According to the Cambridge online dictionaries, guilt is the "feeling of worry or unhappiness that you have because you have done something wrong, such as harming another person."
According to the definition, it's a feeling you get when you realize you've done something wrong, but in my opinion, it can also be a doubt that what you did caused harm to someone else, and you have to live with this tormenting feeling.
Since I was a child, I've had a strong sense of guilt from my parents' constant blaming of me for my mistakes. Rebuke and criticism came freely from my parents, who believed this was the best way to teach us to be cautious and avoid mistakes. They placed a lot of emphasis on the mistakes, while encouraging and acknowledging us had no place in our lives. They were completely out of touch. I used to constantly defend myself until maybe a few years ago. In fact, even when I was talking to myself, I was thinking about how I would defend myself if my mother ever started berating me. It was frustrating to feel guilty and constantly defend myself, even when I hadn't done anything wrong. I simply granted myself the freedom to act contrary to her wishes.
My guilt increased after I became a mother, and this feeling prevents most women and moms from fully enjoying their lives. When I became pregnant with my first child, I was working full-time. I spent 4 hours a day commuting from my house to work and back for his first two years of life. We used to leave the house at six in the morning and return at six in the evening, together. When he was three months old, I put him in a nursery where I left him every day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. He attended the nursery from the time he was three months old until he was five years old, spending eight hours a day there. Guilt was ruining my weekdays five days a week. I had to leave him with my husband or my mother when he was 4 years old because I had to travel a lot. For 10 months or almost a year, I had to be away from home 4 to 5 days a week, 2 to 3 times a month, and the guilt was killing me. Because he saw how much the guilt was torturing me, he used that to his advantage by manipulating and punishing me. In retrospect, I can see how the negative emotions left me depleted, suffering, and unhappy because I believed that by sending my son to nursery at such a young age, I was doing harm to him. I still remember how upset I was the first time I dropped him off at the nursery and how I felt like I was abandoning him. When I felt guilty, it was primarily due to the fact that I was neglecting my son by working long hours and not having enough time to care for him or spend quality time with him.
It took me a long time to let go of that feeling and realise that guilt was a big part of why I was constantly exhausted and unhappy. If you ask a counselor, she will tell you that the amount of time you spend with your children isn't as important as the quality of that time. Since then, I've made it a point to make my time with my children as pleasurable as possible for both of us. Quality time was something I learned about. I discovered that the notion that a mother is always available to her children is incorrect. Upon reflection, I've come to the conclusion that the definitions I received from both my mother and culture about what it means to be a good mother and wife are no longer applicable to me. There were many things I needed to reevaluate in order to make room for new ideas and goals.
I'm wondering if this has happened to anyone else. Is it you or someone you know who is saying it? A lot of women, especially when their children were young, have had similar experiences or stories, and I'm sure there are thousands, if not millions, of them.
