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If you are someone who is moving in your own direction in life, and away from societal norms, both in perspective and action, you are probably also someone who deals with a lot of guilt. And if you are a people pleaser or recovering people pleaser or a woman or identify as a woman, then doubly so, as you will have had lots of “good girl” training to stifle your true nature and desires to be pleasing to others, and serve others, and relinquish yourself.
Guilt is a tool used to disempower people, and it has been so throughout the ages. Guilt keeps us OBEDIENT.
It is used to manipulate you into being and doing what others want from you. Society’s, religious institutions, family systems and systems of all kinds employ guilt to modify people’s behavior to their wanting and to their liking. To keep people in line.
Guilt asks us to give up ourselves and our desires for the ‘greater good’. That ‘greater good’ has of course been defined by some higher up authority at the top of the chain, and everyone is supposed to agree with this and not question this, or there will be consequences.
It is no wonder we are afraid, when we go to do something like make simple moves in our own direction, towards our own loves in life, or businesses, towards the things that light us up, the things that bring us joy, and suddenly… we are riddled with guilt.
I am clearly not talking about the kind of guilt where you have done something that disagreed with you and your own heart. I am talking about the kind that keeps you constantly shirk-ing your good, and disowning your power to choose for yourself in life.
You cannot choose when you don’t believe you have the power to choose, and you cannot believe you have the power to choose or own that power when you’re filled with guilt and shame. The guilt and shame that has kept you and all humans obedient for centuries.
Throughout history humans have used guilt to create ownership, obedience to hierarchies and servitude to others over self. It’s a tool.
In ancient Egypt, under certain rulers, they kept workers in small dark rooms and gave them a beer and a tiny portion of bread a day and mind trained them to be so grateful for it, and so guilty if they were not grateful for it, that they never questioned it and believed themselves to be truly blessed for it.
The feudal system in Medieval Europe used a strict hierarchy where serfs were taught to feel guilty if they did not fulfill their duties to their lords, thus maintaining social order through psychological control.
And of course in Colonialism and European Colonization guilt was used to undermine indigenous cultures by portraying their own ways as superior and making indigenous people feel ashamed of their beliefs, traditions and lifestyles.
Control using guilt.
And of course this training throughout the ages has simply replicated itself in family systems because family systems are a reflection of their human societal and cultural conditioning, so how could they not?
I am not here to say that this shouldn’t have happened, because it DID happen, it is what is, and I don’t believe in fighting against the past or putting our energy there in the past, but I do believe in the power of the RECOGNITION and AWARENESS of the things that control us, and bringing that power to the PRESENT, so that we recognize the things that keep us stifling ourselves so much that we stop truly LIVING and ENJOYING our beautiful world and lives.
And guilt is something so very deeply embedded in our culture and world that it needs to be more fully understood and addressed before we can create our next level lives and our freer and more harmonious future world.
It is so VITAL that you understand how guilt controls you, so that it can stop controlling you, and when it stops controlling you, THEN you suddenly realize you have a choice. It is like a veil gets lifted. You suddenly begin to see and realize your power.
It was not an accident that you could not see it before, that was the WHOLE POINT of that kind of guilt! To make you believe that your power is outside you, above you, and that you do not have any. That you owe everything to the higher ups, and that anything that is outside their liking will get you rejected and ejected from love, care and resources and safety.
When you grow up learning this you learn to shut down any inkling that you have any power because it is simply not safe to see that, or know that. So you forget it… until you remember it.
But even after you realize that power, that guilt will still come up OFTEN and in increasingly sneaky ways. Because it’s a pattern. And patterns have a momentum about them. They repeat until you are so aware of them and so in touch with the fact you don’t need them anymore, that they finally fully unravel.
For example: have you ever felt good about yourself and good about your life or something you did, without someone else congratulating you on that but just YOU feeling proud of yourself or really feelin’ yourself, and a short time after you shut down into some version of a “who do you think you are!?” narrative?
That is guilt working its pattern on you, snapping back at you to keep you in line and obedient to higher powers and not yourself.
Me and my sister were laughing the other day at the realization that you are not even “allowed” to give yourself a complement or to claim a positive identity if someone else did not give it to you. You cannot give that to yourself! Someone else must DEEM you that. And despite all of our puffed up bravado around claiming our empowerment and loving ourselves in new ways, the guilt still hovers in the background threatening to punish you lest you get “too big for your britches”.
We can “know” all this with our mind, but our BODIES TELL THE TRUTH. Your body will tell the truth of how you really feel about that.
We can “know” all this mentally, but when our body goes into a nervous fight or flight response when we are more full of our own self than of others needs and wants, that is the truth of how our energy system and how our nervous system and body really feels.
The fact that you cannot even claim something wonderful about yourself without fear of punishment shows how VERY VERY EXTERNALIZED our power is. We are servants to others views of us, and not to ourselves, we must be given permission externally, we cannot give it to ourselves. And to do otherwise causes fear to arise in people in a primal way, in fact you may even be feeling it right now in your body if you’re really paying attention to how your body feels. Fear of punishment for this, for questioning those authorities, is a very real thing that lives in your body.
This guilt doesn’t need to “go away”, it will unravel in its own time and way when we just become AWARE of it and its power over us. And become aware that when you post something, say something, offer something, or do something that makes a move in your own direction in any way in life, and then your body goes into fear, overwhelm or panic, this is why.
There is an ancient being inside you who has just questioned the king and is running for their lives to keep from getting hit.
You’re not going to get hit. Because they don’t need to hit you anymore, you hit yourself now. Stop hitting yourself, angel. You have every right to take up just as much space as any other being, to feel how you feel, think what you think, and be how you be.
You can help your body remember it is safe in these situations by putting one hand across your forehead, palm down on your forehead, and one hand over the top of your head, or across the back of your head, whichever feels better. Just hold that as long as needed, 2 min, 5 min. or 10 min, you can put your elbows down on a table or pillow or your body and just hold it as long as needed and it will calm your nervous system until you are back on line and at home in yourself again.
You are safe. You are loved. You can be proud. You can be oh so very grateful TO YOU, so grateful to you for all you do. People think if they do that they’ll stop being grateful to others and the world but the truth is the OPPOSITE! You will actually be MORE grateful because you will be filled up with gratitude from the inside out. Instead of performative gratitude which is not the real thing. You will actually feel that river flowing.
And as always, if you want to embody your power and magic more and create your most beautiful life in every single way, I recommend my new Results Not Typical Course or My Work Sells Itself Course, which are available right here and also now have payment plans available at checkout. In addition Moth & Moon Guided Oracle Journey or Introvert Star Workshop are both excellent entry points if you’re still on the fence. Or check out my galaxy of creation-goodness below! lol 💫 😂
See you next week sweet pea’s!
To your thriving 🎉
xo,
Sunni
