This document discusses guilt and provides interventions to help people deal with guilt. It defines guilt and explores its impacts. It identifies sources of guilt such as childhood experiences, religious teachings, and existential issues. The document provides activities people can do to address guilt, such as writing guilt slips, keeping a guilt journal, reframing situations, and using affirmations. It emphasizes that identifying sources of guilt is the first step and that holding onto guilt weighs people down.

1. Journey to Recovery Series
Guilt Interventions
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes PhD, LPC-MHSP, LMHC
Executive Director, AllCEUs Counselor Education
Podcast Host: Counselor Toolbox
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2. Objectives
 Define guilt
 Explore the impact of guilt
 Identify activities to help people deal with guilt
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3. What is it?
 Guilt is anger at yourself, and comes from an Old
English word that means “delinquency.” Today
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines it
as “feelings of culpability, especially for imagined
offenses or from a sense of inadequacy; self-
reproach.”
 Note: Nowhere does it say that guilt is related to
things you actually did wrong
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4. Questions
 How does guilt impact your attitude, optimism
and emotions?
 How does guilt impact your self-esteem?
 How does guilt impact your health?
 How does guilt impact your relationships?
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5. What Can Guilt Do?
 Make you become over responsible, striving to make
life 'right’
 Make you over-conscientious
 Make you over sensitive
 Immobilize you / Interfere with decision making
 Co-Dependency
 Overshadow the other array of feelings available
 Mislead you
 Motivate change
 Some guilt is, of course, necessary; otherwise people would
not know how to exercise self-control or have a conscience.
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6. Where does it come from
 Autonomy vs. Shame
 Major Question: "Can I do things myself or am I reliant
on the help of others?"
 Will, Efficacy
 When criticized, overly controlled, or not given the
opportunity to assert themselves, they begin to feel
inadequate in their ability to survive, and may then
become overly dependent upon others
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7. Where does it come from
 Initiative vs. guilt
 Major Question: “Am I good or bad?”
 Purpose, Acceptability
 When efforts to engage in physical and imaginative play
are stifled by caregivers, children begin to feel that their
self-initiated efforts are a source of embarrassment.
 If the parents treat the child’s questions as a nuisance or
embarrassing then the child may feel like a nuisance.
 Children who are over-directed by adults may struggle to
develop a sense of initiative and confidence in their own
abilities.
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8. ACES
 How can the following conditions make the child
feel overly controlled, or like a nuisance or an
embarrassment?
(Remember children in autonomy and initiative still
think egocentrically and dichotomously)
 Substance abuse
 Parental divorce
 Mental Illness
 Domestic Violence
 Emotional, psychological or physical abuse or neglect
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9. Other Sources of Guilt
 Toxic guilt
 A nagging feeling of pervasive but nonspecific badness, as if
your whole life has something wrong with it
 Often has roots in early childhood: mistakes that your
parents or teachers treated as a big deal, for example, or
religious training
 Gluttony vs. Abstinence (Moderation)
 Sloth vs. Diligence (Balance)
 Greed vs. Generosity (Benevolence)
 Lust vs. Chastity (Moderation)
 Anger vs. Passivity (Assertiveness)
 Pride vs. Humility (Authenticity)
 Envy vs. Rejection (Respect, contentment)
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10. Other Sources of Guilt
 Existential Guilt
 Guilt you feel for having a negative impact
 Guilt you feel for having more than someone else
 Guilt you feel for surviving
 When toxic guilt gets mixed up with existential
guilt, people often suffer from a feeling that they
are responsible for everyone else's pain
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11. Other Sources of Guilt
 Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda Game
 I shoulda, coulda, woulda…but didn’t
Go to the gym
Called my friend
Finished my report
 I shouldn’t have…but did
Had that second piece of cake
Lied
Called in sick
Gone out drinking all night
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12. Psychological Flexibility Matrix
 Behaviors that move
you away from what
is important to you
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 Behaviors that move
you TOWARD what is
important to you
 Thoughts and
feelings that move
you away from what
is important to you
 Thoughts and
feelings that move
you TOWARD what
is important to you
Radical
Acceptance
• Identify situations that trigger guilt
Forgot a birthday
Broke a treasure
Lied about something
Didn’t keep a promise

