Beyond Blame: Understanding Guilt & Regret In Alienation

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 73 stay tuned welcome to be on the high road I keep forgetting to announce that I am live in the private Facebook group every Friday at noon eastern time okay so it's the Facebook beyond the high Ro private support group I think is what it's called and I'm doing it in there you guys so that it is private right and you're not just out there on Facebook if you happen to want to come up on the camera and get coached about anything or ask a question you know face to face anything that's going on if you have any thoughts or whatever whatever you want to interact about um Friday at noon okay

in the private Facebook group so if you haven't joined yet do go ahead and send in a request to do that listen if if you have requested to come in the group and I have you didn't get approved for some reason just know that it wasn't by I wasn't intentionally I never will intentionally turn any alienated parent down I will say that I have been strict about accepting members into the group because I want to make sure that those who I'm bringing in actually are alienated parents right so that's why I ask the there's three questions that I asked in the beginning and I do read those so if those questions aren't answered it you will get denied until you can go back and

then try again but I've had some really weird requests from people that I know were either going to solicit or did solicit their Pi services and their um fortune telling services and all kinds of different things so I'm really I am probably overly strict about who I accept in so like I said if you have tried to get into the group and you didn't get accepted for whatever reason please know that it wasn't intentional I've just been trying to protect the Integrity of the group and then of course the identities and privacy of the parents that are in there okay so this Friday at noon eastern time you do not have to come on on camera you can type in the comments if you want to ask any

questions that you might have or just show up just because you want to hang out with me and some other alienated parents who are wanting to heal their lives okay so on with the episode hi everybody I am pardon me if you're watching I'm stretching my hips because they're killing me today and every day really my back is really where it's I'm hurting the most and I believe that would be tension and just left over trauma in the hips anyway I have been back to back and am recording this in between appointments and so I wanted to make sure that I got it done and I figured I should stand up and stretch today we're going to be talking about a lovely lovely topic of guilt and how it differs from

regret and what we do with it all right so I did some research as I usually do before episodes on some definitions because there are I think a couple important distinctions to be made between guilting yourself and having regret and this is what I found there's not really an agreed upon standard for definitions for the both of them or the distinction between the two but gathered from a few sources this is what I came up with is that guilt says I knew I was wrong when I did the thing but I did it anyway regret says I wish I would have known better regret says I wish I would have known all the things I wish I would have had more control of the situation the guilt is doing something

inconsistent with your values morals your standards for yourself and then regret maybe at the time you were faced with some decisions and it was a difficult decision but you did the best with what you knew at the time because we don't have the advantage of having foresight we don't have the advantage that we have now looking back and knowing all of the factors that were in play and all the things that happened after you made the decision you don't know that in the moment so regret looks back and is man if I only would have known if I only would have seen the signs right so I think a lot of times we will tell ourselves we feel guilt but really what we are feeling is Regret knowing

the typical characteristics of an alienated parent I mean we're all different but there are certain aspects of our character that are similar to one another I don't know that I've ever met somebody that wakes up in the morning and thinks how can I [ __ ] up the world today I'm just going to go and like Blaze and guns go ruin [ __ ] you we don't often go into situations wanting to do the wrong thing and that's where guilt would be appropriate most times now having said that I can look back on situations that happened back in the past both when I'm talking about with my daughter and other decisions I've made since the Alien Nation began and not pertaining to my

daughter other areas of grief where I did did know between right and wrong but things weren't as black and white as what I've just explained for my daughter I knew that my ex was going to use whatever he could find against me and that I probably shouldn't have made some of the decisions I made in the moment and in the moment I had bad feelings but I chose the decisions anyway because I felt I didn't understand how else to protect myself so I did what I knew how even though it went against what I thought that I probably should do I didn't have the tools to do it so that's where it gets muddy one of the listeners one of you guys had written to me a while back some months back and brought

