Dr. Liz talks about her own guilt when her oldest daughter revealed recently that she too has been diagnosed as autistic and that she’s struggling with depression.

She shares what to do about guilt – how to check it out to see if it’s appropriate and what to do about it so you don’t get trapped in it.

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About Dr. Liz

Interested in hypnosis with Dr. Liz? Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work.

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Transcript

0:00:01 – Dr. Liz
Hey everyone, dr Liz here. I forgot in the original recording to say that both of my girls have given me permission to talk about their autism and some of their mental health struggles on the podcast. >>>>>Hey everyone, it’s Dr Liz here. I’m going to tell you some stories about my recent vacation and then tell you some stories about my early motherhood. What I would like for you to come away with from this episode is what do you do when you feel guilty? What are some strategies you can use when you feel guilty about something? How do you move out of that guilt and not get trapped there and destroyed by it? So let’s jump in. I really struggled about what to do the episode on this week. I actually have a whole spreadsheet where I keep an ideas list and just none of them resonated with me, and so I waited. I waited until I felt like I really have something to talk about, something that I feel like will help you and me. So often I record these podcasts to learn more for myself. Originally that was to learn more of the research and communicate it about hypnosis, but then, as the years went on, I’m in year nine now, about to come up on year 10 of doing the podcast.

I visited my oldest daughter in Asheville about two weeks ago and it’s almost a year to the date that Helene hit. I was there when Helene hit unknowingly, I did not know, a hurricane was coming. When I flew in that night, I think I heard some announcement in the airport or something and thought, oh my god, I’m glad my flight isn’t canceled and another mom of one of her friends is coming whose flight was canceled because of the hurricane. Little did I know that I would be stuck without water, electricity, anything for days and days, my whole trip, basically. So while I was there, I had this mini PTSD going on, just flashbacks of everything that happened last year. Nothing really major for me, nothing really major for me, but some anxiousness so that it didn’t get bad this year. But it’s still there.

And then my oldest daughter told me two things while I was there. One that she was diagnosed with autism, level one when she was in Italy this summer. And if you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you know my youngest daughter who’s 19, was diagnosed with autism at 15 during COVID, when a lot of things came to a head for her. But I had honestly never considered it for my older daughter. She’s 24. She graduated. She graduated from Florida State University, working her way through with no student loans and with our support as well her parents’ support and college savings, and came close to graduating with a 4.0. She made 1B the entire time she was there. She moved to Asheville, made friends, got a job, all of this.

So to look at her from the outside, you would say she’s very high functioning. I knew she had struggled with anxiety and depression, actually for many years, and had tried different medications for it and also had seen therapists. But I really didn’t see her as an autistic individual until she told me this and I said what? No, you’re not, which is exactly what she predicted I would do. Okay, not my best parenting moment, like really.

And I was like you’ve got to be kidding me. And she’s like no, mom. I went for a full evaluation in Italy and I even said to her is it just a little bit? A little bit? And she’s like no, not a little bit, like solidly in the middle. I was like, oh my god. So we talked about it and of course, I immediately went into supporting her and asking what I could do to help support her and she said to me. This changes nothing. Nothing has changed. Like I am. I am the same exact person and I was like, okay, I get that. And then she told me about some of her other mental health struggles that have been going on, some pretty severe depression. So after we have this discussion, I go back to my hotel room.

I had a flood of guilt come up, and when I say a flood, I mean like Noah’s Ark, okay, like my whole world felt flooded with guilt and thinking of everything I did wrong as a mother, even though I know intellectually like autism is genetic. They have many theories of how autism develops, but the leading theory is really genetic. There’s some also in utero theories like some things happen in the uterine environment when the child is developing, but those actually have to do with some genetic differences in the mother that’s carrying the fetus. So that’s really genetic, right? Although they know like areas with higher pollution rates have higher rates of autism. Like there’s some environmental things that happen too, and myself as a mother it’s like, oh, make sure I live by somewhere with not a lot of pollution, right? I didn’t even know that at the time. That study was not published when I was pregnant. Okay, we do the best we can when we’re pregnant and then later we learn all this stuff. But I still had this wash of guilt come over me.

