Regret is a vital human emotion. Keep hold of it for too long and the guilt can be crippling!
Guilt is a fairly common theme in my hypnotherapy clinics. Can hypnotherapy for guilt and shame help with such a problem? The answer would seem to be ‘yes’. I’ve worked with guilt a great number of times and could help you to be free of it too.
“Holding onto regret is like dragging the weight of the past with us, everywhere we go.” I’ve worked with this issue a good deal and do understand its potential to blight lives. The good news, however, is that you can learn to let it go. Hypnotherapy could help you to let go of guilt and regret, for good.
We are social animals and we share with other social apes the capacity for guilt and regret. These emotions enforce constructive social behaviour and, when sincerely expressed, prompt other members of the social group to accept an apology and restore good relations. These emotions, in common with all others, have positive intentions.
They are positive emotions which aim to help you. At least, they are positives when they are short-lived and formative. It’s when we find it impossible to escape from them that we find ourselves with a problem.
I have worked with people in London, Oxford, Reading, Wallingford and Thame in order to help them to let go of guilt and shame.
Hypnotherapy, combined with other psychotherapeutic interventions, can be a very effective tool for this purpose.
I also offer hypnotherapy online for guilt, using vsee, zoom or whatsap. Please get in touch for more details as to how this works.
If you’d like to set yourself free, read on and give me a call.
I’ll be glad to talk with you, with regard how hypnotherapy for guilt could help you to let go of such destructive and redundant feelings, for good.
Why punish yourself twice?
There will always be things we wish hadn’t happened. There will always be things we’d rather not have done. Many of those things will have had negative consequences upon our lives. Why punish yourself twice? Why spend a lifetime in regretting what can’t be changed?
A regret is a little grief, a pining for a choice which we might have made but didn’t; a wish that things could have been otherwise. Guilt and regret are healthy emotions when they cause us to reflect upon and make changes to our behaviours. They become problematic, however, when we find it impossible to let them go.
I’ve used hypnotherapy in Reading, Wallingford, Oxford, London and Thame to help people let go of guilt. You could be next.
Is it that we are not living true to ourselves?
Could we possibly be confusing what is guilt with what is actually a burning desire to free ourselves from an unwelcome restriction?
Are we being repeatedly unfaithful because we are weak or because we really can’t bear to be married any longer? Perhaps we’d sooner suffer remorse for infidelity because the problems associated with divorce feel too great to face.
Do we feel guilty because we experience sexual desires when this is a perfectly normal part of the human condition? Has our guilt tipped over into scrupulosity?
Scrupulosity is where thoughts and self-recriminations of a religious or moral nature become obsessive, repeated over time and associated, often with certain rituals designed to express repentance or avoid punishment. Click on the link if you’d like to learn more.
Other forms of guilt are less dramatic. Some parents come to me with the guilt of having worked so hard that they feel as if they neglected their children. Others have stolen little things when young and find that they rediscover a sense of guilt in middle age. Whatever the cause of your guilt may be, hypnotherapy could help you to liberate yourself from its chains.
You can learn to let go. Hypnotherapy for guilt could help you.
Well, you know and I know that what has happened can’t be changed. The only thing which can be changed is the way in which we allow events in our past to affect our present and future. Once you can forgive yourself for what has happened the guilt and regret can be allowed to pass. Life will move on and you will be free.
“Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” – William James.
This guilt and regret has already made you a better person. Bad people don’t have these feelings. You are, therefore, a good person and you deserve some self-compassion, forgiveness and love. I’ll help you to leave your past behind you, in order that you can focus your efforts on building a better future.
Accept, forgive, move on. Hypnotherapy could help you!
To regret an action or event is to defy its reality. It’s like bashing your head against a brick wall. The wall will always win. You did what you did. You didn’t do what you didn’t do. Hypnotherapy could help you to forgive yourself.
The rest of your life could be better because you regret the action and decide to behave differently in future. You could be a better parent, lover, husband, wife or friend than you ever could have been if this regretted thing had never happened.
It’s a curious thing that only the good are afflicted by guilt. It’s much the same dynamic as that dynamic which leads good students to be afraid of exams or safe drivers to be afraid of the roads.
Only the good are afflicted by guilt. The bad people amongst us just don;t give a damn what they’ve done.
So, if you’re suffering from guilt then you’re a good person. You therefore don’t need to suffer guilt any longer. You can feel sure that you’ve earned the appropriate lessons, that you’ve done your best to make mends and you can then let go.
Let go of this guilt, give yourself a break and get on with enjoying the rest of your life.
Give yourself a break!
Give yourself the chance and give the other person concerned the opportunity to benefit from the newly changed you. If, for example, you have let a loved one down then carrying all that guilt around will lessen your chances of making amends. You can be the best person you can be. Don’t let guilt stop you any longer.
