (if relevant)]. I’ve learned from what happened and I don’t need to repeat this mistake. I’m making a promise to myself to do better and be better from now on.

I allow myself to let go of any shame and guilt I’ve been feeling. I give my mind full permission to make peace with this memory, mark it complete and place it in the past. I’m choosing to let go now.”

What happened after I went through this ritual?

From start to finish it took just half an hour. I checked in with myself to see whether the guilt and shameful feelings were still there, but they were gone. In their place were much lighter feelings of remorse and sorrow, which are healthy, appropriate emotions to feel when you’ve let someone down.

Those feelings soon lifted. I felt peaceful, and as though some part of me had been cracked back into alignment, like some kind of emotional chiropractic effect. I realised at this point that, in addition to shame and guilt, I’d also been feeling fraudulent because I’d behaved dishonourably, while claiming to value honour. That too was gone.

And the other matter, the one from decades ago?

I still need to address that one. It happened when I was at school and involved an act of bullying, which I didn’t instigate but took part in because I lacked the courage to stand up to the ringleader. The person on the receiving end was devastated. It’s haunted me ever since.

I want to put it right but don’t know where the person lives and can’t find them on social media. While I continue searching for them, I’ll reflect on what happened and what I could have done differently. I may write a letter and burn it in an atonement ritual, but my aim is to apologise to them personally, if that still feels right after reflection, and let them know how their talent and kindness inspired me.

I’m looking forward to pulling that one out of the tar and letting it go.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I’d love to hear what lumps of emotional osmium have been weighing you down, that you’ll choose to atone for and let go. You never know when your experience will be exactly what someone else needs to hear.

Feel free to either share your story in the comments or message me, if you’d rather tell me about it privately.

If you’ve found this article useful or thought-provoking, I’d be grateful if you could do a quick restack so that others can benefit too.

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Sending you all love. Take care and see you next time,