A not so short message from someone who has been there.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with empathetic guilt. It sounds incredibly ludicrous, surely you can’t feel guilty yet empathetic? While I’m (fairly) certain you could, that’s not what I’m referring to. Here, empathetic guilt is referring to that awful feeling of guilt, the one that makes you never want to talk about your problems again, because you empathise with other people, who must, of course, “have it harder” than yourself. I truly loathe that phrase. While yes, the children starving across the globe, the old lady down the street with cancer, or the man who has 5 children to provide for, but no job, are all struggling with very serious issues, you too are struggling a very real battle. Whether that’s pre-exam anxiety, a breakdown because you couldn’t find the tv guide you always buy on a Friday afternoon, or the homelessness you’re facing, they are all valid struggles.
We often forget that things that may not affect others, really do affect us. There should be no shame or guilt in feeling any emotion, you don’t particularly have control over them. (Unless you’re some cool robot that can turn their feelings on/off, if so, please, feel free to stop reading, I’m not sure this applies to you).
Back on track, there are so many times I wish I could tell myself, my friends, my family, even strangers, that their guilt is naïve.
You are not a bad person for having your own fights. You are not a bad person for the sadness you feel when you find a dead bee, or the anxiety and panic attacks you feel every time you make a phone call.
I guess what I’m saying is, your feelings are not invalid just because you feel someone else is worse off.
Empathy is great, in doses, but this empathy where you invalidate your own struggles because you’re so caught up in worrying about what other people are dealing with? That’s not healthy. You are a human, you have emotions, and they should not make you feel guilty. The way things affect you should not make you want to crawl up into a ball of self-hatred and anger, because your struggles, no matter how unimportant they may seem, cannot, and should not be compared. You do not exist to second guess how you are dealing with your emotions, you do not exist for the guilt, the dread of telling anyone what you’re going through because you’re “being dramatic”. I can tell you from experience, these feelings are not healthy.
I once cried because my partner wouldn’t plug my phone in, and yes, at the time I felt so childish for getting so upset over something so ‘”irrelevant”, but when I look at the situation in hindsight, I was dealing with a lot of negative emotions, self-harm, suicidal feelings, and I’d felt like none of those things were worth talking to anyone about, I bottled them up so much that I broke down over a charger. It wasn’t healthy to keep things bottled up, and had I told someone what was going through my mind, I’d have probably found the charger situation a minor inconvenience.
What I’m really trying to tell you is, please, stop letting your empathy hold hands with guilt. They are not a good couple, in fact, I’d call them toxic. They are not friends. Be empathetic. Feel guilt when you have really done something wrong. Feel your feelings, be true to them, speak up. You are not being anything other than human. Your emotions, your struggles, they are not less valid because you are not on your deathbed, or have not lost your child, they are real, they are affecting you, and that is not something you should feel guilty for. Please remember, why empathy and guilt should stop holding hands.
- Kat Denyer