Do feelings of self-doubt hold you back? Do you struggle with feelings of guilt because of something you regret doing or not doing? Does unworthiness or shame keep you stuck? I’ve found that common issues like these are at the root of the deep pain and suffering that keeps many people stuck or going in circles. Yet there is a path forward that can help you release guilt, self-doubt, and shame to discover the deep, healing power of inner freedom and self-love. Today, we’re joined by Blake D. Bauer, a world-renowned teacher, speaker, and best-selling author who will guide us into the realm of discovering the deep, lasting healing you deserve.

Topics discussed include self-worth, self-doubt, self-love, self-care, soul, guilt, shame, blame, manipulation, relationships, family, children, love, intergenerational patterns, self-betrayal, existential guilt, worthiness, humility, learning, thinking errors, alignment, values, priorities, self-needs, attunement, and living in alignment.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Details: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). As applicable, additional resources may be provided in the show notes.

Non-Emergency Online Mental Health Information: https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/ and https://odphp.health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Blake D. Bauer:

Website: https://www.dralamountain.org/teacher/blake-d-bauer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blakedbauer/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlakeBauer1/, https://www.facebook.com/YouWereNotBornToSuffer.by.BlakeDBauer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blake-d-bauer/

Book by Blake D. Bauer:

You Were Not Born to Suffer: Overcome Fear, Insecurity and Depression and Love Yourself Back to Happiness, Confidence and Peace

—

Listen to the podcast here

RESET YOUR LIFE: Healing Self-Doubt, Guilt, and Shame

How to Heal Self-Doubt, Guilt, and Shame

Addressing The Root Of Deep Guilt And Suffering

Do feelings of self-doubt hold you back? Do you struggle with feelings of guilt because of something you regret doing or not doing? I found that common issues like these are at the root of the deep pain and suffering that keeps many people stuck or going in circles. Yet, there is a path forward that can help you release guilt, self-doubt and shame to discover the deep healing power of inner freedom and self-love. In this episode, we’re joined by a world-renowned teacher, speaker and bestselling author who will guide us into the realm of deep lasting healing, the healing that you deserve.

In this episode, we’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “I don’t know if you could help me with this, but I am giving it a try. Despite a few years of therapy, I still can’t get over things I’ve done in the past. I don’t want to be specific, but I regret some of the things I did as a parent, daughter and wife. Sometimes the guilt goes away just for a while but then it comes back like a dark cloud. I’ve done my apologies but I can’t stop blaming myself for the past. Can you address this?” With that question as the focus of this episode. I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly and this is Imperfect Love. Please note, as this episode contains sensitive information, reader discretion is advised.

I am delighted to be joined by a very special guest Blake D. Bauer. Blake is a world-renowned teacher and speaker. He is also the author of the bestselling book, You Were Not Born To Suffer. Welcome to the show, Blake. I’m so excited for our conversation.

Carla, thank you. I am, too, very much so.

I’m very excited. Before we launch into this very poignant question, one that just pulls me into it. It resonates with me. I’m wondering if you would share with our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you.

What a loaded question. Thank you. I would say, it’s hard to articulate because we have a self-perception and then there’s also the perception of others and how other people experience us. I like to think that I show up in the world with a lot of presents, a lot of kindness and a lot of love for the people that I interact with. That comes from a lot of years of deep pain and suffering that have humbled me. This is relevant to the question that your beautiful reader has submitted.

I try to stay connected to the awareness that life is a miracle and every moment of every day is a miracle. Even in that miracle world, carrying this burden, our own unique form of suffering, hope and fear. Since I am able to move through most of my day with that in my consciousness and my awareness, that I get to interact with life in a way that it’s hard to put into words, but for me is a blessing. It’s a beautiful personal experience and journey while I’m here.

Thank you for that beautiful, grounding, and human beginning to this interview. I can feel that about you. I feel that you are very grounded and humble. Also, very loving and kind. As you say in such a beautiful way, for most of us, I know for me, it’s a matter of being a work in constant progress. Every day, we have these choices that we make to either feed love and light or feed darkness or unkindness.

Those are our choices and we often forget. I’m not saying it’s that simple for someone on the journey. There are times that we just get pulled down and we feel that deep cool but also so much of it is a matter of being present and making that next wise baby step choice. Thank you. Could you talk just a little bit about the work you do so that our readers who may not be aware of your amazing presence, they can feel some connection to how you work in the world.

Personal Journey Through Addiction And Self-Discovery

Thank you, Carla. I’ll start with how I got started so that everybody has a sense where this comes from. As a teenager, I was addicted to drugs and alcohol. That became my coping mechanism for my own trauma and the pain that I experienced growing up. Around the age of seventeen, I basically sabotaged everything that I cared about, loved and identified with. I was coming home from a party when I was seventeen. I was on a bunch of Xanax, cannabis and liquor and I got to a freight train in the middle of the night. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I was delirious.