I had severe postpartum depression when she was born, like a suicidal postpartum depression that I tried to get help for with a therapist who was a postpartum specialist and just honestly so nasty to me on the telephone that I ended up not seeing her and not getting help and I was too depressed to reach out to someone else. Honestly, I try to return all my phone calls within 24 hours of someone leaving me a voicemail. It’s pretty rare these days that someone leaves me a voicemail. It’s pretty rare these days that someone leaves me a voicemail, but if they do, I always try to call them back within 24 hours and be as nice as I can be as well, because I know what it takes to reach out to someone when you’re struggling, and that was a formative experience for me about how to behave in the future as a therapist returning calls.

So that was my immediate thought is I cause this with my postpartum depression, even though I cannot have prevented it in any shape or form, and the only way I could have prevented that postpartum depression is to be a different person. That’s how I feel about it. And the only way I could have prevented that postpartum depression is to be a different person. That’s how I feel about it. If I was born a different person, into a different family and raised a completely different way, maybe I wouldn’t have had postpartum depression. I don’t know.

Even when you know the risk factors, which I didn’t at the time there’s only so many that you can control. Moving is one of them, and a lot of people move when they’re pregnant because they’re preparing for the baby, they want to be closer to family or they want a better job or they want a better environment. And I had moved right after she was born, which contributed to that depression. And then for my second one, it didn’t hit until she was about nine months old, but it did hit because my husband at the time was going out to clubs and staying out late and traveling across the state to concerts and acting like he was I don’t know to concerts and acting like he was, I don’t know 25 instead of 35 with two kids. So I couldn’t control him in any shape or form. He was doing this during the pregnancy.

When she was born, I remember Eva was only like six weeks old or something. You’re exhausted. At six weeks old, she was nursing all night long. I was getting hardly any sleep. And he goes out to some club, locks his keys in the car and calls me to come pick him up. At 4am and I have her, and then I have my older one, who was like four and a half when she was born, and I’m supposed to wake up these two babies, basically put them in the car and go pick him up from a club, which is what I did, instead of just saying figure it out yourself, call your mom, call your brother, I don’t care who you call, but leave me to sleep. Which I think at the time, if I had been stronger, I would have said that Uber did not exist. Uber was not an option, but taxis were. I call a taxi, but leave me be.

So there were things leading up to it. It wasn’t like a super happy year that led up to it, but then another event, big event, happened that threw me into a severe postpartum depression, because it’s defined up until about a year, year and a half, after the baby is born. It’s not just those first weeks. So this was my first thought, like postpartum depression, okay, caused autism, which is like laughable when I think about it with my logical mind. Postpartum depression does not cause autism, you guys. Neither does Tylenol, okay.

But this was my first thought, like, oh my God, this guilt wash as a mother and we can have washes of guilt about all kinds of stuff as parents, not just mothers as parents. But then I went looking so I was really in the feelings and I was crying a lot. This was pretty devastating to me, more so the struggles she was having versus the autism. But it was like, wow, I have two autistic kids now Okay, not just one, two of them and they both struggle with depression and anxiety and this child is really struggling. So that guilt wash came up immediately.

And then grief came up for me, so just straight out sadness and grief that she was going through this, that she was feeling so bad that I mean I know what depression, severe depression, feels like and it’s awful, and so I just felt so sad for her that she was going through that and I think that’s more where the guilt came in, like due to my history, is why she’s feeling that, okay, I’d like to blame everything I can on my ex-husband, but on this one I really didn’t. It was like, okay, he has his own genetics. I think his genetics are more responsible for the autism, since it’s like him, a brother, like several of them, fit that criteria, let’s say undiagnosed right. And when I met him he was having panic attacks. So he has some of those anxiety genes as well. But for some reason I feel like the depression genes are me, my side. So I felt really guilty. This has gone on for a while and then one day this week I woke up and thought you’ve got to be kidding me, like you’re not responsible for all of this.

And then I pulled up my DBT handouts dialectical behavior therapy, which I loved, which helped me so much with emotional regulation so much so that I actually got trained in it and use it in my practice all the time. And DBT has a worksheet on guilt and shame. But guilt specifically, because when you’re emotionally dysregulated, guilt fits into that. Sometimes you feel so guilty that it overwhelms you and then you don’t make really good decisions for yourself or for the people you love in your life. You can drop so far into guilt that you’re not able to help them the way that perhaps they need to be helped, and then you feel guilty about that. Okay, there are circles and circles and circles of guilt that parents can get into, partners can get into friends, individuals just sitting around you can feel guilty about pretty much anything, depending on your history. So let’s look at this handout.

