Why Highly Sensitive People Feel So Much Guilt and How to Stop Getting Caught in It

 By the end of this episode, you’ll see why highly sensitive people often carry guilt even when they haven’t done anything wrong, and how your experience can start to soften when you understand what’s really happening underneath it. In this episode, you’ll discover why highly sensitive people can feel guilty even in situations where they haven’t actually done anything wrong.

What your mind starts doing when you feel responsible for other people’s feelings, reactions, and disappointment, and how guilt can begin to loosen when you stop automatically treating it as proof that you’ve failed someone. This is an edition of Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom.

One of the most common ways that stress shows up for highly sensitive people is guilt. It– we feel guilty when we don’t do something, we feel guilty when we do something, and so guilt becomes, for many highly sensitive people, a kind of go-to stress reaction. Now, let’s be clear. It’s not a part of being highly sensitive.

You can be highly sensitive without guilt, but it is a very common stress pattern for highly sensitive people I was talking to one of my clients recently about a situation where her mother was causing a feeling of guilt for her. And the situation with her mother, who lives with them, is that she would not take responsibility for anything.

And they’re renovating the house and redoing her room, and she wanted to ask her opinion about the layout of the new room. And her mother wouldn’t give anything. She was just like, “Oh, whatever. It’s fine.” Just wouldn’t commit, wouldn’t share her opinion, wouldn’t tell her what she really wanted. And often she does this kind of thing, and then later it turns out she does have an opinion.

She just wasn’t willing to share it at the beginning when something could be done about it. So what happened is then for a lot of HSPs, and not– my client’s not the only one, when someone doesn’t take responsibility like this, then we often think that we– it’s our job to take responsibility for them because we want them to be happy and we are not sure what they want.

So we get in this kind of stuck, frustrated place where we’re trying to figure out what they like and what they want, trying to guess, and chances are they’re not gonna be happy anyway. And so this is a beginning of a kind of guilt that can start to happen, like the guilt coming from, “I should make them happy.

It’s my job to make them happy. I want to make them happy.” These kinds of thoughts can lead us to focus so much on them that we start feeling like we’re failing because we really don’t even know what it is that they’re wanting. And at the same time, we don’t wanna be taken advantage of. And so there’s a sense of injustice there and some anger that can start to pop up.

And then you can feel guilty about feeling angry ’cause there’s another belief that I shouldn’t feel angry So guilt often comes, in my experience, from a fear of making other people unhappy, whether that’s not doing what they wanted or maybe there was some rule that they uphold and you want to go against it and so you feel guilty because they will be unhappy or there’s gonna be some repercussion.

It’s like suffering in advance in a way. But what I find helpful with guilt is to think of it as a kind of alarm clock. It’s Stress is always an alarm clock. No matter what kind of stress you have, it’s an alarm clock saying, “Hey, something’s going on. You’re caught in some kind of a loop here and you should check it out.”

Just much like the warning light on a car just says check the tire pressure or something like that. So guilt is an alarm clock letting you know that you’re focusing too much on other people. You’re focusing too much on what they’re wanting or you’re trying to make them happy and not knowing how or you’re trying to make y- you think you should be making them happy but you don’t want to.

Any of these things can create guilt and the bottom line is the attention is too much on them. Now, as HSPs, we naturally put our attention on other people because we are empathetic and we care about other people and so that’s why this particular stress pattern shows up so often for highly sensitive people.

We don’t like others to be upset in any way because as highly sensitive people upset in our environment affects us deeply. We feel upset from others. We’re rocked by that and so we do everything we can to avoid it. But as in our attempts to avoid it, we can end up creating something that’s just as toxic, which is guilt The other reason why HSPs tend to fall into this particular stress pattern is that we are actually very capable of making other people happy.

We are so aware of others and so empathetic and caring just naturally that it’s easy for us to even see what their needs are and to give them what they’re wanting, sometimes without them even knowing that they wanted it. And this is a– this is fine. There’s nothing wrong with this. This is actually our gift in a way.

But it can be used as a coping mechanism, and all coping mes- mechanisms are based always on inherent skills. So we take our best skills, which is listening, empathy, creative problem-solving and we– and then we use that to try to make the other person happy and then we end up getting way off into their business, too much focused on them to the point where we’re trying actually to manipulate them.

We’re trying to manipulate the situation to prevent some kind of upset. And so this can become so internalized that we start to think we should always do this, and that can lead to guilt anytime we decide not to, when we decide to step out of that particular coping pattern So the core dynamic is the moment someone else becomes uncomfortable, the HSP mind naturally begins monitoring and interpreting and adjusting and problem-solving.

