Dr. John Delony

And in that regard, it's a good thing.

It's alerting us to, you have done something out of alignment with who you say you are and or what you need to be in this community.

And that's a good thing.

What most of us call guilt

is somebody we care about has uncomfortable feelings and we want to take them from them and try to solve them for them.

And so asking yourself, is it a core value violation for you to go commit to dinner reservations with your friends and go out and honor those reservations?

No.

Is it a core value violation that you don't spend every evening with your parents?

No.

And so when you quote-unquote feel guilty for saying, I already have plans, what you're in effect doing is reaching over and saying, hey, I'm going to take y'all's feelings of loneliness.

I'm going to take your feelings of isolation.

I'm going to take the choices y'all have made, and I'm going to try to solve them for you.

And I can't solve them, so I'm just going to carry them and impact my marriage, impact my friendship, relationships, and kind of ruin the dinner I'm going to have right now.

All right.

And so part of owning guilt is when your body says, hey, this is a violation, that's a good thing.

It should happen.

You should feel guilty when you violate your core values.

But I'm going to make a commitment to not try to carry other people's emotional challenges.

That's theirs.

Those are their feelings, their emotions, their responses.