The Guilt Stimulus

You cannot make amends just to make things even.

When you have danced through life happier, easier, and Now With Jazz Hands! because someone else took the fall for your mistakes — the least you can do is listen long enough to validate their pain.

And maybe — just maybe — say thank you.

But no. Instead, you think you can smooth things over by hiding out, making others work for your redemption while you cross your fingers and hope the storm passes.

That is not absolution. That is laziness dressed as remorse and you continuing to punish the people who actually cared.

And that guilt track you play on repeat — your favourite melancholy hit — is not penance. It is performance art (the only art you make now). When you convince yourself that doing something good for you is somehow a betrayal of someone else, congratulations: you have found a new low.

Here is the thing, darling — the way someone else may or may not think of you? None of your business. You cannot control their thoughts any more than you can control the weather. (You are not a climate system; you are just a person with control issues.)

You will make choices again. You will hurt people again. That is life, not a moral failing. What matters is whether you learn or just keep staging the same tragic play with different props.

Because everything you think others are judging you for — that is your own reflection staring back.

Know the difference between true guilt (the kind that says “I went against my own values”) and fake guilt (the one that just hides fear or sadness behind a costume of virtue).

True guilt can guide you. Fake guilt just keeps you kneeling at the altar of other people’s expectations.

Set your boundaries — not barbed wire fences. Rigid walls keep everyone out, including accountability.

You are going to disappoint people. You have to. That is part of being alive.

You were not put on this earth to grease palms in the dark and play saviour to blushing virgins come Sunday morning.

“The fear of mankind is a snare.” — Proverbs 29:25

Now go ahead — take the damn snare off.