And all of this is good, except when it becomes stressed, then it starts going into more reactions, self-blame, for example. And so the stressed HSP mind starts scanning for what you did wrong, and it starts reviewing, “Did I say something wrong? Was my tone off? Should I have handled that differently?

Did I hurt them?” Even before you know whether you actually caused them any harm, or in some cases, you’re not even causing them harm. You’re just thinking you might be causing them harm. And it might not even be harm. It might just be you’re gonna cause them some discomfort. You– They’re gonna be a little discomfort or complaining a little bit and so did I do something wrong to not prevent that?

See how the mind starts taking on responsibility that isn’t ours? We start trying to control it so that we can have this peaceful experience, but in the end, we’re actually not having a peaceful experience So then we start trying to restore the emotional equilibrium, and so we’re trying to fix and soothe and explain and reassure and repair sometimes in advance, even before something has even gone wrong.

And it’s not that it’s a bad thing to be repairing and soothing. It’s just that this can become something that leads us so far away from ourselves that we’re unable and not free to take care of ourselves and to interact with somebody in a balanced way. There’s fear behind this

And so to continue along this line, what happens is that the mind starts treating their emotions as information about you. And this is huge. Instead of they’re having an experience, it becomes, “This is something about me. I should have prevented this. I should have seen this. I should have known. I should have set up the question better so that she would have an- answered in a way that would have given me what I was hoping for.”

We put all that responsibility on ourselves. And then there’s the disappointment that, that comes, and it’s “This is my failure. I failed.” And so the frustration of them not cooperating or them being upset in some way is now my mistake. And so we end up taking on more responsibility than is actually ours to hold And then we overinterpret emotional cues.

For example, just because we’re sensitive, we’ll naturally pick up on facial expressions and pauses and tone changes and energy shifts, and then we start building meaning around them because we build meaning about everything as highly sensitive people. And sometimes we do this accurately, and sometimes we don’t do it accurately because of the bias of stress that we have here.

So you can see how it starts to snowball, and we can go on to mentally rehearsing and replaying, and we can end up self-adjusting to prevent future guilt. And so we end up getting it caught in a loop of people pleasing, sometimes even when the people don’t want to be pleased. We’re doing it because we don’t want or we feel like we can’t handle their upset.

And so the mind learns, “Don’t upset people. Stay easy. Anticipate reactions. Avoid disappointing others.” And then gradually, your authenticity can start to narrow, and your ability to express yourself can start to tighten because you’re always on guard to make sure that you’re easy for everyone else and that you’re anticipating what they need and that you’re not upsetting or disappointing others.

So this is a stress reaction. This, again, is– it’s m- it happens to us as highly sensitive people because our strength is being aware of others, noticing the subtlety, caring, and processing things deeply. But that’s not what’s causing this. This is a coping mechanism. This is a stress reaction. This is something that causes me to derail in a way, and that’s not a part of the natural sensitivity.

It’s what happens when sensitivity gets stressed. And this is really important to, to see the difference here. So we start losing track of boundaries. This is huge. The mind stops distinguishing between empathy, which is a natural part of being highly sensitive, and responsibility These start to meld together and you start to think that, “Oh, because I see somebody’s upset, then it’s my responsibility to do something about it.”

And these are not necessarily the same thing, and they’re not… and it’s not necessarily true. You can care deeply without being responsible for another person’s emotional process. In a way, I’ve found over the years that taking on someone else’s emotional process, like basically helping them around it or trying to prevent them from being upset, in a way, it’s very subtly disrespectful to that person, and it’s based out of fear on my side that I can’t handle it if they’re upset.

What I’ve found is that when I allow the other person to have their emotions, then it’s very freeing for them and for me, and I often find that it’s not as bad as what I thought it would be. So this is something that is really worth explor- exploring the difference between empathy and responsibility And then so it can continue where the m- the stressed mind can start equating guilt with goodness.

It becomes like a an institution inside our minds that if I feel guilty, it means I care. We can really start believing that, and good people feel bad when other people are upset. This is a kind of belief system based around a stressful pattern, and there are a lot of people that believe it, so we can get support from others as well.

But it means that, that guilt starts becoming morally reinforced, and now it becomes harder to get out of that trap because now we have this belief system around it supporting it. And so this leads to trying to control outcomes emotionally. And so you start trying to manage the behavior around you to avoid people’s disapproval and to prevent their disappointment and to maintain emotional smoothness.

And so this is a kind of fear-based manipulation where we’re pr- trying to prevent an emotional rupture. And this is stress. This is stress at work. When the mind gets stressed, it becomes smaller, and then it becomes more fearful, and then it reacts instead of thinking more broadly. And it causes this kind of trap, which often ends in guilt and many other kinds of problems.

