Parenting Guilt Explained: Why You Feel It (and What to Do Instead)

1. 0:00 – 1:01

   Sponsor: Equip virtual eating disorder treatment for families

   1. SHDr. Sheryl0:00

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2. 1:01 – 1:31

   The hidden emotion under parenting stress: guilt

   1. SHDr. Sheryl1:01

      start a sentence like this: "I know I shouldn't feel this way, but..." And what comes next is guilt. Guilt about working too much, or not working enough. Guilt about losing their temper, guilt about not doing enough, or somehow doing too much. And here's what I've noticed. Most parents don't actually talk about guilt directly. We talk about behavior, or school, or about screens, but underneath all of

3. 1:31 – 2:37

   Podcast context + why talk about guilt in the tween/teen years

   1. SHDr. Sheryl1:31

      that, there's usually a parent wondering, "Am I screwing this up?" Welcome to The In Between Years, a podcast from Good Inside for anyone raising, caring for, or loving a tween or teen. I'm Dr. Sheryl. The in between years are that stretch when kids are no longer little, but not yet fully grown. Friendships shift, emotions get bigger, identity is forming. So many moments that can leave parents wondering, "What does this all mean?" This topic of guilt is why I wanted to talk to Dr. Juli Fraga. [gentle music] Dr. Juli is a psychologist who specializes in maternal mental health, and she has spent years studying the emotional lives of parents. Parental guilt is incredibly common, especially in the tween and teen years. But it's also incredibly misunderstood. We treat it like a signal that something is wrong, instead of asking, "What is this actually telling me?"

4. 2:37 – 3:32

   What guilt is supposed to do (and when it becomes too much)

   1. JFDr. Juli Fraga2:37

      So guilt is an emotion that arises when we feel like we've done something bad or wrong, right? Um, and in the science of emotions, guilt serves a very specific purpose. It's what researchers call a self-conscious emotion. It's an emotion that makes us think twice, you know? It's the reason that we may not, you know, yell at our children even when they're driving us crazy.

   2. SHDr. Sheryl3:02

      Guilt isn't random. It actually has a job. It slows us down, makes us think twice. In small doses, it can help us be the kind of parent we want to be, but that's not how most parents experience it.

   3. JFDr. Juli Fraga3:17

      For so many parents, what happens is we experience kind of an inordinate amount of guilt, where we're feeling guilty even when we haven't really done anything wrong or bad. We just feel like we have.

5. 3:32 – 4:07

   “I did something wrong” vs. “I feel like I did”: everyday guilt spirals

   1. SHDr. Sheryl3:32

      "I did something wrong" is not the same as "I feel like I did something wrong." Let me give you a small, very real example. Your kid leaves for school and you realize they didn't eat breakfast, and instantly your brain goes to, "Really? You couldn't even make toast?" And then just as quickly, you start negotiating with yourself. "They'll be fine. They'll eat lunch. It- it's not a big deal." And maybe you move on, but that little moment is enough for a lot of parents to trigger a sense of guilt.

6. 4:07 – 5:38

   Why talking about guilt reduces its power

   1. JFDr. Juli Fraga4:07

      So many of the times, whether or not we feel guilty because we didn't get up early to make our kids a homemade breakfast, or maybe it's something that doesn't have anything necessarily to do with our kids, but maybe we decided to watch an extra episode of Netflix after work instead of go for a yoga class. Um, those aren't the things oftentimes that we're talking with other parents or our friends about, and so it leaves us kind of sitting with the emotion, so much so that the bad feeling convinces us that what we're feeling is actually true.

   2. SHDr. Sheryl4:41

      And when guilt stays inside, it gets louder, not because it's true, because it's unchallenged.

   3. JFDr. Juli Fraga4:49

      But if we had shared that at a time if it's really causing us some distress, right, with another friend, our partner, um, another parent, and they're like, "Yeah, I've been there. I so get it. A lot going on," chances are we just feel less alone in it. And I think any time we feel less alone in an emotional experience and validated, it really helps to take the potency away from it.