What DBT does is say, okay, let’s see if this emotion fits the facts of a situation, like is what you’re feeling appropriate? Because often with emotional dysregulation it’s not appropriate. Sometimes that’s anger. Is it appropriate to be angry at something or someone? And it takes this like wise mind, adult self to say yes or no to that, which is very difficult to move into sometimes. So the DBT workbook actually tells you hey, when we’re in our right mind and highly researched, and this is what you know, all these intelligent people think fits the facts of a situation, for guilt is when your behavior violates your own values or moral code. Your own values or moral code.

Now, this wasn’t the only handout I looked at. Now, this wasn’t the only handout I looked at. I also pulled up my guilt versus shame handout when I took a whole seminar about it. I pulled up another worksheet that partners use and couples therapy, all this stuff. But most of them agree that guilt is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrongdoing, whether real or imagined. So it could be imagined. Now, dbt, when we say, does it fit the facts of a situation? We want you to check in with the real so that you can come out of guilt, particularly if it’s imagined, if it doesn’t fit the facts of a situation.

So guilt is based sometimes on a failure of doing which is direct result of our behaviors and choices or involves a violation of standards, like our own moral standards Can be positive. At time it can motivate us for positive change, like when we do something wrong, we feel guilty about it. We change our behavior so we don’t make the same mistake or negative choice again. But all of the worksheets agree it is based on values, morals and standards. And also it’s quite normal to feel guilt on occasion because we all make mistakes. We’re learning as we go, so keep that in mind. So first we look at the origins of it. Where is it coming from? Did it violate a standard? Does it fit the facts of a situation? This is not as simple as it seems. Simple as it seems For me.

I wanted to be such a good mom I really believed like oh, if I do attachment, parenting and co-sleeping and breastfeeding and I stay home with my kids, then they’re going to grow up and feel happy. That’s basically it. If I have to boil it down to one sentence they’re going to grow up and feel happy because I’m a good mom, because I’m doing everything that I need to do to help them feel good about themselves, to have high self-esteem, to feel effective in the world. These are all my parenting goals and I felt like they were possible. I had a PhD in clinical psychology with a specialty in children and families. That was my specialty when I graduated. Children and families like I knew how to be a good mom. I knew what that looked like and I don’t think, um, people who use formula are not, are bad moms. Let me just say that really clearly here. Okay, we all have like our limitations on what we can do and manage and tolerate and all this stuff as parents. So that wasn’t really it. It was more the emotional piece for me, like I’m present to them, I teach them good skills, I listen to them, I validate their feelings.

I didn’t spank because it was out of fashion. I have no idea if it’s in fashion now. I think the research is pretty clear on spanking. It’s not great for our kids. But it was very different from how I was brought up. I was brought up with a lot of guilt and shame, often religious based. My dad was a Methodist minister, very kind man, but you really don’t get into Christianity without guilt involved, okay, and sometimes shame too. My mother was narcissistic, so if you didn’t make her happy, you paid for it with guilt and shame for sure, both of those. So this was an integral part of my upbringing and I did not want to do that to my children and I didn’t do it to my children. So I had all these ideas and so we think about that and we do the best we can and then, down the road, when stuff like this happens, that’s where I immediately go to.

Did my behavior violate my own values or moral code? Not by my own choice, I really didn’t. There’s no way I could have controlled postpartum depression, which is perhaps a factor in the depression anxiety in their adult years. Should I feel guilty for the genetics leading to autism? I mean I could, but those I don’t control either. That’s not violating my values on moral code. Those are uncontrollable factors to me.

Okay, so now that we know the background, what do we do about it? That’s what really people want to know. What do we do about it? That’s what really people want to know. What do I do about guilt? Well, first I realized what part of what was going on for me was grief and not guilt. So you’re going to talk about guilt here. But it’s like once I made that shift in my mind like, oh, grief and sadness and this is not the first time I’ve cried about my girls being depressed or anxious, or both of them have OCD, like all kinds of stuff. Okay, many tears through the years, many tears through the years. I feel like I should sing that right.