I put my car in park, thankfully and I put my head back and fell asleep on the road in front of the guard rails of the train tracks. I woke up to police knocking on the window and I was confused and disoriented. I have forgotten what had happened. I rolled down my window and I said, “Excuse me, officer. Was I driving too slow?” He said, “Son, you’ve been partying for an hour with the car running and the lights on. We got a call from this house over here.” It was about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. I had done this all the time.

I had a bit of an ego. I was arrogant and thought I was invincible. In high school, I was an athlete and had become a top athlete. I was co-captain of the varsity football team with two of my closest friends. We all had offers to play college football. Halfway through senior year of high school, my coach found out about this DUI, and the night I got arrested. He kicked me off the football team and I lost all my offers to play college football. That was the moment that took me out at the knees, humbled me and brought me to the ground.

I went from being a young, stupid and arrogant young man that was just running from his pain and seeking relief self destructively to a very tortured, ashamed, guilty soul. This is very relevant to the topic of this conversation. I had no idea who I was anymore because I had completely blown up my identity and who I thought I was. I shamed myself in the community. I didn’t know how to ask for help and was suffering deeply. At eighteen, I had no idea what to do with my life. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, or what I wanted to study or how I wanted to make a living.

I moved forward out of high school suffering deeply from waking up every morning, tortured mentally and emotionally and then also having no idea what the purpose of my life was. This then became the catalyst for what has been over two decades now of my life’s work helping people. Which was from eighteen from the most desperate dark place asking, “How do I heal myself? How do I free myself from suffering? What is the purpose of life?” In particular, what is my life purpose? That put me on a quest where I ended up going to five different universities.

I studied all the sciences and then I got into Chinese medicine, acupuncture and Oriental medicine. I was very hungry to understand the truth about the universe, energy, health, life and philosophy and how we live well, how we have healthy love in our life, how we feel purpose and meaning when we wake up every day. That became my life’s work and my path. Not out of vanity or out of a hobby but out of necessity. I always say it was, heal or die for me.

I was hungry looking for answers. Eventually, I had some clarity where I realized that all this money I’d spent, time I had spent, universities I’d gone to, gurus I had sought out, experts I had had sessions and gone to workshops and trainings with was me, was really me just looking for love and learning how to love myself. I could see scientifically, biologically how disease grows in the body and the mind as a result of us never learning how to love ourselves as children.

When I had this clarity, I wanted to tell everybody as loudly as I could, and I was young and naive and that’s when I started to try and get published, which was a whole journey in and of itself. I’ve spent the last two decades sharing with people what I have found to be the most effective tools to having an optimal kind, healthy, and loving relationship to my mind, my thoughts, my heart, my emotions, my body, my needs, my energy, and my sense of purpose on the planet.

I have a formal training and a lot of tools and techniques, but all of this comes from my own deep suffering and search for purpose and then feeling blessed to find answers that work. That are not just woo-woo or clichés where you say, “You should love yourself. You should go and do this well.” How do I do that? That’s what we’re going to dive into here.

Thank you again for the exquisite background that allows us to get a sense of how you have journeyed to where you are. Also, that you walk your talk and that you’ve used a lot of, let’s say discernment to embrace strategies that you find from a real-life vantage point that work. Thank you. I’m curious. When you talk about that connection of creating that connection to yourself. Why do you think for many people, that is so elusive?

Let me restate that in a way. Many people come out of addiction, come out of some life experience and they seem to get well. They’re out there. They’re operating and doing all the right things. On an internal level, that sense of being worthless, flawed, guilty, and blaming is still running the show underneath. Even though they’re external successful or coping well, often that deep unhealed wound is masked by the external success. Whatever that is. it’s still roiling around inside. This is what I found in my clinical work. That’s what I’m coming from. What is bad about it from your perspective?

The Concept Of Existential Guilt As Homesickness

We’re going to go right to the bottom of the rabbit hole. Before we do, at a high level, I’m sure you’ve heard this saying, which I love. Which is, “All sickness is homesickness.” We’ve spent so much time away from our own soul or our own inner truth. I love that because, to me, it’s very practical. It helps people to understand that all sickness is home sickness. It’s like, why don’t I feel at home in myself? Why do I keep having restlessness? Why do I keep feeling the guilt? Why do I keep feeling unworthiness?

Basically, if we go down to the bottom of the rabbit hole and we can unpack this to whatever degree, Carla, that you want to. I have found in myself and in every human that I have interacted with or worked with, we all carry a deep existential guilt for existing. This is the root cause and unworthiness of even being here. This is so important to unpack. I call this unspoken truth. We’re scared to go here because of what it brings up. We’re talking about self-love and healing and the idea of selfishness. We’re all in denial about our true nature.

Even if we’re good people, we like to tell a story about how we’re very selfless and we’re very giving. That can be true but underneath that, I believe that all human beings are intrinsically designed to be selfish. All of nature is intrinsically designed to be selfish. There’s nothing wrong with it or bad about it or shameful about it. We have only experienced what I call unhealthy selfishness as opposed to the healthy manifestation of selfishness. Which is healthy self-love and healthy self-care. That’s not vanity. That’s not narcissism. That’s knowing how to not hurt yourself with your thoughts and your habits from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed.