up a situation basically with her she was she lives far away from her eldest kids the ones who are alienated who she sees a few months a year and then she's got her kids and she feels guilty because in her mind she feels like she's chosen her younger ones over her older ones because when they get together and when she has them the older kids I think her words were that they H their volatile Behavior because they were acting out acting aggressively towards the kids which happens very frequently for this kind of situation if you've got alienated kids on one side and then you've remarried and have kids step kids whatever you've got going on but another set of kids at your home where you live

now it is very common for the ones that don't live with you to act aggressively act out and anger and present problems when everybody's together it's a whole scene the guilt that a parent feels in that situation I'm not going to say it's not necessary because it makes sense right it 100% makes sense why you're thinking that because really what it is is that you you don't like the situation right it feels awful and you don't like being feeling like you've been put in the place where you have to choose between one or the other but when it comes to the your little one's safety and their mental health and all the things sometimes we have to make decisions that aren't fun right that we

have to choose between seemingly two evils or doesn't seem like you're being given the choices that you actually really want there's no ideal situation so in this case we do guilt ourselves but the emotion of guilt actually comes from knowing the right thing to do and doing something other than that and so guilt really by definition isn't the emotion that is appropriate here in this situation does that does that make sense every parent that I have spoken to I don't I cannot even think of one parent that isn't struggling or hasn't struggled hard with the feelings of guilt right feeling like I totally there were all these signs I remember the day that all the [ __ ] went down and I had

Clues I knew and I chose to do the other thing anyway and choosing that other thing is the reason why we are all sitting here and I don't speak too much kids today we all do it or have done it I can't say that we're all doing it at the moment but we've all done it and so I think what's helpful to do is to differentiate between the guilt and the regret did you know what you were doing at the time did you have all the information is the other question to back that up because maybe you did have some of the information but I could bet that you at the time you were doing it weren't wishing ill will on somebody or doing something so that you would end up alienated you were not like disregarding

all of it knowing that your children would be going through what they're going through today you I guarantee that you weren't right so guilt isn't actually as useful as we like to think it is but we can learn from it we can learn from our own thoughts and what we're trying to tell ourselves because if you're feeling it inside right if this is something that's going on you're having some like unrest is that the word I'm looking for discomfort about whatever it is if we know how to address it where to look and the actions to take then obviously this is going to help us become more effective and more successful in our journey to Healing just remember that just because you feel

guilty does not mean that you are guilty because guilt sort of infer that you have knowingly done something wrong and like I said I can almost guarantee that when we're talking about your children you really have taken all things into consideration and you chose what you chose because you thought that was the best thing it's it's not always rational your brain is going to offer you arguments and Associated emotions that are not coming from a rational place this is your limic system like I was talking about last week of the before with those knee-jerk reactions right this is the emotional brain that is unconsciously driving around partying it up and taking shots and throwing paper

airplanes and driving the bus so the thing that's really helpful to do is to ask yourself wait is this a rational thought if it's coming from my emotional brain then great that is awesome information now that we have it we know it's irrational and we can then move forward accordingly if it's coming from your executive functions then we move a different direction maybe there's something that you can actually go and rectify right and make amends for or maybe if we're talking about the person who's sing any your kids from you and you know that making amends is not like a thing not a going to be a fruitful Endeavor it's not going to get you anywhere then you can now consciously

make decisions differently moving forward but guilt really does not in the long run won't benefit you to sit in what I think is interesting though is that the irrational brain will try to make you feel guilty over pretty much anything it possibly can the irrational part of your brain loves to assign blame whether that's looking outward or coming right back into yourself wherever it can assign a reason for something it will do it and it will seem really convincing like it's fact it's true because if we can find fault even if that's somebody's us like I was saying then it offers us a sense of control as Twisted as it sounds as humans We crave order We crave

predictability if things are predictable we feel stable certain of the road ahead we can assign blame wherever it needs to be and move along there's like closure it offers you some sort of false sense of closure because without being able to blame ourselves or others that would mean that we would have to accept and acknowledge the fact that the world that we live in is unstable it's chaotic unpredictable we don't want to admit that sometimes bad things can happen and there's no Rhyme or Reason about it if you have something that you can blame on then it's that thing that we need to avoid the problem all goes to there and then we can just avoid that person and

