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dealing with guilt feelings after placing a parent in a nursing home (& maybe using hypnosis to help) An email question: Do you have any tapes to help with guilt feelings? My husband and I had to place his mother in a foster care home and we can't shake our guilt feelings regarding this change in her life and ours. We need to be able to let go of this guilt trip that affects our daily lives. I have a get-rid-of-guilt tape/CD in the works but it is a month or so away. Guilt about such a situation is common and tough to manage. I do have a recording that may help, but it will take some thinking on your part in addition to listening to the recording to place this situation into a manageable perspective. The recording I would suggest first is healing tree 2. The thinking on your part that you would probably benefit from getting into your brain is as follows: 1) It's a loving, positive part of your mind that keeps you going over the situation with the mom and feeling badly that you had to put her in a nursing home. Feeling guilty is a yucky feeling but it is simply an effective part of your brain wanting to help you be the good person you want to be. You probably don't want to be a person who puts a mother into a nursing home without feeling guilty about it for a time. It is tough to have to take such a step and you probably don't want to be making such decisions without a degree of concern, dismay and mourning and a lot of distress if you are forced to do it. 2) Guilt feelings are just your brain wanting you to go over things to be sure you haven't missed something and to make sure you don't do such things in the future without a lot of thinking. (Of course, such situations don't come up that often, but your brain, where the guilt mechanisms are -- doesn't know that the situation won't be recurring a lot.) Further, you probably want to be alert for new alternatives if they come up and the guilt feelings are also due to your brain wanting to revisit the issue every so often to think through whether things have changed. 3) Feeling guilty in such a situation is simply a form of life "dues" that you pay for being committed to being a good, caring sensitive person and for having ethics and empathy. The alternative to being a person who would have such feelings is either a) being an insensitive, callous person or b) being an angry, hostile, viscious person or c) both. 4) You've felt guilty before and you will feel guilty again and always the guilt softens with time. You either change what you are doing because the guilt feelings could not be resolved with your reality (e.g., you decided you were full of baloney in your thinking) or you
5) Ultimately you will decide that it was necessary to place mom in the nursing home and you will decide on a reasonable schedule of visits and supportiveness. You will then feel guilt feelings when you don't keep to your schedule. Those guilt feelings will push you not to go off the schedule in future or they will push you to set a more realistic schedule. 6) It will help resolve the guilt feelings to be certain you have acted in the same way you would expect your child to act in a similar situation with you.  |
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