I often look at nature and I love the metaphor of an apple tree. If you think about an apple tree, it selfishly takes what it needs from the earth, the atmosphere and from the Sun. Since it gets its needs met and it preserves itself and its life. It then grows into this strong, abundant source of sustenance for everyone and everything around it giving oxygen, apples, shelter, wood. It is an abundant source of benefit to everything and everyone around it because it gets its needs met. The reason I bring up selfishness is because we are all born to imperfect messy humans that are selfish and doing their best.

Unpacking Intergenerational Trauma And Unworthiness

All of us, if we think back to our parents, this guilt for existing goes back to the fact that we’re born to people who have not yet learned how to love and heal themselves deeply. They’re carrying that same guilt wound, that same unworthiness wound that’s being passed down from generation to generation and it’s not being addressed. That’s why I find that most of us continue on this cyclical self-sabotage or in Buddhism, there’s a phrase called the Hungry Ghost. It’s like there’s someone kind of there, but they’re like a ghost. They’re not fully there. They’re always hungry and nothing’s ever enough. We’re all trying to be more, do more, and have more thinking that that is going to fill the hole.

The only thing that’s going to fill the hole is slowing down fully enough and deepening our presence and our awareness enough to untie this core wound. Which is that, we have this guilt for being here, for being alive. It’s tied up to this feeling of, I don’t even feel worthy of being alive. That’s because of the energy, the stress, and the dysfunction of the environment that we grew up around. That becomes guilt for having feelings. Most people feel guilty or ashamed for having emotions. It’s like if I said to you, Carla, “Am I a bad person because I have feelings? Am I a bad person because I have needs?”

When you put it in this perspective, no. We all walk around feeling guilty and ashamed just for having feelings and needs. I was always interested in understanding the root of my suffering and your suffering. What I found at the bottom of this hole is that we have this guilt for existing and this feeling of unworthiness because of the suffering that our primary caregivers were going through around our conception, birth, and in our early years. As little kids, we take everything personally because we don’t know better.

We’re not able to coach ourselves and say, “Mom and Dad are just struggling or work is stressful or their marriage isn’t going that well or mom was abandoned by dad or dad was abandoned by mom.” We can’t rationalize this. We think, “There must be something wrong with me. I must be a problem or a burden. I must be worthy of love because mom’s always upset or dad’s always reactive or one of them is not there or I’m not getting the loving energy that I need.” This is the root.

The healing of it becomes this ownership of, “I have a right to exist. Whether I chose my parents before I was born or if I believe there’s no way in heck I would ever choose my parents or I have no idea how I got here. I was just an accident.” We, at some point, have to take 100% responsibility. Even if it’s not our fault, it becomes our responsibility, which is to say, “I have a right to exist because I’m here. Even if I was called to an accident, I still have a right to be here. Since I have a right to be here and I’m here, I also have a right to my feelings. I have a right to my needs, my preferences and my sense of purpose and calling. It’s up to me now to say it matters. I can’t wait on anybody or anything anymore to give me permission and to say it matters.”

Once you learn how to say, you matter, your existence, my feelings, my needs, my sense of purpose and calling, living in integrity, within alignment with my soul or my essence on a daily basis. Living in alignment with who you are, then over time heals and dissolves the guilt. It heals and dissolves the shame and the unworthiness when you finally learn how to treat yourself as worthy. That’s the secret. It’s learning how to treat yourself as worthy and it takes practice. For you and I, it’s decades of living in a certain way.

I’m sure for any of the readers, if you’ve been conditioning yourself to live in a certain way for 3 decades or 4 decades or 5 decades or 6 decades, you have to have some perspective. It’s going to take a little time to override the programming in your nervous system, your brain and your cells. If you have accurate information, the accurate information can guide you like a treasure map to the treasure. Half the battle is finding accurate information. There’s a lot of opinions on this stuff out there and there’s a lot of bad advice. Unfortunately, when you follow bad advice, you don’t find the treasure.

Thank you so much for that very rich and detailed explanation. I agree with you wholeheartedly. In my work with people, I consistently remind them of what you are saying. That we become who we are through decades. Until we have that wake up call that we want to do it differently that we want to. If that comes at 30 decades, 20 decades or 50 decades, whatever it might be, we have all of those decades of hardwired patterns, plus the intergenerational ones that you were talking about.

We want to fix that in 2 sessions or 3 sessions and one month or even a year of weekly sessions. Depending upon the nature of what you’ve experienced and how you’ve been programmed or if you have been through some trauma. It can be a difficult and slow process. This is a question and a statement all in one. Going back to my own life and how much work I had to put in on a personal level before I even felt like I could be a competent psychologist. I found that all the work that I had to do that I wanted to do to become the person I wanted to be. That was a significant amount of work. It doesn’t mean it’s ever done.

