Guilt:

Guilt seems to start to show up in our thoughts when we begin to think about life without our loved ones in some way. As we begin to allow thoughts or feelings not caused by or part of our grief to come into our minds, as thoughts and feelings begin to surface on their own that contain any hint of happiness or maybe just any lack of sadness, guilt can rise alongside them. Guilt can then make us feel as if those thoughts and feelings are somehow wrong, bad and/or possibly a betrayal of our love, our memories, our grief and our loved ones.

Guilt can also rise within us as we look back at the past, as we start to self-evaluate and look at thoughts, words or actions from our lives with our loved ones. Guilt can be there as we begin and continue to re-live and re-think parts of our lives together that we might have regrets about. 

Guilt: is a feeling of having done something wrong or having failed in some obligation: 

Looking back on it from my current perspective, it is fairly easy to see why we might feel guilt in all those situations. At the time however, the guilt just seemed to show up. It was often such a powerful feeling, especially when it first began to happen, that I don’t remember stopping to deal with the why’s of it.

I remember the first time I found myself dancing alone in the kitchen while I was making dinner. I also had a smile on my face! I must have actually had a very early happy moment, or I somehow drifted free of grief for a bit. 

However it happened, there I was dancing, when I suddenly realized what I was doing and then felt intensely guilty and almost shameful that I had somehow let myself not be grieving and sad. 

I’m sure many of you have had similar situations and similar feelings associated with an all-of-a-sudden realization that we were not actively sad and full of grief and we were doing something that indicted happiness or even joy. And then the guilt came to visit. 

Some (endless) questions to consider about guilt for us to talk about:

• What things or types of things make you feel guilty? 
• What emotions does feeling guilty lead you to?
• Why does a moment of happiness or joy make us feel guilty?
• Is it important that we do feel guilty if we feel happy or some other emotion that isn’t sadness and grief?
• Do we need to feel guilty about not grieving all the time? Why or why not?
• Is it a betrayal if we feel something other than grief and sadness? Why or why not?
• Can we or should we try to learn to not feel guilty for not grieving all the time?
• How might we do that?

• Why does thinking about something potentially enjoyable like going out with some friends trigger our guilt? 
• What if we do go out and have some fun?
• What if we want to go out with just one person and feel guilty for wanting to do that?
• How do we navigate that?

• How long will we continue to feel guilt?
• How long do we need to feel guilt?

• What does the guilt that we feel about a real or a perceived wrong or failure in the past mean?
• Does the guilt we feel in our grief make us sad, or feel shame or anger or multiple things at the same time or…?
• How do we deal with the guilt when we feel it? 
• What can we do to learn to understand the feelings of guilt we get as we begin to find healing? 
• Is it possible that much of the guilt we feel is caused by our grief and is a product of our grieving? 

• Is it ok to come to see that we really might have nothing to be guilty about and that it’s ok to let our thoughts and emotions move away from grief and sadness without it being a betrayal of our love? Is that true?
• Can we see that if what we are feeling is about something in the past, that we can learn to accept it for what it was knowing there isn’t anything we can do about it now? 
• Can we learn to not beat ourselves up about something from the past or to not become guilty or angry about it? 
• Can we find forgiveness within ourselves for real or supposed failures in the past and let them go?

• What do we do if guilt makes us angry? 
• What do we do if we get angry because some thought or action triggered our guilt and our grief?
• What can we do to address the anger we feel because of guilt and ultimately the causes of the guilt and anger? 
• How can we find ways to not become angry, especially if it’s a grief reaction to guilt in some way?
• Others???

Anger:

Not everyone feels or expresses anger in grief. Not everyone has issues with anger while they are grieving. 

But, I have heard people talking about anger at many Support Group meetings. I’m guessing that it is probably there at some level, at some time, in most of us. And we probably really do have some things to feel angry about considering what has happened to our lives and our loved ones.

Things I’ve heard about anger:

There can often be a lot of lack of control involved in bereavement and lots of unresolved questions we may be asking like: Why, why me, why now, how come,  why is this is so unfair, why did this happen, why did you let this happen, how am I going to go on, why did you leave me here alone, how can I deal with all this by myself, why did you say that, why didn’t you understand and many other questions like these. 

Not having answers to these types of questions can easily make us angry. 

In addition, anger can come from guilt for thoughts or actions we have had in the past, And we can also become angry because we feel guilty…

We can find ourselves being angry about things happening that were outside our plans, outside our control, and certainly outside our ability to change or effect, particularly what happened to our loved ones.

Some people have talked about being angry out of fear of what the future had to bring and how they would handle it alone. How could they make good decisions without having the shared decision making process they had grown to depend on with their loved one? Some have expressed anxiety and anger about how they would be financially impacted, how could they continue to live at a level close to what they were used to or needed to without having their spouses income available? I’ve heard people talk about being angry with God for all the changes and losses in their lives.

Some people have said that they are angry with their loved ones for leaving them alone, for leaving them to do so many of the things their loved ones used to do or that they did together that they now have to learn to do on their own. The same type of anger was expressed when they were doing some task their loved ones used to do and things went wrong! 

Sometimes our anger may be so strong that it makes us want to verbally or physically act out or even strike out in some way that can release some of our frustration at what has happened to us, to our loved ones and to our lives and futures. 

I think it’s important that if we feel anger that strongly, that we try to learn to recognize the causes of our anger and learn how to control how our anger expresses. We may need to find a way to learn to control it, especially if it becomes directed at others when they may not really be the cause of our anger. We may need to seek professional help to find ways to gain that control if it gets out of hand.

A (shorter) list of questions about anger to talk about: 

• What things have made you angry or are you angry about in your bereavement?
• Are any of the  thoughts or feelings I’ve written about here things that sound familiar to you? 
• How do they make you feel?
• Do any of them make you feel angry now? 
• What are you feeling anger about now if you are feeling it?
• How do you deal with your anger?
• How does your anger express?
• What coping skills, social skills and life skills do you think you might need to learn to deal with your anger, particularly if it gets in the way of your moving forward in your life?