everything will be just fine and we'll just live life like that but if we always did that let's say we're we're guilting somebody outside of us then we would have a lot of things to avoid in our lives we'd run out of places to point our fingers it makes sense right if we can just say oh that they're the problem oh I'm the problem it was my fault I should have done it differently if I could have only done it this way then maybe we wouldn't be here I think sometimes it feels like a way to hold on to those that we have in our minds lost if we can only hold on to these negative emotions then maybe we're holding them tight like we're being loyal to them showing them Allegiance like we tell

ourselves that if we don't experience these feelings of of blame and wrongdoing at every reminder or sign that we get that comes before us that we're doing wrong by our children that we're not honoring them that we're not keeping their memory alive that we're not being loyal but it's not the case logically it doesn't make sense beating yourself up doesn't hold them any closer to you in fact if anything it puts a barrier between you and and your children I'm sure you've heard me talk about there's a lot of to support that when we punish ourselves for something in order to learn a lesson we're much more likely to repeat the very thing that we're punishing ourselves for

because we feel shame we go and we do that very thing because we don't know what else to do with ourselves we shut down the executive functions and you end up like strong arming yourself back into making the same mistake in some other area of your life so it doesn't actually work to try to teach yourself a lesson and feel like you're honoring them by dragging yourself through the mud but it it feels so necessary it makes sense in Our Minds when we're doing it it feels like the only way that we can stay close to them is to replay whatever event that we're guilting ourselves about right oh you should have done it this way you should have done it that way like you're

honoring them by doing it but really it's it's not okay so also with guilt I was talking about out that we like to have order our children will also do that on us have you ever noticed I was just talking with a client a little bit before recording this who was going through this very thing and every single one of us as alienated parents goes through to some degree or another is that they can't give me the real reason why they're not talking to me the herd children the one I'm referring to are adults mostly adults they don't give her any solid reasons they're just ambiguous whatever reasons like most of us experience there's no hard evidence or offense that they're guilty of

committing just very random things you took Dad's or mom's money you cheated whatever they're lame excuses but because they're going through something so unstable and so uprooting not to stress you out any more than you might already be but if they have somebody to lay the blame on it's a a lot more convenient and it feels a lot safer for them than saying they don't know why they don't have both parents they don't know why their parents are fighting it feels much more secure in their structure and saying well all of this is because of them and we know with alienation when we think about that with our prefrontal cortex with our executive functions we know very well that this is

exactly what happens with all of our children no child likes the instability that conflict offers children crave predictability and peace and so even though the alienating parent is the one that may be causing the conflict and throwing the daggers your child is associating parent strong mean parent who is throwing daggers at you that common denominator seems to be you whenever you're around this is when problems and the conflict comes up right so you must be to blame it feels much safer for them to say that and stay with the person who is seems to be stronger and more aggressive they must be safe under that umbrella knowing even at whatever age your children are if they're in

elementary school age and above they know that it doesn't feel good but they don't know how to put words to that they know they don't like it but they don't again if they're children they don't know how to incorporate employ their executive functions and reason with themselves they're going by how they feel and if there's conflict and they know that somebody is pointing fingers your way well it must be your fault Boom for then instant illusion of control so I know that you guys probably all know that because you know the Dynamics of alienation and what happens but we don't always think about it that way obviously not the same kind of guilt that you might feel but you can still understand

that it's the same motivation that is driving that it's it's craving a sense of stability who's guilty let's put it on one person it assumes that it must be black and white very All or Nothing sort of thing there's no context there's little context to guilt so and another instance that's not our kids I was trying to think of all the ways that we might feel guilt and the other way that I came up with was not everybody's parents like this but often times parents when they they don't feel needed will guilt their children stereotypically it's been moms that guilt their children but I think it happens across the board it's just in different ways where they will how come