I wake up each day and I always find something to work on. I know, on my walk, I was thinking of something. I said, “I don’t want to think about that. I’d rather think about something or go in a direction with that thought that infuses me with love.” When we have that awareness, we never become perfect. It is a journey of not only programming our brains but, as you said.

This intergenerational belief that we should feel guilty for being here. We should feel guilty for taking up space. I’m pivoting to the reader’s question. When we let go of that, how can this reader use that to forgive herself for human mistakes that maybe were intentional? If they were mistakes, they weren’t intentional. How can she shift to move forward in palpable ways?

Practical Strategies For Forgiving Yourself And Others

It’s such an important and loaded question to unpack. I’ll start on because there’s multiple strategies that can help than multiple perspectives. You mentioned that she said she has made amends, which is great. For other readers, I find that writing letters, for example, to people that we have done harm to and apologizing and expressing everything that we want them to understand can be very healing. For anybody who’s reading, if you haven’t done this yet.

Write letters to these important people in your life. Say I’m sorry and own whatever pain you’ve caused or created. Also, try to help them understand what you now know it was coming from or where it was coming from inside of you. It’s very healing. Writing a letter to yourself. I didn’t hear that mention, for example, we can write a letter to ourselves and say, “Dear, Blake or Dear Carla.” As a third party and objective party, I see, “This is why I did this. I’m so sorry that I did this to you. I’m so sorry that I created this pain for you.” Connecting to your inner child can be very healing. Writing a letter to say little to you. Let’s say the guest is Natalie, so little Natalie.

“Little Natalie, I’m sorry that you didn’t know this. I’m sorry you believed that this was the strategy that was going to help you. I’m sorry that you never felt safe to talk about what you needed to talk about.” Connecting to your inner child is very healing, if this is not something that you’ve done. One other theme that I hear that’s important is these lessons are meant to humble us. I love the saying from Pema Chödrön, that, “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches you.” Everything that you’re meant to learn from it. I would say that the guilt is still there for a reason.

Maybe shifting the resistance to the guilt and saying something like, “Thank you for this guilt, for teaching me to be the best version of myself or to care about how my words and my behavior impact the people around me.” The truth is, I know a lot of people operate in a vacuum. They’re not aware of how their words and their deeds affect the people around them. Especially the people that we say we love. I would say the guilt is the teacher and the guru.

Honor the guilt because it’s there for a reason. Maybe the lesson hasn’t been fully digested and embodied yet. This brings me to another thing that I find is important. I find that one of the biggest blocks and this is on point with the topic of your show, in general, this idea of imperfect love. I find that both for men and for women, one of the things that sabotage us from finding and creating healthy love is that a lot of us walk around with this feeling of being entitled to good love.

I know a lot of men and a lot of women think, “I’m attractive and so I deserve good love or I’m successful and I deserve good love or I’m intelligent and so I deserve good love.” Maybe your parents doted on you so you just believe that you deserve good love. I have found in my own life and observing tens and thousands of people in their life and their love life. We’re only worthy of the love that we give, of the love that we embody.

There’s a reciprocal relationship, a karmic boomerang in relationship to all the humans in our life. If we are not showing up with kindness, presence, care and a balance of this is about me and about you. Not just about me. Also, not just about you. There’s got to be a balance, this reciprocity. The only way to truly feel worthy of healthy love, which is also part of feeling worthy of forgiveness. It’s knowing that you’re showing up in a way where your words and your deeds on a daily basis embody this worthiness.

You’re a magnet for that coming back to you. That makes me think, “Am I forgiving the people around me fully, too?” If I want forgiveness and I want to feel forgiveness, I have to be able to give and grace other people with forgiveness. I would say to this reader. Maybe if you dig around for where you have not forgiven other people, either that might be a place to look.

Maybe you’re still holding on to hurt, anger, resentment or hatred towards someone in your current life or your past life. That becomes an attractor field for the guilt that you’re still experiencing. I want to be able to extend forgiveness to be able to receive forgiveness at the same time. I’m going through all the things that are coming to my consciousness for this.

You’re saying so many things that are rich. I want our reader to be able to embrace the depth and the profound nature of what you are saying. I’m going to recap it and invite you, Blake, to add on. First, that piece when you’re talking about we are only deserving of the love we give. Somebody may think, “That’s not what I learned in school or church. I learned to love regardless of what I’m being given.” I am getting on a deep level of the importance of what you’re saying because true love is action. True love is reciprocity.

When we love in the way we want to be loved and the other person is showing up, not only is that healing. Both people are working that muscle of love or divine energy or whatever you want to call it. If we’re just passively receiving the love all the time, then we’re not learning the joy. That true deep joy of wanting to give to another person. That is very important. The other piece that I wanted to pause on was how you described guilt as being a teacher because many people don’t see it that way.

In my practice, I often talk about guilt and I use a metaphor of saying, “Let’s imagine you shoplifted something. Guilt is intended to come forward,” and have you say, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m going to take what I stole back. I’m going to apologize. I’m going to make amends in some way. I might give a donation to somebody or something, but I’m going to make this right.” We then release the guilt because we have learned from it.

