Dysfunctional and alcoholic families love guilt. Guilt is a way to control you or for a way for you to control someone else. Do you use guilt to get your way? Or does someone use guilt to make you do something for them?

The work that we need to do each day is to separate ourselves from someone else’s problems. Their problems are not ours. We are not responsible to prop someone up, to fix someone, or to save someone.

We are responsible for ourselves.

Yes, we are responsible for our children, but only to a point.

Do you help solve your child’s fights? Or write their school assignments? Or cover for a spouse when they drink too much?

No one said that guilt and the complexities of dysfunction or alcoholism are easy to navigate.

When we are complacent and do not put up a firm boundary, all hell breaks loose.

We cannot find our own happiness by covering or fixing someone else. No matter how much we might want to mend a wounded part of ourselves, we are unable to do that.

If your father left you, you can’t fix that wound by trying to be with a partner who isn’t emotionally available for you. It just won’t work. You can try, you can waste your time and energy, but in the end you’ll be hurt or will have hurt someone because you’ll realize that you’re not being fulfilled.

Our true potential is in embracing our truth and face our problems.

If someone tries to use guilt to control you, beware.

We are not chess pieces to be played with. And if you use guilt to get what you want, I implore you to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself this question:

Why do you have so little self-esteem that you use manipulation to fulfill yourself?

Is that a hard question to ask?

Yes, it is, but if we want to be free of the dysfunctional behavior in our lives, then we need to be honest with ourselves.

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