Qualm Effect

As I was reading the book Real Self-Care, the author quoted various examples. One of them I try to explain in my way.

"I feel sorry I spent so much time in the spa when I could have taken care of my family."

"I deeply regret not attending to your needs."

"How can I relax when there is so much to be done?" I just can't relax."

"When I take time for my care, I feel selfish."

In my quest to understand what is happening with self-care and help, I happened to meet with some of the harshest realities. Sometimes it seems that I am pushing myself for my self-care and, deep inside, building the base of self-hatred. I started looking into this new and most ignored concept when I started reading the book Real Self-Care. The author showed this with many examples. I got similar things in these two posts about what guilt has to do, and White Hot Truth soothes self-help fatigue as she enlightens it in her book White Hot Truth, which also confirmed my understanding of guilt I am building in graduating my self-care.

When it comes to our own self-care, we all feel that it is time-consuming, and we feel guilty of spending that time on ourselves. We feel that some more important works could have been done at this time. Is this feeling right? After all, guilt often brings positive growth and motivates us to improve our behavior.

Yes, you all are right. Guilt is a powerful emotion, a feeling that comes when we consider ourselves responsible for wrongdoing or regret our actions. Guilt is good as long as it is evaluated with our thoughts, which I will be discussing in a while. Our guilt about our self-care is based on societal expectations. Society says that success comes through hard work, sacrifice, and putting others first. In meeting these societal expectations, we keep doing hard work, sacrificing our own needs, and putting others first, always neglecting ourselves.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

This guilty feeling is built and maintained by us.

a) We make guilt-related inference: We make some conclusions in our lives like

i) You took stationery from the office without asking for permission.

ii) You cheated on your partner.

iii) You do not pray every day.

iv) You forgot your husband's birthday, and he feels hurt.

b) We bring guilt-based irrational beliefs to this inference: Now to these conclusions we add our irrational beliefs. These irrational beliefs have two components

1) Rigid belief: The rigid beliefs are what we put on ourselves to follow; the shoulds and musts, have-tos, and got-tos.

e.g., I should take care of my family first.

I must always get up and cook the meals for my family.

I mustn't take rest.

2) Self-depreciation belief: When we fail to meet these rigid beliefs, we depreciate our own values and carry our negative self-judgement like

1) I am bad

2) I don't deserve good things to happen to me. I only deserve bad things.

3) I am selfish.

In this way these negative self-judgments keep rumbling in our minds, and we get occupied with them always and start to believe them as true.

c) We think in ways that are resonating with our irrational beliefs: These are the consequences of the above events.

d) We act in ways that are twining to our irrational beliefs: These are the consequences of the above events.

In conclusion, when our inferences interact with our irrational beliefs, then only we have guilt-filled consequences.

HOW TO REMOVE THIS?

1) Run away from "should" sand: Communication is a great boon. It changes the meaning of the sentence completely. Try to imagine the situation in the two lines below

i) "Ah! I should go to the pharmacy to pick up the medicines before I go to my office."

ii) "Ah! If I went to the pharmacy and picked up the medicines, I would feel better at work."

If you closely examine these two statements, then you will understand that the first statement is clearly putting you in the trap of self-judgment, where if you fail to do the thing, you will consider yourself bad or incompetent.

In the second statement, there is a win-win situation; if you go to the pharmacy and buy medicine, then you also will be feeling good, and if you don't go, then it is also fine. So, always try to formulate sentences that give you many opportunities rather than putting you in do-or-die situations.

2) Use refinement, internalization, and realism to shift our motivation.

3) Have remorse, a healthy alternative to guilt: In remorse we have similar inferences, but these inferences are backed with rational beliefs. These rational beliefs have two components

i) Flexible beliefs

ii) Unconditional self-acceptance belief:

I never thought at times I used this guilt to motivate me. The topic of guilt brought me to many faces of guilt, and I feel it needs deep study to uncover those and help ourselves live a free life. My next topic is on taking time for yourself, in other terms, self-care.

A- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/acceptance-of-self.html?zx=af3c2e13bf8aa3d6

B- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/boundaries-to-set.html

C- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/compassion-on-yourself.html

D- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/discovering-oneself.html

F- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/forgiving-yourself.html

G- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/grains-of-gratitude.html

H- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/human-experiences-common-to-all.html

K- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/kindness-to-self.html

L- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/l-factor.html

M- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/mindfulness-for-self-compassion.html

N- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/no-that-needs-your-attention.html

O- https://water-1droplet.blogspot.com/2025/04/organize-importants-over-urgent.html