I also think that piece where you’re talking about forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others, which can be related to guilt. We do want to go through our list of resentments, list of people we haven’t forgiven to make sure forgiving people doesn’t mean that we invite them to harm us again. It simply means letting go of that resentment and saying, “I truly and deeply forgive you. I’m not going to hold on to that negative energy anymore. I might keep you 1,000 miles away from me and have a very strong boundary, but I’m not going to hold on to that negative energy.”

When we do this, we create that cycle of forgiving others then, we are allowed to forgive ourselves which is often where that guilt comes from that lack of forgiveness. As you also say, that lack of learning the lesson. I remember in doctoral school and this amazing professor. I was confiding in him something I had done that I regretted and couldn’t heal. It was impossible to heal. It was passed. He looked at me and said, “Carla Marie, who are you not to forgive yourself?”

That sounds pretty simple, but it took me a long time to process it and to realize what he was saying. If I don’t forgive myself, then I am somehow setting myself apart from other people as either better or worse or something. If I allow myself to forgive myself for being human, that is that deeply, humbling rich place of them saying, “I learned my lesson. I won’t do that again. That harm is passed. Now, let me change myself moving forward.” Did I pull that together in the way that you intended, Blake?

Moving Beyond Identification With Roles To True Self

It’s beautiful. This is such an important topic. I have three things coming to mind that I want to highlight for the reader and this is relevant for everybody. What I heard from you is like, who is Carla? Who is Blake? Who is this reader without the guilt? Who am I if I don’t identify with the behavior? Whatever it was I did that created the guilt, it’s probably a part of me that I’ve been identifying with for a long time. What if this is a symptom from life asking you to go beyond the identification you have with the small you that feels guilty for all these various reasons?

Our soul or our spirit or our true self is so much bigger. I believe pure love is one way of expressing it or pure consciousness or pure awareness. I would say to the reader, learning to access, for example, through meditation. The part of you that’s pure consciousness and pure awareness will help you be like, “I’m not the guilt that I identify with.” Whatever your name is. Let’s say Natalie. Natalie is so much bigger, so much more and this one chapter in my life does not have to define my whole future or who I believe that I am.

Identification is a big topic. How do I learn to connect to the bigger awareness, the bigger consciousness, the infinite unconditional love that is the essence of my soul. The action that created the guilt, the habits and patterns that created the guilt are our teaching, like we were talking about, to become love, to become healthy love. That’s the purpose of our soul’s journey here. It’s to awaken and embody pure unconditional love. That’s the teacher like we were saying. To get into the nitty gritty for the reader again. There’s two big things.

My question to her or this person would be, do you often find that the people around you are using guilt to manipulate you because that could be a big problem. Often, we make a mistake and then, the family member, the spouse, the child is then manipulating you based on guilt. It becomes that heart string where you’re easily influenced because you have felt guilty in the past. That’s a slippery slope that’s dangerous. A spouse could hold that over your head for a whole marriage and try to control you. A parent can hold that over your head and try to control you.

A child can hold that over your head and try to control you. The person in that situation has to become aware of things like, “Are the people around me using this? Am I allowing myself to be manipulated because I made a mistake?” If I were in that situation, would any of these parties have never made a mistake? Have they never messed up or hurt me? Why am I not playing that game? If you start to dissect it like, “This is how I would break it down.” You could give yourself permission to live in full integrity and not let the guilt run the show. Let your truth run the show. Your love or your honesty run the show to override the manipulation of the guilt.

That was like a red flag that started to go off in my mind as we were talking. This is the biggest thing. I would say to that person, “Where in your life do you still feel guilty and ashamed?” Not for what you did like what you’re talking about this event. Let’s say I cheated on my husband or I cheated on my spouse. That, to me, is the betrayal of, “I betrayed my partner. I betrayed my children. I betrayed my parents. I’ve let everybody down.” That would be a good example of how this could manifest in someone’s situation.

Maybe let’s say I made a bad investment. I took a million dollars of my family’s money and I put it in a bad investment. I’ve let down everybody. I betrayed my child, my spouse and my parents. These are in my mind. What could be a betrayal on that level that I am carrying that much guilt? I would still say to that person, where in your life are you still not expressing your true feelings 100% about other things because you feel guilty and you feel ashamed? Where are you not acting in integrity, alignment and following your heart because of the guilt and shame?”

I would say that’s the root of the problem. That’s the pattern that’s keeping the problem in place. Keeping it activated because we’re operating from shame and guilt in every other area but we’re saying this is the reason why. I would argue that the woman who asked this question or the man who asked this question, it’s not coming from just the event you think it’s coming from. I would guarantee I can figure out with you where guilt and shame have been driving a lot more of your behavior. Which is, “I feel guilty for having feelings. I am guilty for having needs. I feel guilty for having preferences.”

