Sahaj Kaur Kohli

And with that, you have to have a lot of self-compassion to know that you're figuring out how to deal with something that maybe no one in your family has dealt with.

You were never taught how to deal with.

So it's really important to show up with a lot of self-compassion.

And then the last thing that really comes to mind here is to accept that guilt may always be an emotion that you have to navigate.

You know, it's a warning light.

It's not necessarily, I think a lot of children of immigrants

look to guilt and feel guilt and then say, oh my gosh, this is a sign that I need to turn around and not do the thing I want to do or continue on the path that I'm about to take.

And instead I say, sit with the guilt, see it as a warning sign and try to understand where it's really coming from.

So all of the things that some of the coping mechanisms I already named, you know, it's really important to reauthor the narrative that you've been taught that things are binary.

Something that I often see when people are dealing with guilt is that guilt is bad.

Again, guilt is not necessarily bad.

It's just an emotion that is trying to tell you something.

So a lot of children of immigrants and a lot of people in this country deal with feelings, think of feelings as good or bad, think of themselves as right or wrong, this or that, all or nothing.

And I really want to encourage you to question that narrative.

You know, two things can be true at the same time.

You can pursue something that makes you really happy, something that is inherently good for you, healthy for you, and you can still feel guilt.

And so to that, I just really want to drive home the point that guilt is not necessarily a bad emotion.

And it's okay if you are always trying to navigate it.

Absolutely.

Getting clear on your values can definitely help with managing guilt.