Overcoming Guilt: a Block to Self-love & Joy
Valentine’s Day is approaching, and self-love comes to my mind as I believe my quality of self-love will be mirrored back by my dear ones’ love for me, so it’s a good prompt to look at what could be blocking deeper self-appreciation. Guilt is a sneaky one – let’s look at it together.
“Guilt accompanies all negative emotions and, thus, where there is fear, there is guilt.” David R. Hawkins Letting Go
What should you be doing right now? The washing up, dealing with some mould in the bathroom, eating a salad for lunch, eating less sugar, be slimmer, be more interesting for social media posts, be a better mum, friend and partner?
Guilt is an often-felt, painful emotion, and commonly repressed. We turn away from it in our minds, yet we can’t really ignore the lasting sting of it, it seems to leave a small dose of poison in our thinking; and drives unease and low self-worth, rendering us unable to fully relax and enjoy what’s here right now in the moment.
Swallowed-down guilt tends to repeat on us in a myriad of ways over time including self-punishment and through accidents, the loss of relationships and jobs, fatigue, illness, the list continues! It’s not something that’s talked about often, perhaps mostly because we really aren’t aware of guilt as a driver of our state of mind. But we do react, and that’s by projecting it onto others, escapism (shopping, TV, alcohol, food etc), suppression or repression.
If the first step towards personal evolution is awareness, self-forgiveness takes it further. So what can you forgive yourself for not doing? What past/present mistakes could you forgive yourself for? You did the best you could at the time, with your level of understanding as it was then, right? Yes, you did.
With today’s toxic, social media-driven focus on perfection, the vine of guilt twists around us ever tighter. Love is a much higher vibration than guilt, and self-love will be a compassionate witness and healer for when guilt darkens our doorstep. If we can keep this understanding in mind we can free ourselves much more quickly.
“Guilt represents death just as love represents life.” David R. Hawkins
If you feel that guilt is impacting your quality of life and health, and would like some 1-to-1 support to release it from your subconscious, and your physical health, freeing you to enjoy life contact me by email: hello@hannasharpekinesiology.com or phone: 07730 330 533.
Ps A great tool to use on your own to relieve guilt is the Ho'oponopono prayer, a simple four-line prayer to recognise your responsibility in life. You may have heard of it. The words are ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you’. It’s simple but powerful.
You can find recordings of this on music platforms. I like Jason Stephenson’s version, which I use as a meditation, and dedicate it first to myself, then family members and anyone else I can recall that I’ve felt uneasy, angry, blaming or guilty towards over the years.