“Maybe I don’t like being a parent and I feel guilty and ashamed about it,” because that’s a very common thing. Maybe I don’t like my marriage, but I’m so afraid to talk about that, so I feel guilty and ashamed. For example, if I’m in a marriage and I betray my spouse. The deeper reason is, all the other stuff I haven’t addressed. It’s not to act that I did that. I don’t want to create a mess, but the deeper reason is because I didn’t know how to talk about the feelings, the needs, the preferences, the values that are underneath everything. I’ve never been able to articulate it.

The betrayal, the thing I’m trying to forgive, is a symptom of the deeper issue. Which is that I feel guilty for my feelings and my needs. I probably feel guilty and ashamed of my desires within my relationship or in the world. I don’t know how to accept and embrace that part of me that feels like the darkness or the sinful, or the shameful. I guarantee that is the root cause of what has created this habit of experience in guilt. You think it’s because of the mistake you made. The truth is, the guilt and the shame goes back to the self-betrayal, the self-rejection for so many years.

I’m so glad you said that, Blake, because I was making notes. The note I made in big caps is self-betrayal. That aligns with what you were talking about with how important it is to live in integrity with knowing who you are, working on that, and letting that come to the surface. Doing your best day to day, living in integrity, in self-alignment, and in one’s truth. To some people reading, that may sound like woo-woo. It may sound very foreign but if we distill it down to who we are as humans, I agree with you.

We’re here too evolved, to allow our souls to evolve more into love. That’s a lot of choices we make. If we get out of the attunement or never learn, I wasn’t raised in an environment where I learned to slow down and self-reflect and tune into what my soul wanted. I did what I was told to do. It’s only later when I wake up and be like, “I have a calling. I need to get busy with this. I need to find my soul family.” You realize when you are in sync, with who you know on a very core level that you are meant to be. It’s like this pull.

The more you keep coming back to that and doing your best to align, realign, shift, notice. Again, it’s practice. It’s not perfect. It’s much like yoga where we keep practicing. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about learning, moving and exploring but always staying in integrity as much as we can in that moment. When we get out of alignment and many of us grew up out of alignment. That self-betrayal meaning if you don’t know yourself, how are you going to stay true to yourself?

If you can’t stay true to yourself, you’re constantly betraying yourself and we get afraid. Going down into this deep beautiful world of soul work and heart work can feel pretty scary. To me, it’s the essence of life. It’s the essence of being here. Not here to accrue things. They’re great. They help us eat and be comfy, but there’s not a whole lot of meaning in externality. The biggest meaning is in having this healthy, beautiful, internal space to call home which is where you started or one of the many places you started.

As you were talking too, I was having a little bit more clarity for your clients or community members. What I heard too is she spoke of mother, wife and daughter. Again, going back to that identification. I hear the over identification with the role because we’re not our roles but we identify with our roles. I hear this person saying, “My roles are mother, wife, and daughter.” Since you haven’t lived up to this ideal that you have of being the perfect mother or perfect wife or perfect daughter, you would feel guilty even if you hadn’t gone and made this mistake. Whatever this whole thing was that you couldn’t share the details of. You would probably still feel guilty because you’ve set this bar of being this ideal mother, wife and daughter.

You were always destined, I would say to this person, to experience this guilt as your teacher. It was bound to manifest in some big form because this is like you call the wake-up call. The stop sign or the mirror that we needed to hit in the face. Again, it’s like, “Who am I if I’m not mom? Who am I if I am not my wife? Who am I if I am not my daughter? I’m a soul on a journey learning about love. What do I want? What do I need? What’s important to me? What would I like to experience beyond these roles while I’m on the planet? Am I having my needs met? Do I know what my needs are? Do I ever talk about my needs? Do I feel too guilty to talk about my needs?” This theme is probably relevant for whoever asks that question.

Thank you. I’m also thinking back to the piece where you were talking about the reader who wrote in and how important it is to look. I know we don’t have time to dive into it deeply. Maybe I’ll have you back if you’re willing to talk about the role of manipulation.

Absolutely.

That is a huge can of worms that is often not acknowledged. I work with it a lot in my practice where someone will come in and they’re explaining. I realize, “They’re being manipulated. They’re guilty for what they didn’t do as a mom or a dad or as a child for the parents.” Somebody is using that against them and they’re not aware of it because they’re generally not manipulative people. They were generally trying their best at the moment. Looking at how somebody who wants something from you, often, its finances.

I often see that kids want money from their parents. Instead of being able to say, “Could you please loan me X amount? I’ll pay it back here.” They instead inflict all of this emotional damage on the relationship, on themselves and the other person by trying to guilt trip the person into submission. Do you see that much? Have you noticed that increasing trend?

The Role Of Manipulation In Guilt-Based Dynamics

It’s very common. Again, if we follow the thread in the present to the route. I call it the golden thread. It goes back to what I was talking about that we’re all born to these messy imperfect humans that are selfish. You’ll love this because I like to ask if I’m with a group of people. I’d say, “I want you to go back to the night you were conceived. Go back to the moment you were conceived. Think about all the reasons why you were conceived.”