But again, this was a new wash of it and I realized like, oh, I have some gremlins going here. Hey, gremlins are those unhelpful reactions. So I definitely had some blame, self blame, some frustration it’s hard to accept this reality. Now some despondency or hopelessness. Feelings of hopelessness, like there’s nothing I can do about this. I can’t go back and change the clock on time. I cannot have been a different mother than I was. Feelings of stupidity that’s a gremlin that comes up from our subconscious Like I shouldn’t make mistakes. That’s feelings of stupidity, like I’m such an idiot and I made all these mistakes, all of that. That didn’t come up so much for me as grief.

Grief can come from a change in self-identity. So this was a change in identity for me. I’m not a mom of one autistic adult, I’m a mom of two autistic adults, okay, and it was just a jump for me. Like, I have this extremely high functioning kid who deals with significant depression still, and then one that’s on her way living at home taking some college classes but did not do that straight path of going to college and staying there and doing well. No, she came home last year suicidal. She had to come home. She wasn’t holding her weight. Also, she was um, had some significant health stuff going on. That was, I recently identified through the Mayo Clinic. But it’s like all right, I had that and I made those adjustments. And then it was another adjustment to make here for me in terms of identity.

Now let’s talk about what would be helpful, like helpful autopilots we talk about on this podcast. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go back and listen to the ones about your chimp versus your human. I have a whole series on it and we say, okay, helpful autopilots are those thoughts that pop up, that help us along the way, that help us not get stuck in the feelings. The feelings are okay, the chimp is going to come up and throw feelings at us so that we do something different, so that we do change something, and then the the helpful autopilots come up as part of our human part of our wise mind. Is what dbt would say? So the antidote to frustration is acceptance. Let’s start sorting this out. Let’s adjust.

There’s a radical acceptance for me that I had to do of okay, I cannot change the past. I cannot go back and parent any different way than I did, no matter how it affected them. I can’t change my genetics. I can’t change the person I married, who made these children with me and his genetics. That’s acceptance. Antidote to helplessness is patience. Time will move things along. There’s actions that I can take here. There’s ways to help myself feel better Despondency, that feeling of it’s all too much. The actual helpful autopilot to that is resignation. My starting point is where I am. That’s actual radical acceptance to me. He doesn’t. Dr Peters doesn’t put it that way in his book the path through the jungle. That’s what I’m referring to with the chimp versus human, but I would say that’s also acceptance. My starting point is where I am and how do I move forward from here.

And then feelings of stupidity, meaning like I shouldn’t make mistakes, is a positive approach. Let me be proactive and find some solutions and, in terms of grief, the helpful autopilot there is my feelings are okay, all of my feelings are okay. As my feelings are okay, all of my feelings are okay, it’s what I do with them. That’s important. Some of them can just simply pass. Tears eventually stop and they pass. Actions eventually occur to me almost always, and that may be as small as like all right time to get up out of bed and feed the animals and I need to make sure I take a walk in the sun today to bigger ones. Like all right time to get to work. I have clients today, shower, put those professional clothes on and show up as the best therapist I can be with everything that I know and I continue to learn all the way.

Opposite action for guilt in terms of the DBT system is validate yourself. Don’t apologize or try to make up for perceived transgressions. Just take in the information and validate yourself. All of your feelings are okay and validate yourself. All of your feelings are okay. You can seek forgiveness if that’s appropriate. Let’s say, you did something to someone that violated your values. You can seek forgiveness. You can repair the harm. It’s amends in the 12 step system, but you don’t have to be in 12-step to make amends, ask for forgiveness, apologize, make something better, accept the consequences gracefully, commit to avoiding behaviors that violate your moral values in the future. So we commit to being different in the world.

Let’s say you have a problem with lying and you’ve decided I’m going to be honest no matter what. Because lying becomes a habit and people do it out of stupidity, sometimes right, like someone who has a real lying habit or is a pathological liar will lie about stuff that to everybody else looks absolutely ridiculous, like dude, there is no reason to lie about that, just tell the truth. So that would be like, okay, I’m going to commit to telling the truth instead of lying, because now I feel guilty. Lying Pathological liars often don’t feel guilty. I think sometimes people who have a habit of lying will feel guilty and then often something will happen to change that way of life.

