The Guilt.

Over the years I must have spent a decent proportion of my time feeling guilty. In the back of my mind I know I shouldn't BUT it is a tough feeling to shake off and the impact it has can be catostrophic. It is very easy to create a vicious cycle when you are feeling this way, the guilt feeds the low mood and the low mood just loves to get a grip on you and drag you to that dark place. The result of this is the guilty feeling gets even worse until you convince yourself everyone would be better off without you and your annoying existence... Have you been there? If you have I hope you realise that NOBODY is better off without you and that you should not feel guilty at all. I think there are always times that will happen and that guilty feeling will creep in but as long as you remember and see that this feeling is temporary then it is ok. Your life has changed and adaptions have to be made, you have to do things as a new you but that does not make them less important or appreciated. All our feelings have validity and are there because of one reason or another, as long as we can filter them and understand how to interpret them so we can keep our mental health and well being balanced. My guilty feeling mostly creeps in if I cannot partake in something with my children and it pains my heart. What I try and do now is think of activities I can do with them and this usually means they are doing something different than they have done before. So I look at it like this, they are now getting to do more of a variety of things. WIN, WIN. The other aspects that that cause guilt is to my long suffering partner, I have to sit back sometimes and amongst my brain blow ups that he too is probably having the same thing happening too. After all it impacts their lives a lot too, they also may need to grieve for the life you once shared and accept the new way of things. Have you ever been snappy with someone because they are doing something with your children, partner, friends that you now cannot do? I know I have and it has made me feel even worse about myself. I soon began seeing that I was dealing with it all wrong and has to turn these feelings around. I have said this before but it is so true, at least for me anyway, I feel like I have to grieve the things I used to be able to do before to enable me to move on and accept my new roles. Tonight I wanted to build a small cabinet we had bought as I want to contribute to making our house our home, I didn't want any help, BUT I ended up needing it as I was feeling weak and I was clearly not able to follow the instructions..... I was annoyed but then I just thought right, at least I had a go, I did as much as I could. It goes to show that day to day simple tasks can turn into chaos in your mind and can cause us to flip quickly from ok to NOT ok in an instant.... Only for how tired I was I didn't have it in me to have my rage moment of frustration and my inner hulk appear. LIMITATIONS!! Yes we may have mental or physical limitations but that does not make us any less of a person and we certainly have nothing to be guilty about. We are not letting people down our health is and only those true people in your life will support you as they always have. People who only stick around or support the easy and fun bits of you are not true friends. Quality over quantity is so right, you are not defined by the amount of people you know or what you can and cannot do. How do you deal with guilty feelings? Please comment and let us know and maybe people can help each other out.