Hi Acacia.
I thought I'd try to answer your question: How do I stop feeling guilt and fear?
Guilt and fear are part of this path. It's inevitable, these are our children, regardless of their age. However, for me, letting go of guilt and fear had more to do with me, rather than my daughter. She was simply being her, as someone said, "it's just another Thursday" for her, while I used to be wringing my hands, losing sleep, sick to my stomach, freaked out......you know how it goes.....
Once I got the basics down, setting strong UNBREAKABLE, NON NEGOTIABLE, boundaries, I started working on me and how I could navigate this terrain and find some kind of solace and happiness regardless of the choices my daughter was making. It seemed like a very tall order but I was determined. I read a quote by the Dalai Lama which inspired me, "do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace." That became my intention.
I believe intention is important. My intention was to find that peace. To that end I entered a codependent course thru my HMO which offered me weekly therapy and a weekly support group. In addition I read a lot. Books by Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle & Victor Frankel made a difference for me. Every single day I did something for me. I focused on my needs and my desires.
Letting go of guilt for me had much to do with an overblown sense of responsibility I had in general in life and especially with my daughter. When our kids are 18 or even 25, it's a bit different, those kids deserve more parental concern, but our kids, over 30, are a bit different. We've already parented them, instilled values and boundaries and love and care and they've not launched for whatever reason. I learned that at least for me, there is an end to parenting.....not an end to loving, or caring, or helping if it's appropriate, but parenting. That's when it turns into enabling for me, when I am doing for them what they need to be doing for themselves.
So I dug deep and developed a willingness to change, to hear what the experts said, to allow a new way of looking at it. I became willing to change my perception which of course, changes everything. Guilt is a web that goes beyond our kids, if we tend towards feeling guilty when guilt is not appropriate, then WE have an issue and WE can choose to heal it and recover from it. I did.
Fear for me with my daughter was continual and relentless worry and anxiety which never went away......my daughter made choices which were scary for me. In my therapy I looked at how my worry did nothing for my daughter. How my fear was screwing up my own life. How I had likely spent years in that fear place. I was asked how that was working for me. Well, it wasn't. And, I started to see that.
Most of my fear was future tripping, worrying about what MIGHT happen if I didn't step in to save the day. I learned from reading Eckhart Tolle books and Pema Chodron books how to stay in the present moment and not lapse into the past and begin tormenting myself with what I SHOULD have done (guilt) or tripping into the future to try to avoid any catastrophe that might be lurking out there (fear). I had done a lot of this throughout my life and as I saw that, it wasn't hard to want to cut it out!
I learned that grief is a big part of this process, there is a lot to let go of when our kids are troubled. There is a lot of grief. My experience is that grief needs to be expressed. As it is expressed, it dissipates and a new opening occurs.
I learned to stay in the present moment and not let my mind go down all those scary paths. I did that with meditation and a lot of physical exercise, both excellent ways to calm down and stop the relentless monkey mind which cannot stop over thinking and worrying. I listened to YOUTUBE guided visualizations when my mind would kick in with scary thoughts. Or I would hike. Every time I slipped into guilt or fear, I did something out of my tool box to shift the energy. It worked.
Over time, as I practiced, it became easier. I also started a gratitude journal. Statistics show that folks who practice gratitude actually change their experience. Instead of continual fear and worry and guilty thoughts, new perceptions started to take root. It's easy to be held hostage by our own thinking.....I learned that I have the power to shift that.
The most important thing that happened was as I let go of the enabling, the responsibility, the guilt and the fear, I started to accept what is. That is not just a line, accepting what is, is life changing. It began with my daughter and blossomed into my entire life. As Eckhart Tolle says, "When you argue with reality, you suffer." Well, I had been doing a whole lot of arguing and I decided to stop. Once any part of life is accepted, a calm surfaces, a big relief, a sense of all is well. A "space" between those fear thoughts occurs and over time, with practice, you can widen that space.
This is not easy, it was without a doubt, the hardest thing I have EVER done. But I did it. And others here have done it too. And so can you. I could not have done it without the incredible support I received in my codependency course, in my therapy and here on this forum.
I needed that support. Frankly, I could not have done this without it.
As I have mentioned a few times, I see this as a spiritual journey or journey of awareness which offers the potential of giving us the wonderful gift of acceptance.....life is full of so much to let go of, learning how to be okay with what shows up in life and accept it, is invaluable. It changes everything.