If we unpack this and what I take from the conversation, this thought experiment. I believe that we have children for selfish reasons. Regardless of the beautiful story we say. Let’s say you and I were dating and we’re so switched on and self-aware. We’ve healed. We want to bring in this being of light and love. We will support it to do this great work in the world and make the world a better place for many generations to come. It’s an idealistic way of bringing life onto the planet. It’s still our delusional story that we’re telling. The child could come in and be like, “Look at my crazy, woo-woo, hippie parents. I don’t want to do anything that they are talking about.”

It was always our delusional selfish story and behavior. We convinced ourselves of it and we may have convinced everybody around us of it. If you break it down, it’s still selfish. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing shameful or bad about it. It’s just the way the universe and nature are. That’s why when the kids come out and that’s why it’s in every situation that we find ourselves being manipulated in. It’s this dynamic of not owning the truth of our selfishness. It’s a denial.

We grow up in environments, Carla, where I’ll say to you, “You’re so selfish because you’re not doing what I want you to do.” Most of those grow up with that experience with our parents. Our parents are saying, “You’re not being a good child or a good boy or a good girl because you’re not doing what I want you to do.” That’s where this whole confusion begins. If you’re someone who is inclined to be a good boy or a good girl, you end up in situations where you’re always trying to please people. You don’t want to let anybody down. The irony is, that’s your survival mechanism, selfishly.

This is where we get into the weeds where we start to own, “How did I get into this mess?” Now, I’m being guilt-tripped. I selfishly brought this kid into the world because I didn’t know what else to do with my life or because I believe that’s what I should do because everybody else was doing it. That’s why this can be so confusing. How do I unpack it? Where does this guilt come from? The more I have an awareness of it, the more I can then say, I love you. I don’t feel in alignment with this. I understand where you’re coming from. You have everything you need to get out of this situation. I will be your friend through this.

I will support you through this, but I don’t feel good about giving you money or I don’t feel good about going to that event even though you want me to go. I feel it’s not an alignment for me. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. We don’t have the language. We don’t even have the language to articulate things like this, which is why we get so lost and we get so manipulated. That’s why just having these conversations is how we start to open Pandora’s box and start to bring light to a very dark, messy place.

I know we’re getting ready to wrap up, but there’s two things. For someone who might hear you say, “It’s not an alignment for me. I’m not going to go to that.” I would imagine you’re not saying that alignment doesn’t mean that it’s inconvenient. I’d rather watch TV instead of supporting you. You’re going much deeper than that and saying, “If somebody’s asking you to do something that feels on some level not connected with how you want to be in the world or connected to how you want to show up in the world.” It’s not an excuse to opt out of reciprocity and supporting other people. It’s much deeper and designed to say, “I can help you in this way, but being your supporter in this way isn’t aligned with my values or priorities or needs,” something like that. Did I get that right?

It prompts tying everything back together to this question to me. Often, we make major life decisions before we have any idea of who we are or what we need. We often have kids and we don’t even know who we are. We get married and we don’t even know what we feel. We don’t even know we have emotions or we have needs. Let alone how to talk about them or talk about them effectively. For the reader, this person is a mirror for all of us or for everybody reading. When we make these major life commitments and agreements and we don’t quite know who we are or what we feel or what we need or what we want. We’re bound to get caught up in this web.

It’s our karma to be in this situation, where I’ve created this whole life. Maybe that life was created from a place where I didn’t even know who I was or what I wanted. You start to wake up in this life that you’ve unconsciously created and you feel guilty. I have to start doing something about it or else I’m going to feel terrible for the rest of my life because I’m not addressing anything that needs to be addressed. The thing I can close with is that, if you’re going through that process, it’s also a process that mirrors the other people in your relationships.

The people in your orbit, your spouse, your children, or your parents. You’re waking up, but that’s a mere for their souls needing to awaken, too. Typically, if I’m in a situation and you and I are, let’s say in a relationship, or family. I start to get to a place where I’m expressing my feelings, my needs and my preferences. I then give you permission because I’m giving myself permission. You now have permission to start telling me about your feelings, your needs and your preferences.

I may not like it but that’s part of this process. When one person in a unit starts to awaken and sometimes that person is looked at as the black sheep or early on. That is opening up, healing, and awakening for everybody in that connection. All the people in the family, everybody around because what’s good for you turns out to be what’s good for everybody else. It’s just hard to see that in the beginning.

Absolutely. I wish I could say in my experience, as a human being but also as a psychologist, that the other people see the invitation and take the invitation. That often is not the outcome. In fact, as you awaken, readers, the other people in your life may have big negative reactions. They may not like what they see. They may not want to do the work or take the invitation to begin to unfold and grow. They may have major pushback. I often talk about it. When you put a mobile above a child’s bed, we have this homeostasis. The mobile is static. It’s just sitting there.