When you’re talking about affair recovery and someone has lied to hide the affair and it’s discovered honesty, honesty. Honesty is the first commitment that that person has to make to remain in the relationship. If the other person wants to remain in the relationship, it takes time to build back that trust, but it’s based on honesty in the smallest ways and in the largest ways. Smallest ways meaning, let’s say they’re on their way home and they want to stop off and get some fast food or something, but instead they say, oh, you know I have to stay a little bit late at work. No, just say, yeah, I want to stop by and get some fast food on the way home. I know you don’t agree with that, I know you think it’s bad for my health, but my commitment is to honesty here. Okay, so that would be like a smaller action right there versus a larger one obviously would be opening the phone, email account, all that stuff that you do during a fair recovery.

You can also check in with judgments that you’re making on yourself. So that’s checking in with the guilt like why am I feeling guilty here? Let me see if it fits the facts like we were talking about, and if it doesn’t, then what’s the feeling that I really need to address here, which for me was some grief for my daughters struggling with this, some grief for my own parenting that was limited by postpartum depression or depression years later or some out of control behavior years later before I really became regulated, before I really became committed to emotional regulation and being an even better parent. But I can’t wind back the clock on their early childhoods. So one of the major recommendations for guilt or shame also, but let’s stick with guilt here is learn to forgive yourself. Do you judge yourself too harshly? And practicing forgiving others actually helps you learn to empathize and forgive yourself.

When I made living amends in one of the 12-step programs I was in, I volunteered in the NICU the neonatal intensive care unit at the children’s hospital by my house for a year and that was one way to make amends to my children for some of their early childhood where I was depressed and I did feel unregulated and I didn’t feel like emotionally I was the best mom. So I made amends in that way and then living amends is when you’re moving forward and living in a different way and responding in a different way. But sometimes when I start to feel guilty about that early childhood, I think about that year in the NICU where I held babies. That’s what I did. I was a baby holder, because babies need to be held. You know they’re in the hospital right and hooked up to machines and all kinds of stuff. They’re not having that holding environment that new babies need, that aren’t in the NICU. You go home, you hold the baby all the time. The baby cries. You hold the baby, the baby poops. You change the baby, then you hold the baby. The baby smiles. You hold the baby like all kinds of stuff. So that was my amends. So that is also an option.

If you’re truly remorseful over something you’ve done wrong in the past, you can’t change it. You make amends and then forgive yourself, moving forward. So that’s what I’m working on as I navigate this and I hope that you are forgiving with yourself, you’re gentle with yourself, you’re compassionate with yourself as much as you can be. It’s really difficult, it’s not an easy task, but it is developing that kinder internal voice to be the counterpart to that inner critic that comes up and says, oh my God, you shouldn’t have been a much better mother and none of this would happen. Your kids would be completely fine, right, they would be the stars of the show, which we know.

It’s not all parenting that influences them right Like social media influences them right Like social media so clear has actually a huge influence over parenting these days. Their school relationships, whether they get bullied at school, whether they feel like they have friends or it’s hard for them to make friends all of those are factors in what happens in their mental health environment for them. So those are also good reminders to help me not feel guilty. So those are also good reminders that I turn to when, like, the guilt starts to creep up. It’s like, wait a minute, I am not the only influence and factor here. And then, of course, it’s always easy to think about their dad, right, the ex-husband, like, oh, he has some responsibility here too. That’s an easy place for me to go, but that doesn’t tell the full story. It doesn’t often solve my guilt.

It’s that self-compassion and forgiveness and, for me, spirituality too, like it’s a spiritual journey for me of these children were meant to be born to me, maybe because I do know so much about this and I’m continuing to learn.

I just attended a seminar last night about trauma and autism and how, due to the sensitive nervous system, the sensory overload that happens, a lot of things are considered traumatic to them that to the rest of us it would not be so. Sometimes changing routine or a very overstimulating environment is processed as trauma for them. So my point there is we continue to learn and change and grow, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons they were born to me is that I am willing to continue to do that and as I do that I let go of that old identity and the identity shifts, but the grief of that old identity shifts as well. I’m able to let it go more and more. All right, we’re going to wrap up here. I hope this helps you with grief, guilt. I hope this helps you with guilt and grief. They often go together and I hope you are healthy and safe Peace.

Transcribed by https://podium.page