A couple of weeks ago, I woke up with no voice.
Not a croaky voice. No voice at all. And I was due to teach a live class that morning.
So I cancelled the class. I let everyone know as early as I could, and I moved the class to the following week.
And then I felt guilty about cancelling for most of the morning because I’d been on vacation the week before and had already missed two classes because of it.
Here's the ironic bit. The class I'd cancelled was a class about “false guilt”. The kind of guilt that turns up when we haven't done anything wrong. I'd only just finished preparing it.
Later that morning, I remembered to use my own tool. More on that in a minute.
The days after a "no"
Last week I wrote about approval, and how a lot of us are still checking for approval decades later. This is where I notice that checking most.
We say "no" to something. Not a dramatic "no". A small one. Somebody asks, and we say we can't.
And two days later we're still chewing on it. We've replayed the conversation in the shower. We've written a nicer version in our heads, with a better excuse in it. We've looked at their reply four times, trying to work out whether the full stop at the end was an aggressive full stop.
They've almost certainly moved on.
We almost certainly haven't.
I think a lot of us treat a "no" like an application. We hand it in, and then we wait for somebody to stamp our “no” and tell us we were allowed to say “no”. But nobody ever writes back to say, "That was fine, you're still a good person". So we keep waiting. And while we wait, we try to buy the "no" back. A softer follow-up message. An offer of something else that nobody asked for.
But a "no" isn't a request. It's information. All a "no" does is tell somebody where your limit is. And they don't have to agree with your limit for it to still be your limit.
Two kinds of guilt
So why does the guilt arrive anyway?
Because there are two kinds of guilt, but from the inside they feel exactly the same.
Real guilt is about something we did. We can point at it. We can fix it, and once it's fixed, the guilty feeling quiets down.
False guilt is about somebody else. Their mood. Their disappointment. Their feelings. And somehow it's landed on us.
The giveaway is that false guilt never goes quiet. We say “sorry”, and it comes back. We do more, and it finds something new. Because there was never anything to repair in the first place.
For some of us, this might have started young. If a grown-up's mood was somehow our fault, then at least there was something we could do about it. Be good. Be quiet. Be helpful.
The other possibility, that the grown-up was just like that and nothing we did would change it, is much scarier for a child.
So the child takes the guilt.
Three things you can try
Tool 1. Finish the sentence.
When the guilt shows up, finish this sentence, out loud or on paper: "I feel guilty because I..."
What comes next has to be a verb. Something you did. "I said I'd ring her back and I never did" has a verb in it. "I feel guilty because she's disappointed in me" doesn't. If there's no verb, stop there. That's false guilt. Don't argue with it. Name it, and carry on with your day.
If there is a verb, ask one more question. “What would repair it?”
This second question matters, because "I said no" has a verb in it, and that's where a lot of us get stuck. A verb only counts if it broke something. A promise. Somebody's trust. Saying "no" to an invitation didn't break anything. And if the only thing that would make the guilt go away is taking the "no" back, then it was never guilt about something you did wrong. It was guilt about somebody else's feelings.
Here's how that went on my morning with no voice. "I feel guilty because I cancelled the class." There's a verb. So what would repair it?
“Not being ill” would repair it, but that was out of my hands. I could have taught the whole class in a whisper I guess, but that probably wouldn't have helped anybody.
So the end result of my analysis was: there was nothing I'd done wrong. I'd told everyone early, and I'd rescheduled the class.
One caveat: Sometimes there is something real in there, perhaps in how we said the "no". My habit is to go quiet and leave a message unanswered for a fortnight. That one's real. So the repair is "I'm sorry I went quiet on you, that wasn't fair." We can apologise for the disappearing, we don’t need to apologise for the "no".
Why it works: guilt arrives as a mood, and a mood is impossible to check. One sentence with a verb in it turns the mood into something specific enough to answer.
Tool 2. Make the second answer shorter.
Very often, the other person asks again. Usually nicely. "Are you sure?" or "Oh, go on, it will be fun" or "If you change your mind..." It's like the friend who offers you a drink again, right after you've said you're not drinking. (I've been that friend too by the way, so no judgement!)
That “second ask” is where my "no" usually falls over. I hear it and think, "oh no, they're disappointed, I need to explain myself." So I write a whole paragraph, with reasons in it, and apologies, and a suggestion for another date that I also don't want. And then I feel worse.
So here's the rule. The second answer is shorter than the first. Never longer. If your first "no" was two sentences, your second “no” is one sentence. "Thanks, it's still a no, but I hope you have a great time." Done.
And notice that "if you change your mind" isn't a question. Nobody has asked you anything. You're allowed to let it sit there.
Why it works: the longer answer is where we start defending ourselves. And the minute we're defending a "no", we've turned it back into an application and handed it in again, hoping this time somebody approves it.
Tool 3. When the heavy feeling stays.
I want to be straight about this. Naming false guilt doesn't make the feeling disappear. Knowing it's false doesn't switch it off. What changes is that the guilty feeling doesn't get to make the decision any more.
So say you've turned down the invitation. You've run the sentence, there's nothing to repair, and at nine that evening your chest is still tight.
Don't argue with the tightness. Notice where it is. Chest, stomach, throat. Put a hand there, if that feels okay. Take a slow breath in, and a long, slow breath out.
Then say one more sentence. Not to the other person. To the younger you, the little one who took the guilt on in the first place.
"You didn't do anything wrong."
Why it works: often the heaviness isn't guilt about today. It's grief for a kid who was carrying something that was never theirs to carry. I've had a few cries for little Chibs over the years. A feeling that old doesn't need another argument. It needs somebody to stay with it for a minute.
And if you do the sentence and the breath and the hand on your chest, and it's still a lot, go gently with yourself. Some of this is old enough that it's worth having a therapist alongside you while you look at it. There's no shame in that. I've done it, and I intend to do more.
Where I am with it
I don't always get this right.
There are days when I can't tell whether what I'm feeling is false guilt, or just me being a bit selfish. Because sometimes I am being selfish.
But the more I run the sentence, the easier it gets to hear the real guilt when it turns up. And real guilt is useful. We can do something about real guilt.
It's the rest of it I'm slowly learning to put down.
So here's one for this week.
Is there a "no" you're still carrying around? Run the sentence on it, and see whether there's a verb.
With love,
Chibs 💙
PS. If you'd like to work on this with other people rather than on your own, that's what Tired & Wired is for. It's my small community for people running on empty, and we meet live every week. The first seven days are free if you want a look → https://www.skool.com/chibs
Two meditations for this, one for the day, one for the night
If you've said "no" and you can feel yourself reaching for the phone to soften it, play this one 👇🏾
▶ Watch: Too Much Is Too Much | A Mindful Practice for Boundaries
And if you're lying in bed replaying the conversation, play this one 👇🏾
▶ Watch: The Overstimulated Mind | Vagus Nerve Reset for Deep, Calm Sleep
