The 3 signs of a guilty conscience and how to release it is about understanding what triggers guilt. As you recognize the nature of guilt and its trigger, releasing this debilitating form of self-judgment becomes a very doable thing.
Issues with procrastination, motivation, weight, self-worth, finances, focus and clarity stem largely from the psychological and emotional weight-drag of guilt. We often mistakenly think that the short-comings that undermine productivity and success are personal character faults. Nothing could be further from the truth. This inappropriate self-judgment weighs down the momentum of your natural buoyancy needed to inspire productivity.
This erroneous self-indictment of one’s character from “symptoms” such as procrastination, unworthiness, fear, doubt, finances, etc., simply adds another layer of guilt to the misunderstood guilt already accumulated. This is not a recipe for happiness.
Guilt is defined as, “a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a universal moral standard…”
The problem with this understanding of guilt is that if “standards” themselves are the propaganda of conditioning and consensus thinking – and not necessarily of the truth – then that bases for sanctioning guilt is itself, faulty.
Using programmed “standards” as a faulty bases for guilt can be summed up with this example. Can you imagine feeling guilty from NOT treating someone terrible? If one’s programmed “standards” have been modeled by acts of treating people inconsiderately, then one could possibly feel “guilty” (consciously or unconsciously) for treating someone nice!
That example shows the fallacious nature of using mental conditioning and programming as an absolute bases for behavior. Does that mean you throw out all moral and just considerations that influence conduct? Of course not. However, it does mean that guilt is a very relative dynamic that our conditioning should not be in charge of!
With that said, the 3 signs of a guilty conscience and how to release it is a matter of coming off auto-pilot with guilt-generated thinking and feeling. The following three indicators of guilt-plagued thinking and feeling provide a conscious means of identifying guilt’s insidious nature so that you may release its paralyzing impact.
The release aspect of the 3 signs of a guilty conscience and how to release it is an amazingly simple, three-step process. This tactic appears deceptively benign but will absolutely release the years of accrued guilt and shame. But first, we will look at subtle signs of guilt – one or two of which may surprise you.
Three Signs of Guilt
Guilt Indicator #1 – Qualifying in your mind your own thoughts.
We, unfortunately, do this a lot; we clarify the meaning of our own thoughts to ourselves! Who else are you clarifying for, or to in this case, other than (literally) a guilty conscience! From the heighten awareness of this dynamic in play you will now begin to notice how you do this qualifying automatically. By catching and releasing the temptation to qualify your own thoughts you begin to release the unconscious conscience of guilt.
Guilt Indicator # 2 – Qualifying to others instinctively your communication or point.
Often times while in the midst of communicating to another we will qualify meaning from the unconscious fear (guilt) of being misunderstood or misinterpreted. Even when our words clearly match desired meaning we still have a tendency to qualify our meanings to others.
Begin to surrender the temptation to clarify your responses and explanations (beyond clarifying for better understanding of a point illustrated) – out of fear of being misunderstood. There is a big difference between clarifying for better understanding and clarifying out of fear of being misunderstood or misinterpreted.
The latter motivation reflects conscience of guilt rather than for clarification purposes.
Guilt Indicator #3 – Automatic guilt triggered by omission.
Guilt by omission occurs whenever something – subtle or significant – is forgotten or omitted. From unconscious guilt stemming from misplacing the car keys to not completing a day’s to do list. The problem with this stringent bases for triggering guilt is that the psyche unfairly assess the issue.
You think you have many things on your mind that reasonably can cloud clarity and contribute to forgetfulness, however, that is not the half of it. In every moment your brain is absorbing literally over 400 billion (yes, billion!) bits of data!
In light of this fact, to have critical self-judgment (guilt) because you forgot where you last left your keys now seems kind of ridiculous, does it not?!
Guilt is generated by omission because of the conditioning that says we should be perfect in our expressions as humans. (Think about it, 95% of commercial advertising is geared to exploit the ‘idea’ that you are not ‘perfect’ as you are.)
How is paralyzing guilt released? What follows is a simple, yet effective, means of releasing accumulated guilt from past experience and for maintaining a guilt-free point of reference in your life. When guilt is surrendered, motivation and self-esteem rebound as a consequence of the mental and emotional liberation from guilt.
This release technique I use and teach in my hypnotherapy practice to great benefit. It involves an uncanny use of the breath.
Breath Surrender Technique
It must first be stated before explaining this technique that this process is NOT symbolic; you will literally release accumulated toxic feelings and their residual impact in your life through continual use of this technique.
Breath Surrender Step #1
When feeling, thinking or detecting guilt feelings – or any negative feeling/experience for that matter – your first step is to take a deep breath…
Breath Surrender Step #2
Then mentally bring to mind the feeling you identified for release (guilt, anger, envy, fear, doubt, anxiousness, etc.)…
Breath Surrender Step #3
Then as you slowly exhale the breath mentally “attach” the negative feeling, energy, thought or idea to the exhaled breath… and that is it!
The Science Behind this Technique
One of the basic, unknown realities of breathing is that a breath is exhaled not because it has been inhaled but because that breath no longer serves! We do not “routinely” exhale because we have taken a breath in (that’s just the appearance of the process) – but rather, we exhale because our being knows that breath is no longer useful or beneficial. The oxygen taken in has served its purpose and is released because it no longer serves.
Since your being knows instinctively to surrender a breath that does not serve you, when you mentally/emotionally assign, let us say, guilt, to the exhaling breath, it literally takes that negative emotion or perception out of your system with the exhaled breath!
The reason this seemingly benign practice works in surrendering undermining emotions is because you are using Nature’s intelligence. Nature knows that whatever is being exhaled with the breath is because it does not serve so when you attach a negative feeling to the exhaled breath it surrenders that feeling along with the breath.
This works.
Notes on the Breath Surrender Technique
– Negative feelings – perhaps about the same issue you breath-released – may occur, HOWEVER, it is NOT the “same feeling” being detected – it is remnants of what was ALREADY RELEASED!
– Repeat the Surrender Breath Technique for the remnants of negative feelings from a thought or issue
– From this understanding you are “depleting” the accrued absorption of toxic feelings. You will repeat the process (frequently and often), but YOU ARE NOT repeating the SAME release!
– The wonderful consequence of continued practice of the Breath Surrender Technique is that when “incoming” distress is detected it is easily released. This is precisely because new distress does not tap into a cauldron of accumulated distress since it has been depleted from use of the technique.
– The only reason this technique would not be effective is if there is some “secondary gain” you receive from holding on to toxic feelings (can anyone say, “sympathy”?).
(The practice of the Breath Surrender Technique was extremely beneficial in the experience with my recently departed father. As lovingly close as I was to my father, there was minimal grief over his passing because the grief did not tap into accumulated grief from past set-backs, disappointments or trauma as a consequence of prior continual practice of the Breath Surrender Technique).
Summary
The 3 Signs of a Guilty Conscience and How to Release it becomes your opportunity for genuine emancipation!
As the Breath Release Technique is used you continue to deplete the accumulated negative feelings absorbed from trauma, mistakes, set-backs and disappointments. As a consequence, you increasingly free up your motivation, esteem, confidence and follow-thru.
Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with you, so as you surrender the absorbed consequence of negative feelings and experiences you free your psychological and emotional access to self-love, confidence and purpose.
You are not what has happened to you – you are the means of transcending it.