you don't call me anymore how come you don't come to see me you never come see me anymore and you feel so leaned on that guilting that you feel being done at you differently than your children they're trying to draw you in where your children are pushing you out because that's what they've learned how to do and that you must be the problem you're causing the conflict you need to go there I have to go here because then there's no conflict right with your parents or maybe it's a partner this you never call me you never do these things for me and they're trying to reel you in and then you feel drained and leaned on in that case it's it is this in all the cases but it's just easier to point out

like in this case if it's Mom mom doesn't want to have to acknowledge or consider the fear am I not good enough am I not fun to be with am I not loved am I not needed necessary in their lives anymore when they're throwing guilt at you in that way and needing you to come closer or maybe it's you that does this with somebody else it's usually because whoever is doing the guilting outward doesn't want to address the the more scary thought or idea that maybe they're not enough it's always helpful to just let them know that you love them without necessarily having to agree to whatever terms or go see them when they want you to see them or do the things play into

their game you can there are other ways to cut to the Chase and let them know that they're needed and loved that's really what they're trying to say to you when they're doing that but it doesn't mean that you doing that is going to change their behavior because really it's a them problem when they're leaning on you really what needs to be addressed and you can't if this is not you if somebody's guilting you then what needs to be addresses their own selfworth and that's for them to deal with then whatever whatever right but it's always nice to understand where somebody's coming from when they're when it's happening to you at you whatever in your presence you know what I'm saying in

your interactions so it always feels better to go it's not me it's them they don't they're not showing love they're not doing this they're not blah blah blah blah blah it's all them it's your fault how come you're not being the daughter or son that I wanted and needed and brought up I brought you up to be blah blah blah and you're being so different they're expecting you to solve their lack of seeing what's going on with them right and that can never happen you will never even no matter how many times you showed up how they wanted you to they would still be feeling that feeling inside because they haven't addressed it don't go telling them this but if this is you that's doing maybe

unconsciously guilting somebody else into spending time with you or whatever you're trying to draw somebody closer to you and you end up uh inadvertently doing it this is something to look at for you too what is it that I'm actually fearing here why do I need them to behave this way oh because if they behave this way then I will feel more loved and needed okay so you have a fear that they don't love and need you how can you love yourself so once you've assessed what it is and if it actually is if guilting yourself is the appropriate action at the time like if it's rational or irrational noticing it with compassion not judging yourself but really wanting coming from a place of

wanting to learn about what's happening having your own back I'm going to use the the situation where Angel The Listener she's guilting herself about in her mind choosing her Littles over her Elder children the ones who are alienated what is most important I assume is to protect everybody involved right to avoid any further conflict and keep everybody's fingers and toes on them and then of course make sure that everybody feels secure and safe right unfortunately it's a shitty decision to have to make but if we cannot create other options for ourselves sometimes we do have to choose the lesser of two evils so knowing that you made the decision that you made with

everybody's best interest at heart then have your own back on that decision it will serve you best and I don't mean just you Angel who wrote into to me but this goes for anybody that's feeling stuck between a rock in a hard place these are the choices so deal with that and just be honest with yourself about the fact that you don't love that these are the choices but these are them and then you're not like deluding yourself into thinking that somehow you're responsible right when you might not be responsible at out at all but now let also let me just say that when guilt is appropriate when we've done something that we knew that there was a better way in the moment and we still chose

something else like I said we're always usually just protecting ourselves but if you truly believe that there's responsibility that you can take today about the thing that you [ __ ] up on before then do that step into your power and be like no I [ __ ] up I totally I knew what the right decision was and at the time I was telling myself that I should do this or I should do that I was careless whatever it might be what really helps from here is if you can go and help somebody else who is going through something similar and is asking for help basically what I'm saying is is go do service work don't offer unsolicited advice or help to somebody don't go try to to make somebody see the

error of their ways but wherever you can be of service and especially in the area where you screwed up on go write it by helping others that are going through the very thing so yeah that's that's what we do have your own back though know your reasons and like your reasons why you're doing any and all of the things that you do and so I talked about that in one of a very recent episode it was probably maybe it was the Shas anyway but if you know and like your reasons then you're going to have a much easier time to have your back when it comes down to it your emotional brain is trying to guilt you into taking responsibility or ownership over something that may or may not be yours

