Handling Guilt: I Care, But Not That Much

Heidi Vermeer-Quist talks about ‘false guilt’ and explains her family saying “I care, but not that much”.

There’s a really natural guilt that women struggle with. It seems as though we really feel as though we should be able to do everything, when I think we have a lot of learning around what are our limits, and limits are ok. And sometimes guilt is a good thing, right, like if I do something to really offend or hurt someone, that’s a good thing that I feel a little bit guilty and I would apologize. But there are times where there’s not harmony in the family or there’s not consensus between members of the family, a lot of the time, or within the business, and we feel responsible for that, as opposed to realizing that we play a role in that, we play a part in that and if we’re feeling guilty about something outside of us not being resolved, maybe that’s actually false guilt. That’s a guilt that we need to learn how to let go of. So that would be another, I think, unique challenge for women especially. I don’t see men struggling quite as much. I think they struggle in other ways and sometimes in those ways but maybe not quite as much with this sense of guilt to try to keep everybody happy and keep the harmony. My mother came up with a wonderful expression several years ago and it was also, it included my father, because my father has a lot of wonderful feminine characteristics in that he is very caring and concerned as well, so I always want to be very sensitive that a lot of the women’s issues often do overlay into men’s issues too. But her saying was we care, but not that much. Meaning that we care, we care about everyone here, but we don’t care that much that we can control it, that it is our responsibility to make sure that other people understand or that a certain outcome is achieved because we have to learn to let go, so we care, but not that much and to personalize it, I care, but not that much.