When Guilt Comes From Love

I've been thinking a lot about guilt lately.

Maybe it's because I hear it so often in the work I do, or maybe it's because I recognize it so easily in myself. There always seems to be something we believe we should be doing more of. I should spend more time with my family. I should call that friend. I should be more available. I should be doing a better job. I should have more patience. I should be able to handle this better.

There are an awful lot of "shoulds" in our lives.

They can become especially loud when someone we love needs us. A parent is aging. Someone receives a difficult diagnosis. A friend is struggling. We want to be there. We want to help. And somehow, no matter how much we are doing, it can still feel as though we should be doing more.

Sometimes I think we need two different words for guilt. There is the guilt we feel when we've done something wrong, hurt someone, or acted in a way that doesn't align with who we want to be. That kind of guilt can tell us something important and may ask us to take responsibility or make something right.

But then there is another kind of guilt—the kind that shows up even when we are doing our best. The guilt that tells us we should visit more, call more, help more, be more patient, or somehow find more of ourselves to give.

It's this second kind of guilt I've been thinking about. And I've found myself wondering whether, sometimes, it might actually come from love.

Maybe it lives in the space between how much we love someone and how much we're actually capable of doing for them.

When someone we love is going through something difficult, we may wish we could give them more of our time, take away their pain, make things easier, or somehow fix what is happening. But we also have jobs, families, relationships, responsibilities, and lives that still need our attention. We get tired. We become overwhelmed. We don't always know what to do or say. We are human.

And yet, instead of recognizing those very real limits, so often we look at ourselves and think, I should be doing more.

I understand that feeling because I struggle with it, too. I can look across my own life and quickly identify the places where I think I should be giving more. More time to family. More attention to friendships. More energy to work. More presence to the people I love. There always seems to be somewhere else I could be giving more of myself.

But when is it enough?

I'm not sure there is a simple answer to that question. When we love someone deeply, there may always be another visit we could make, another phone call we could place, another way we could help. If we measure how much we love someone by whether we've done everything we possibly could, I'm not sure any of us will ever feel like we've done enough.

Maybe that's where compassion needs to enter the conversation.

Not as a way to dismiss guilt or convince ourselves that nothing matters, but as a way of acknowledging how difficult some of these situations really are. Caring for someone we love while continuing to carry the rest of our lives is not easy. Watching someone we love struggle with something we cannot fix is not easy. Trying to figure out how to divide our finite time and energy among all the people and responsibilities that matter to us is not easy.

Perhaps, when guilt appears, we can become curious about what is underneath it. Is there something I genuinely wish I had done differently? Is there something I can do now? Or am I asking myself to give more than I realistically have to give?

And sometimes, perhaps, we might discover love underneath all of those "shoulds."

We wish we had more time because the time matters. We wish we could do more because the person matters. We wish we could make things different because we love them.

That realization may not make the guilt disappear. I know from my own experience that showing ourselves kindness and compassion is often much easier said than done. But perhaps it can help us hold the feeling a little differently.

Instead of allowing guilt to become another way to tell ourselves we haven't done enough, maybe we can recognize the love underneath it while also extending some of that love to ourselves.

Because sometimes guilt isn't evidence that we haven't loved enough.

Sometimes it comes from wishing we could love someone beyond the limits of what any one person can possibly give.