right so and either way even if you are guilty of some something then this is not the end of the world yeah we human we're all human and we all make mistakes like I said like I always say we're all just doing the best that we can with the information that we have at the time and the decisions that we made even the mistakes that we made even the worst of worst things that you might have done in the past Nothing by the way nothing that you anybody has ever said has surprised me or made me think that there was an exception anything that you've ever done is not so shameful that you are not deserving of forgiving yourself and being forgiven by other people but

forgiving yourself is really key here no matter how big you think your mistake or your how warranted you think your feeling of guilt is I want you to to know and remember the reason I can almost guarantee that the reason that you did the thing that you did didn't come from a Sinister place it most likely came out of wanting to to support even if it was a backwards way of going about something take ownership of that I've been there too where I've done some really [ __ ] up like things that I now I look back on and I'm like who was that who who was acting in that way why didn't I act like an adult why was I what was my thinking back then and you you can go into all that but it's really

just not not very useful but having your own back and knowing and reminding yourself listen I'm a I'm human I'm fallible I've made mistakes in my past ones that I know I have learned from and I will not repeat again because I'm aware of them and I will make more decision uh mistakes and decisions in my future that I will look back on and probably hand to forehead be shaking my head about but now from here forward knowing what I know now I'm making decisions with my prefrontal cortex I am making decisions consciously I am much more aware and much more mindful about the decisions I make and that's why for me anyway I think the one thing that alienation did backhandedly gift me was

I don't think I would ever be where I am today I know that I would never be where I am today and be living the conscious life that I am today I was just ricocheting off of stuff and just like a pinball just in a very reactive State throughout life and so of course I made the decisions and the mistakes that I made because I was not thinking consciously I was reacting to everything was just a constant motion so just give yourself the grace and the permission and the the compassion and love that you so deserve think about how your best friend might talk to you how you would talk to your best friend or how you would talk to four-year-old self or your four-year-old kiddo offer yourself that

same Grace okay because if you don't offer that to you then then you can't teach others how to offer that to you as well and you can't offer that to others so not truthfully so simply put guilt and regret are different in that guilt assumes that you knew right from wrong and you chose wrong anyway in order to have some other benefit guilt assumes that you are guilty of of something where regret is looking back on something knowing what I know now I would have chosen an entirely different set of behaviors actions than I did both of them you can learn from always you can always learn from last night if you don't like the results it's providing for you then you can change the story

about it guilt just offers you a false sense of security and control it's like a mirage it leads you to the wrong place unless you're actually guilty of the thing and which case then take responsibility of it and go help somebody in the same area right because like I said an apology is not always appropriate or is not always will often times if we're talking about your children so many of us are so tempted to want to run to our children when we realize that we've done something wrong and want to take ownership of it especially in this healing Journey where like oh my God I was wrong I totally was wrong and I didn't even realize that I knew and blah blah blah we want to go

and tell the person that we've inadvertently injured that we were wrong and we're sorry and we want to to make amends to them and try to write our wrongs especially when we've just discovered it when it comes to alienation this is so typical during our healing Journey when we start to become more and more aware and all sudden we like Eureka oh my gosh I was wrong I need to go tell them and maybe that'll fix things don't do it don't go and try to apologize to your kids if you feel rushed behind it and you think that if the main motivator is trying to repair the relationship like today you know what I'm saying sit on it for a little while because it may it may not

necessarily it might not go over well depending on where they're at with it I'm not saying don't contact them but just check your motives first all right you guys have a lovely week and I will don't forget about the Facebook live Friday at noon p.m. eastern time and look coming soon I'm going to be announcing the new situation situational with the ways that I'm going to be helping you guys coming up very shortly probably I'll announce it in March launch in April is my idea April 1st okay guys love you you all have a wonderful week okay bye thanks so much for listening today guys I'm honored that you chose to share your time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more

come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the concepts that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life even while experiencing the grief of alienation for more information go to beyondthe High road.com see you

soon