The past is a very strange thing. It only happened in your mind.
You can learn to see things differently. At the very least, a negative experience will contain a lesson. Often, if we try, we can even find a silver lining in the darkest of clouds. Always begin, however, by accepting what can’t be changed. This will often, in itself, be enough.
Everything we do, everything we experience happens only in the brain. The past is merely your mind’s interpretation of what took place.
You can learn to see yourself and your past differently. You can see yourself from a different angle. You can let it go and forgive yourself, resolving to be different in the future.
It’s human to feel guilt at things we’ve done and which we regret. The purpose of guilt, however, is to be a corrective emotion. We do a bad thing, we regret it, we resolve to change and then we forgive ourselves and move on.
Guilt isn’t designed to be a permanent state of being. If it becomes such a permanent state then there’s something else going on. I could help you to find out what that is. I could help you to put it right and I could help you to move past this current state of being stck in the past.
Give me a call when you’re ready to begin this process. I’ll be glad to hear from you and will teach you how to move on.
You’ll be glad you did.
Learn to leave it behind with Resolved! Hypnotherapy.
Firstly, guilt is often culturally determined. Women would once commonly feel guilty for enjoying sex. Would we condemn people for this today?
Do you really have a good reason to feel this way? Well, we could explore this together. I offer a warm and understanding space in which to explore, discuss and resolve whatever it is which may be bothering you.
Secondly, we often feel guilt for things we continue to do. How is it that we feel guilty and continue to repeat the very same actions? I could help you to relieve yourself of guilt whilst tackling those behaviours at source.
Perhaps the behaviour which causes you guilt, particularly if you are a religious believer, might be a simple human need. Perhaps you could learn to forgive yourself for simply being human.
Hypnotherapy and hypno-psychotherapy can help you to move on after a negative experience. If you’re finding it hard to let go of what has happened, consider giving me a call. We can discuss how you might begin to move on with life.
Guilt and regret, a personal story
Bored with the music in my car I decided to search, one morning, for a new CD to play on my way into Reading. A certain CD came into my head and I spent a long time searching for it, for only that particular CD would do.
I searched with a little trepidation, for I hadn’t listened to it for years and I’d decided, when I’d last heard it, that I’d not listen to it again, for it was so evocative of a certain unfortunate event in my life that I’d found it too unpleasant an experience.
Guilt had become associated with this music and it had been a horrible experience. I’d last listened to it long before I’d begun to train in the use of hypnotherapy. Would time have made any difference?
The last time I’d listened to that CD had been so terribly unpleasant because of my feelings of shame, guilt and regret at what had happened all those years ago.
Something I hadn’t done, a choice I hadn’t been able to make, had led to something horrible and the guilt for my part in this horrid thing had then bored itself deep into my mind. It hadn’t been alone,
I had once had quite a collection of pet regrets and sources of guilt. I would bring them out and look at them, once in a while, and punish myself for having been such a bad person. Feeling bad was my way of atoning for the past. The thing was, it never worked. There was no end in sight.
You can let go of guilt too. Hypnotherapy could help you
And yet, as I listened to the CD on my way into work, I realised that the wracks of guilt and self-recrimination had gone and that I could enjoy the music without reliving events from the past.
Somewhere along the line I had forgiven myself both for this and for all the other mistakes I’ve made along the way.
I’d come to terms with the fact that I have made mistakes in my past, that any choice we make is a denial of an alternative, that I will make mistakes in the future but that it’s all OK.
Only good people regret the negative effects of their actions and whilst learning from an error is a good thing, continued self recrimination and condemnation does nobody any good at all.
Bad people, almost by definition, fail to feel the sense of guilt which bothers you. You are, therefore, a good person. Your sense of regret and shame proves it. Let it go, with the help of hypnotherapy, and move on. Make the most of your life and let the good deeds you perform wipe away the feelings of guilt.
Learn more about a guilt-free future by calling me
I’ve used hypnotherapy for guilt in Reading, Oxford, Wallingford and Thame in order to help people to simply let go and move on. If you’d like to find out more then please give me a call on 07786 123736 / 01865 600970 / 01183 280284, email me at paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk or use the contact form below.
N.B. Please be aware: sometimes I am called or contacted by people whose first questions concern confidentiality. I explain that if they divulge a criminal act then I may have to break confidentiality. Therefore, if you are considering getting in touch because of something you have done in the past – some criminal act of abuse or violence – then please bear this in mind.
I am a therapist who acts to preserve confidentiality as far as is ethically possible. I cannot, however, act as the keeper of secrets where this involves others being the victims of criminal acts of harm.
Best wishes
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To find out more about my work in Wallingford