So over time, this can create hypervigilance. It can create self-monitoring. It can create exhaustion. It can create suppression big time. It can create a fear of being honest, and it cr- it can also create chronic tension because the nervous system is always managing this emotional impact So underneath all of this are some strong underlying beliefs.

And what I love to do with stress in many different situations is to find what the beliefs are that are connected to that feeling of stress. There’s always a connection. There’s always a thought that goes with the feeling. If you can identify what that stressful thought is and then question that thought, then it can start to loosen that belief system, and you can start to get out of the trap.

My favorite way of doing this is a simple process called the work of Byron Katie. I’ve been doing it for many years, and I work many times with clients using this process, and it’s a simple way of identifying a stressful thought connected to an emotion and then questioning it. So what are the kinds of thoughts that can be connected here to this feeling of guilt?

If someone feels bad, I may have caused it. Okay? So that’s worth questioning. Is it really true? Is it really true that you caused it? Or I should prevent emotional discomfort. It’s a great one to question. Or other people’s emotions say something about me. Often, I believe personally that I’m a failure when someone’s emotions erupt or it’s not calm, calm the way I was hoping it would be.

Or being good means not disappointing people. Gosh, that’s a big one. And so when you’re questioning underlying beliefs, look at specific situations, specific time where you thought being good meant not disappointing people, and look at what was going on there, and it can help in the questioning process.

Or conflict means that I’ve done something wrong. It’s like I’m a failure if I– if something erupted in my environment So the important distinction here is the difference between empathy, which is caring about others, which is a beautiful thing, which is something that we as highly sensitive people are especially good at, as opposed to emotional responsibility, where we take on the job of maintaining someone else’s balance or maintaining the environmental balance.

And that’s not actually our job most of the time. It’s like you’re treating other people’s emotions like weather that you’re responsible for controlling. If someone becomes upset, you feel pressure to clear the storm, to stabilize the atmosphere, or to restore emotional sunshine. But emotions are weather systems moving through human beings, and they’re not always yours to stop.

So guilt comes often not after wrongdoing, but after someone else’s discomfort. And this is a big dis– big distinction. Guilt is not necessarily a sign that I’ve done something wrong. It’s a sign that I’ve focused too much on the other person and have gotten too distraught or worried about their discomfort, and now I’m feeling guilt.

So I’m believing that it’s my responsibility to make sure they don’t feel any discomfort, and that’s why I think I’m doing something wrong by not preventing that, even though it was never my responsibility in the first place

So when this starts to shift, you can stay in your own business guilt-free. So going back to my client, this mother who wouldn’t take responsibility becomes no problem. Okay, I asked her, I did my duty and she didn’t want to offer any preferences. So now I’m free to think about what would be the best way to configure this room.

Maybe I’ll think about it universally, considering any different kind of people that could move into this room. What would be the best place to put the outlets? What would be the best place to put the TV or the closets? And it just becomes very simple. There’s no anger because I’m no longer trying to extract what she wants.

I’m just… I asked, she didn’t say, and I move on, no problem. No guilt that I should extract fro- that from her. No guilt that it’s my responsibility if she gets angry later. It’s not my problem. I did what I needed to do. I was responsible. And there’s no anger, so there’s no guilt for having anger either. So you can see how clean it can be when you question these thoughts, when you start to separate caring and being empathetic from taking on emotional responsibility that wasn’t yours.

When you take on emotional responsibility that wasn’t yours, first of all, you can’t control it very well, and so you’re gonna fail quite frequently, and then you’re gonna feel guilty because you failed. So sidestep the whole thing and get clearer on the difference between what is actually your responsibility and what you’re making your responsibility in order to prevent f- some kind of feeling of somebody being upset either now or in the future.

So the feeling I’m left with today is that guilt is an alarm clock letting you know when you’re paying too much attention to what others think and what others want or what others need. It’s a reminder to notice where you’re taking on more responsibility than is actually yours, and to shift back to the simpler job at hand In this episode, we looked at why highly sensitive people can feel guilty even in situations where they haven’t actually done anything wrong.

And often we believe that it’s our job to manage the experiences of others, and then we judge ourselves as doing something wrong when we can’t. And we looked at what your mind starts doing when you feel responsible for other people’s feelings, reactions, or disappointment, and we found that it starts to feel guilty and resentful even at the same time, and it starts taking it personally.

And so we start thinking we’ve actually done something wrong because we weren’t able to control the situation And finally, we looked at how guilt can begin to loosen when you stop automatically treating it as proof that you’ve failed someone. And one very practical way to do that is to question the thoughts that uphold guilt, thoughts like being good means not disappointing people.