Going on a Guilt Trip? Who’s Your Travel Agent?
We ALL have them: guilt feelings! They center around pretty much the same old things for everyone, even as alcoholics. Guilt about parents, guilt about parenting, guilt about things we’ve done (or not done), guilt about not doing enough (at work, at home, for someone, etc.), guilt about our failings, and so on and so on and so on.
We often finding ourselves saying things like, “S/he sends me on a guilt trip…” But, really. WHO sends you on that guilt trip? Your mother about all you didn’t do right? Your kids about your failure as a parent? Your boss for work less than stellar by his/her standards? Your husband? Brother? Friend? Neighbor? The bottom line is, we are our OWN guilt trip travel agent! WE listen to them, and WE decide to go on that trip. WE decide all the time to listen to the stuff that ‘sends us on a guilt trip.” But, in truth, we go searching for those trips ourselves when we allow ourselves to be convinced to go.
So. That means we can also decide NOT to go searching for those destinations by not being around those who seek to send us. If we cannot avoid them, we can choose not to listen, or at least not to be sold on the trip. EVERYBODY is guilty of SOMETHING. But we don’t have to exhaust ourselves by continually travelling those roads. We can go down new roads to new destinations; take detours off the old, too-traveled paths. We must consider new destinations of our own choosing, and then bravely step into the mode of travel that will take us there.