If you were raised Catholic or spent significant time in the religion, you may be wondering how to get over your Catholic guilt. Many people struggle to overcome this pervasive feeling long after they’ve found their way out of a more restrictive version of Catholicism. Whether you are now identify as a more progressive Catholic, have a different religious affiliation, or identify as non-religious, you may be coping with the after-effects of Catholic guilt.
What causes Catholic guilt?
While Catholic guilt is common, people can vary a lot in how they individually internalize guilt from Catholicism. Catholicism is practiced by over a billion people around the world, so there are cultural and regional differences in how Catholicism is practiced. This means that not everyone will come away with the same flavor of guilt, and some people may be raised in a form of Catholicism that carries little to no guilt. Despite these variations, we can name a few themes that contribute to Catholic guilt for many people.
Emphasis on contrition, confession, and penance
Catholics are taught from an early age to notice how they are being sinful. As a Catholic, once you identify your sins you are encouraged to confess these sins and seek penance.
From a developmental psychology standpoint, this emphasis on noticing your sinfulness can cause a lot of stress for a young child. Children thrive when they feel safe and accepted by their caregivers. In Catholicism, children are taught to see God as a caregiver, and so knowing that God is watching and noticing their sinfulness can create a lack of safety and calm.
You might internalize this by feeling that you aren’t allowed to make a mistake, or have messy or complicated thoughts and feelings. As you grew up, you may have continued to examine yourself for sinfulness, which can create a self-critical inner voice. That self-critical inner voice often translates to a pervasive feeling of guilt around your thoughts and actions.
Teachings on eternal damnation
As a Catholic, you were likely taught a lot about hell. For Catholics, hell is a place you end up in if you violate any number of rules. For many, this translates to a pervasive anxiety around whether you are doing something that will lead to eternal damnation.
If you are a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, this anxiety can extend to your very identity, creating a painful internal reality where your mere existence is taught is a reason for damnation. Often this fear and belief is internalized long before you have an awareness of your queer identity – for many the awareness that there’s something to hide and fear comes before the awareness of your own queer identity. For many Catholics, this fear of eternal damnation is also tied to sexual behavior, so as you grew up you may have learned to tie guilt towards any sexual thoughts, desires, or actions.
Family and peer influence
One reason Catholic guilt varies so much is that family influence can play a big role in how you experience Catholic teachings. If your family brings a safe, secure form of love and belonging, you may be partly or fully inoculated to Catholic guilt.
However, if your caregivers are inconsistent, unavailable, intrusive, or any number of emotionally immature parenting styles that lack safety and security, the Catholic teachings that promote guilt may be more fully internalized for you. This is because messages of questioning your worth and belonging are essentially being reinforced at home and at church, creating a cycle of self-doubt.
Peers can influence you as well – often youth groups and other social groups can involve a lot of peer encouragement to follow strict religious rules. You may have been asked to sign pledges to avoid sinful behavior or to remain sexually abstinent. Often these pledges occur among peers to encourage a sort of peer pressure to encourage conformity.
How to get over Catholic guilt
Many people questioning their Catholic guilt recognize that some of these more rigid and shaming messages are no longer important to them. Some people identify as “recovering Catholics” to signify that they are healing from this guilt-ridden way of living. As an adult, you may be seeking a more balanced relationship with religion and spirituality, or de-emphasizing religion and spirituality in your life if it’s no longer meaningful to you. Yet the guilt persists! Here are a few ways to get over your Catholic guilt:
Learn that your thoughts can’t be sinful
A huge revelation for me when I became a therapist was learning the skill of defusion from acceptance and commitment therapy. Defusion is essentially a skill of creating space between the part of you that can notice your thoughts, and the actual thoughts that pass through your mind. The underlying theory behind this is that we can’t control every thought that comes in our heads.
Take a minute and listen to your thoughts – and pay attention to which thoughts you choose to think, and which you don’t. Maybe you’re planning your grocery list in your head when in pops an embarrassing memory from two weeks ago. Did you choose to think about that embarrassing memory? Probably not! Defusion involves recognizing that our thoughts are not as important as our values and our actions in the world.
Many Catholics and former Catholics struggle with intrusive thoughts. These are thoughts that are persistent yet unwanted, and they can cause a lot of distress.
Maybe you see your friend’s wallet lying on a coffee table and think “what if I stole his wallet?” Suddenly you are filled with guilt and shame at having such a “sinful” or morally wrong thought. But were there any consequences to thinking that thought? Did you act on that thought? To build the skill of defusion, you might start to notice “that was just a thought.” You can remember that this is a thought your mind randomly created, and what really matters is how you choose to act and move through the world.
Distinguish between unhelpful guilt and helpful guilt
Sometimes we do things we regret, and that is a normal part of the human experience! Catholicism may have led you to believe that you should sit in silent shame when you did anything wrong. However, this is often unproductive and doesn’t help resolve anything.
To move on from Catholic guilt, you’ll need to differentiate between unhelpful guilt and helpful guilt. Examples of unhelpful guilt include guilt from noticing intrusive thoughts, watching your favorite tv show, or eating ice cream. These are morally neutral actions!
Helpful guilt arises when you truly realize you did something that isn’t aligned with your values. We want to be able to retain our helpful guilt – this is essential to maintaining human connection! When you notice helpful guilt you can take action to repair relationships and pursue meaningful corrective action in your life. An example of helpful guilt is yelling at your partner and then realizing that you regret this and want to find ways to communicate while avoiding yelling.
Healthy relationships involve working through mistakes and conflicts as they come up, rather than hiding them or avoiding them. Try to practice speaking up when you feel you truly need to account for something and seek to repair relationships when needed. On the flip side, recognize that you don’t need to apologize for every little thing. The people who love you likely don’t care about your smallest perceived mistakes – reserve apologies for when you get real feedback that an apology or conversation is needed.
Offer yourself self-compassion when guilt arises
Whether your guilt is helpful or unhelpful, feeling guilt is uncomfortable and can be intense. Learn to speak to yourself kindly and with self-compassion when this arises. As we discussed earlier, Catholic guilt comes from a lack of safety and security when you are young and dependent on your caregivers for survival. To overcome this guilt, we need to learn to be our own source of safety and security. This comes from talking to ourself with kindness, and with building reciprocal relationships in our lives that add to that sense of security.
This doesn’t mean that everyone around you has to make you feel safe all of the time. People are flawed and may miss the mark at times, and people have a right to give you feedback when you are missing out on responding to their needs and wants. However, you will likely grow in your ability to tolerate guilt if you surround yourself with people who bring kindness to their interactions with you.
Life beyond Catholic guilt is possible
I can’t promise your Catholic guilt will magically evaporate, because as we explored, this took a lot of time to set in. However, if you take the time to learn that your thoughts can’t be sinful, distinguish between helpful and unhelpful guilt, and offer yourself compassion, you’ll be well on your way to taking the power out of Catholic guilt when it arises.
If you’re struggling with Catholic guilt, I’m a former Catholic and religious trauma specialist seeing adult counseling clients over video in my Texas practice. Schedule a free introductory call here to explore how I might help walk you through these skills to find more freedom from Catholic guilt.
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