13. Activities
 Guilt Slips
 Identify what you feel guilty about and write each on a
slip of paper
 Review the list and throw away the ones not in your
control (This can become compost later)
 Review what is left and identify what you have atoned
for. Throw those away.
 What is left, put in an envelope or jar and take out one
each day to work on.
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14. Activities
 Guilt Pack
 Review the list of things you feel guilty for.
Get a bunch of stones or bricks or cans of vegetables.
Count how many guilts are on your list and add that many
weights to your pack. (This is great to do with kids too.)
Put on the backpack and carry it around while you do
housework or yard work.
Think about how much guilt weighs you down and zapps
your energy. How much harder is it to just get up off the
sofa carrying all that weight?
Next, identify which guilts you can either forgive, fix or
let go and how (You will learn strategies next). You can
take those weights out of their pack.
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15. Activity
 Learning to forgive
 First explore what forgiveness means
 Choosing not to allow energy to remain stuck in the past and to use that
energy to move toward your goals
 Give each person 20 gold tokens…
 Then identify how to forgive yourself, learn from it and move forward
 Moves a token from the past to the present
 Finally, identify how to “spend” the token
 Set a No Guilt Allowed rule for when you are relaxing or taking
care of yourself
 If you start to feel guilty, ask yourself if what you are doing is wrong
 Identify common guilts
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16. Activities
 Guilt Journal
 Keep a log of everything that makes you feel guilty and look for
patterns. (Maybe that critical voice of your father or
overcompensating for something you did wrong in the past??)
 Right and Wrong Game
 Give everyone 3 pieces of paper. Have each person write three things
they have done for which they feel guilty.
 Put all the pieces in a hat or box. Draw one out at a time and have
people vote on whether it was right or wrong to do that and explain
why.
 Then have them theorize other reasons it might be right to do
whatever was done.
 Example: Canceling a night out with your best friend
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17. Activities
 Bill of Rights
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Guilt Bill of Rights
Sleeping in on Saturday I work hard all week and there is plenty of
food for the kids to make their own breakfast.
I have the right to sleep in.
Going to the gym when
my in-box is full
I have the right to take care of myself. (My in-
box is always full, and I will be more effective
if I clear my head).
Not answering the
phone.
I have the right to choose with whom and
when I share my energy.

18. Activities
 Positive Affirmations
 Why do people feel guilty for these?
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19. Activities
 Reframing
 What if I didn’t feel guilty about this?
 How different would my life be?
 What are the possibilities?
 You’re not denying or ignoring your feelings of guilt or
the events that took place. What you’re actually doing
is putting yourself into a solution-focused frame-of-
mind that will open your mind to the possibilities that
may exist. To help with this process, you can also
reframe your perspective of the situation. Ask yourself:
 What’s positive about this?
 How else could I view this situation?
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20. Other Activities
 Write a story about what happened, including
 What were your needs and motives?
 What or who was the catalyst for your behavior? Does the catalyst
remind you of something from your past? Were you recreating or
overcompensating for a trauma?
 Did your actions reflect your true values? If not, trace the beliefs,
thoughts, and emotions that led to your actions.
 How did your actions affect you and others? Whom did you hurt?
Include yourself on the list.
 Looking back, what healthier beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and
actions would have led to a more desirable result?
 How did you feel about yourself and others involved before,
during, and after.
 What have you learned from your experience and how you might
act differently today.
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21. Other Questions to Ponder
 How were your feelings and mistakes handled growing up?
Who was hard on you? How do you replay that scenario
today?
 Who said? Evaluate the standards by which you’re judging
yourself. Are they your values, your parents’, your
friends’, your spouse’s? Do you need their approval?
 Others’ judgements have more to do with them than you. They
may never approve. What is the benefit to being judgmental or
making people feel guilty?
 Do you expect perfection? Would you forgive someone else
for the same actions? Why would you treat yourself
differently? How does it benefit you to continue to punish
yourself?
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22. Ways To Avoid Feeling Guilty
 Don’t over-commit or over-promise.
 Don’t procrastinate
 Say no to perfectionism.
 Look at the big picture, beyond yourself for all of the
contributing factors
 Don’t associate with people who blame, shame, judge
 Don’t use guilt as a way to manipulate yourself or others
 Set realistic standards
 Don’t live in accordance with other people’s standards
 Ask/Communicate, don’t assume you know how others
feel about something
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23. Summary
 Guilt comes in many forms
 It is largely anger at ourselves and energy tied up
in the past.
 Holding on to guilt weighs us down
 Identifying your sources of guilt and addressing
them is the first step.
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