If somebody comes in the room and takes one of the little birds or whatever, the whole thing starts moving. People want it to go back to homeostasis. They want it to be what they always knew, even if it’s hugely dysfunctional. When we have somebody come in and go, “Bing,” and the little mobile starts moving. The other people sometimes attack the person, as you said, the black sheep and try to cut them off the mobile, which makes its own dysfunction. We just make everything go back to the way it was.

That’s so beautiful that you brought that out to know that as you awaken, as you do things that are more in alignment with yourself, your truth, and your values, the people who have been used to you being the doormat or the people pleaser or the guilt-stricken mom parent daughter, sister, or whatever it might be. They may have big reactions to that. That’s not your fault. That is their opportunity to also engage with their journeys.

The last piece, Blake. I love that you brought up selfishness. That it’s not narcissistic. I look at selfishness as on a scale 0 to 10. It’s a continuum. We need to be selfish. If we weren’t selfish, we wouldn’t eat, drink, or care for ourselves. You wake up and get up. We wouldn’t clothe ourselves. As we get more toward that end of the continuum, where there is a lack of reciprocity, a lack of giving and loving in the way we want to be given to and loved. That’s where we get more toward that unhealthy and of the continuum. Thank you again for illuminating and giving me that opportunity to give that light on if you’re feeling, I’m selfish for having any needs. You’re human. The plants and the animals all have needs. It’s part of the cycle of life. Blake, are there any other final pieces?

What a loaded question because there’s so many of my own pieces. If we don’t matter to ourselves, if our feelings, our needs or our calling doesn’t matter, then we’ve trained everybody around us to say it doesn’t matter. We experience this life where we’re guilt tripped, manipulated and we don’t matter. Our feelings are a problem. Our needs are a problem. Our feelings are a burden and our needs are a burden.

It’s up to us to say it matters. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s okay to have feelings. It’s okay to have needs. It’s okay to have preferences. The more you embrace that, then you also embrace that and the people around you. You know how important it is for you. You know in your partnership that, “My partner has feelings. My partner has needs. My partner has preferences and I want to respect them and honor them in the same way I want mine to be honored and respected.”

It’s got a matter to you if you want it to matter to the people around you. This question puts everything into perspective. I always ask people, if you value yourself 100% today. What would you say? What would you do? How would you carry yourself? That’s the ultimate test. If you’re religious in the Christian or Catholic faith. It’s like the question, what would Jesus do? In a spiritual tradition, it’s like the question, what would love do in this situation?

If you were to value yourself 100% in every situation in a relationship moving forward. What would you say? What would you do? How would you carry yourself? Every excuse and limiting belief that you have that pops up as a response to me asking that question, shows you your blocks and your work. Why are you not valuing yourself 100%? That’s probably where I would leave it.

Valuing Yourself And Questioning Limiting Beliefs

What a very beautiful and precious ending note. To be able to pause and ask yourself those questions when you’re doubting or confused. Take it down to a core level, pause, listen to what pops up and know that it’s a messenger that you can talk to, you can question and you can engage with. We don’t have to succumb to our limiting beliefs. We have to ideally question them with love. Thank you, Blake. It has been an incredible joy and a pleasure. I feel so blessed. Where can our readers find you?

Thank you, Carla. It was lovely here, too. My website is Unconditional-SelfLove.com. It’s very easy to find. On Instagram, I use @BlakeDBauer. It’s very easy. You can go on Google and put in Blake Bauer and you’ll find everything you need to know.

Excellent. Readers, you can find him just by typing in his name. Thank you again, Blake. It has been a joy and a privilege.

Thank you, too.

To our readers, thank you as always for being with us. It is my true joy, my privilege, and my pleasure. Thank you. This is imperfect love.

Important Links

• Blake D. Bauer on LinkedIn
• Blake D. Bauer on Instagram
• Blake D. Bauer on Facebook
• Unconditional-SelfLove.com
• Blake D. Bauer on Drala Mountain Center
• You Were Not Born to Suffer: Overcome Fear, Insecurity and Depression and Love Yourself Back to Happiness, Confidence and Peace
• You Were Not Born to Suffer: Overcome Fear, Insecurity and Depression and Love Yourself Back to Happiness, Confidence and Peace – Audiobook
•  You Were Not Born to Suffer – Facebook

About Blake D. Bauer

Blake D. Bauer is the author of the international bestselling book You Were Not Born To Suffer. He has helped thousands of people around the world who could not find lasting solutions from conventional medicine, psychiatry, or coaching. Blake has an extensive background in psychology, neuroscience, alternative medicine, nutrition, traditional healing, mindfulness meditation, qi gong, zen, taoism, and buddhist practices. Based on both his personal experience overcoming deep suffering, addiction, and adversity, as well as his professional work with over 100,000 people worldwide, his teachings integrate what he’s found to be the most effective approaches to optimal mental, emotional and physical health.

Blake is a world-renowned teacher and speaker with an extensive background in psychology, alternative medicine, nutrition, traditional healing, and mindfulness meditation.