Escaping Toxic Guilt by Susan Carrell

I came across Susan Carell’s book Escaping Toxic Guilt while scouring the library shelves for something on topic of dealing with shame. Guilt and shame are close relatives. According to Carell:

Guilt is feeling bad about something you’ve done, while shame is feeling bad about who you are.

Hmm… I could relate to that. Furthermore, toxic guilt occurs when we feel guilty even though we aren’t doing anything that violates our own value system. Often the source of this guilt is conditioning by controlling parents or other domineering authority figures in our childhood.

The book distinguishes between good guilt, which reminds us when we’ve violated one of our own personal values and prompts us to make amends or to act differently next time; and bad guilt, where somebody else’s agenda is at work causing us to suffer unnecessarily or to fall under their controlling influence.

In the second section, the author outlines some common guilt-inducing situations, like relationship break-ups, divorces, and dramas over where we will have Christmas or Thanksgiving this year.

Then once you’ve identified your guilt as unhelpful and recognized the scenario that causes it, the third section outlines a five-step plan for dealing with toxic guilt by speaking your truth, setting boundaries, bracing for resistance from others, going with the new flow, and maintaining boundaries.

I found this book a really interesting read. Toxic guilt is insidious and can lie buried deep in our nervous system until we get triggered when we go to do something we want that our parents or other adult authority figures in our childhood may have disapproved of. The book also has some really great points to make about setting boundaries with other people.

If you spend more of your time feeling guilty than you’d like, I recommend giving this book a spin. Click here to buy it on Amazon.com.