Guilt that icky feeling that gnaws at you, sinks in your stomach; the cold leaden weight of remorse and self-recrimination, tail between your legs, bad feeling as you wish you could hide your head in the sand.Familiar with it? Many of us are overly so for things we’ve done and things we haven’t. From the large and life-altering to the incidental, guilt has a way of niggling, nagging and dragging us down if we don’t address it.Whether it’s the bag of chips I shouldn’t be eating (don’t tell Catherine Burns), or the people, projects and pile of e-mails I’ve been neglecting I won’t even start on parenting and the whole slew of guilt possibilities that induces guilt could become a permanent state if I let it.But what is guilt and what purpose does it serve?“Guilt is an action signal,” says Tony Robbins, in his book, ‘Awaken the Giant Within’. He says that guilt is a message that we have “violated our own highest standards” and suggests we must immediately address it and stop that violation happening again or the guilt will persist.I agree. There are definitely times when I know I’ve let myself down and those guilty feelings kick in to recognise them. But there are times when I can feel guilty and I don’t even know what I’ve done! Guilt is slippery. I’ve coached enough clients to know that much of what we are suffering from is not this useful, time-to-change-indicator guilt, but instead some irrational, beat-myself-up-without-due-reason emotion.The latter tends to stem from the following:* Comparisons: Comparing ourselves to others, whether it’s some unfalteringly successful colleague, the “perfect” parent of that budding wunderkind or the flawlessly airbrushed darlings filling our magazines and TV sets, comparisons can leave us feeling “not enough”.* Unrealistic expectations: The problems of perfectionism are that when we place ridiculously high demands on ourselves, we are likely to fall short and feel bad.* Our multitude of “shoulds”: We cannot possibly assume responsibility for the expectations and often happiness of everyone around us, particularly implicit expectations that we might just be inventing on their behalf; conjectures like, “they will be upset or not like me if I do this or don’t do that”.* The guilt others want us to feel: When they guilt trip us by manipulating words and situations, sometimes subconsciously, to produce a guilt response.* Conditioning: Add to this list above the learning we did as children about culpability, saying sorry and not letting people down and it stands to reason that guilt might be a go-to reaction for many.Being stuck in ongoing negative thoughts of guilt and internal self-flagellation is no good for our overall health and wellbeing. Prolonged guilt damages self-esteem. We see it in extreme in the “I’m sorry people”, those folks who seem to apologise for everything even existing. Guilt can also lead to feelings of inadequacy and paranoia that others are judging us harshly. I get ‘dinner party regret’, waking up in the middle of the night panicking about something I said that may have come out wrong or they took the wrong way: ‘What must they think of me?!’ Yet I find, if I later ever broach the subject, chances are they don’t even recall the conversation.Guilt keeps us stuck in the past. We are so busy regretting what we’ve done or haven’t that it draws our energy and thoughts from what we could be doing now and depletes our joy. Being full of self-criticism and regret is really boring.How do we unpack that baggage and get off the guilt trip? Here are some steps to consider:1. Acknowledge your feelings. Robbins warns that if we try to deny or suppress our guilty feelings, they will only come back stronger. If you are feeling overwhelmed by guilt, write down all the things you are feeling guilty about.2. Recognise the kind of guilt it is and its purpose. Is this a healthy and appropriate warning signal that you need to address some unhelpful behaviour or put something right? Or is it arising from one of the irrational guilt inducers above?For those genuine action signals:3. Make the necessary amends and behaviour changes. Rather than wasting any more time and energy feeling guilty about it, decide and take immediate action to make reparation then commit to the personal changes needed so as not to violate your standards again.4. Accept it and move on. Making a commitment to positive change can help us to accept the mistakes we have made. While we need to recognise our accountability for our past actions, continually punishing ourselves will not solve or put right anything we have done. Learning to forgive ourselves is important. The following website lists some useful tools to help with this: http://www.gateways-to-inner-peace.com/dealing-with-guilt.html5. Learn from our mistakes. Making some mistakes in life is inevitable but let them be useful lessons, learned one time.As for the other kind of guilt that serves little purpose other than to suck your joy, here are some helpful hints for dealing with that:* Make a list of your life priorities. Check those “shoulds” against this list. If it would not contribute to what is really important to you, then don’t waste another second on it.* Ask yourself: Would I let a friend feel guilty about this? Is this serving me?* There is no benefit to feeling guilty for things that are clearly beyond our control. Drop the self-punishment and instead do something useful with that energy. Make a contribution to better something you do have control over.* Remind yourself that saying “no” need not be followed by guilt. Practice setting healthy boundaries and saying “no”, guilt-free.* Realise that taking time and doing things for ourselves is empowering and enabling us to better serve others. There can be no guilt in that.* Perfection does not exist. Set realistic expectations.* If you must, feel guilty for five minutes a day (but not before bed). Set a timer and let yourself wallow in all the stuff you ‘shoulda, coulda’ done. Note any actions that would make you feel significantly better if you took (perhaps get around to calling your mother) otherwise let them all go and commit to a guilt-free day.* Avoid guilt-tripping others by using passive-aggressive tactics to try and elicit remorse. Being brave and addressing issues up front is more likely to produce a positive outcome and perpetuating bad feelings serves no-one. Similarly, don’t fall for others’ guilt trips. Learn to recognise people pushing your buttons. How you choose to feel about something is solely up to you.* Talk to a friend or confidant about what’s eating you up and if it’s just the silly stuff, have a good old laugh at the ridiculousness of the human condition and what we do to ourselves.What’s done is done. We cannot change the past, no matter how much we might wish to, and no amount of guilt is going to make a difference. All we can do is affect the future.Julia Pitt is a trained success coach and certified NLP practitioner. For further telephone 705-7488 or visit www.juliapittcoaching.com.