   4. SHDr. Sheryl5:11

      This is why a 30-second conversation at the bus stop can feel weirdly life-changing. You say to someone else, "I totally forgot breakfast this morning." And then that parent says, "Same." And suddenly, you're not a bad parent. You're just a parent. But here's where it gets a little more complicated. Sometimes what we call guilt isn't actually guilt.

7. 5:38 – 6:52

   When “guilt” is actually empathy for your child’s discomfort

   1. JFDr. Juli Fraga5:38

      Might also be empathy, right? You're having some empathy for her, that she's having the experience that you know as her mom is gonna be hard on her.

   2. SHDr. Sheryl5:47

      This is a huge shift in mindset, and I want you to try it every time you feel that sense of guilt. A lot of what parents call guilt is actually them saying to themselves, "I feel bad that my kid feels bad."

   3. JFDr. Juli Fraga6:05

      I do this more than I want to admit, have guilt because our children are going to feel, quote-unquote, bad or uncomfortable with something, as if we're responsible for the, you know, uncomfortable or, you know, prickly emotion, um, as if it's our responsibility to completely take it away.

   4. SHDr. Sheryl6:29

      That belief right there, that your job is to prevent your child from ever feeling uncomfortable, that's where guilt blooms. Because if you think that's your job, you will fail constantly, and when guilt takes over, it doesn't just sit quietly. It starts to shape your decisions.

8. 6:52 – 8:05

   How guilt shapes parenting: overgiving, lost boundaries, and exhaustion

   1. JFDr. Juli Fraga6:52

      If I'm a child, and if, let's say, I feel really sad about something, and I tell my parents or their, you know, my caregivers, and maybe they were never given any tools to deal with sadness, maybe it's really hard for them to kind of work through or even regulate that emotion, and they say something like, um, "You're making a big deal out of nothing. Just brush it off." You know, and the child says, "Oh, but I still feel so sad." They're like, "Oh, you just need to get over it right away. Why are you, you know, you know, don't kind of be a negative person or a Negative Nelly." And the child hears that over and over and over again. But imagine that because the parent didn't have any tools to deal with their own sadness, that there's never a repair, um, for that kind of misattunement, as I would call it. What does a child learn? A child learns that in order to stay in the good graces of my parents, who I love and need so much, or my attachment figures, I have to push my sadness down. They do this unconsciously without realizing it, and instead, guilt will rise to the surface.

9. 8:05 – 8:41

   Where guilt can originate: childhood emotional invalidation and misattunement

   1. SHDr. Sheryl8:05

      So guilt turns into overgiving. You say yes to things that stretch you too far. You override your instincts. You stop holding boundaries you actually believe in, and then over time, you don't just feel guilty, you feel exhausted. There's another layer here, because for many of us, guilt didn't start in parenting.

   2. JFDr. Juli Fraga8:31

      You know, we feel guilty about something, so we say yes then when we need to say no. We don't set a boundary when we really want to.

10. 8:41 – 9:25

    A practical “emotional litmus test”: did I do wrong, or just feel wrong?

    1. SHDr. Sheryl8:41

       In simple terms, if growing up your feelings weren't really held, you may have learned to turn those feelings inward. So instead of feeling sad, you learned to feel guilty. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, you learned to feel like you were failing. So here's a question that can change everything. Did I actually do something wrong, or do I just feel like I did?

    2. JFDr. Juli Fraga9:11

       Great distinguisher is just asking yourself that question, "Hey, have I really done anything wrong here, or I, do I just feel like I have?" You know, to kind of use that as kind of your own emotional litmus test, so to speak.

11. 9:25 – 10:14

    Benign wrong vs. catastrophic wrong: recalibrating the stakes

    1. SHDr. Sheryl9:25

       Most of the time, we're not dealing with huge mistakes. We're dealing with normal, everyday ones.

    2. JFDr. Juli Fraga9:33

       It's kind of a benign wrong, you know? It's not a catastrophic wrong. It's not like this is going to really scar my child forever wrong, you know? And to kind of be able to distinguish between the two, because I think most of the things that fall under parental guilt, even when we have, you know, in this case maybe didn't keep our word about something, it's not a catastrophic wrong.

    3. SHDr. Sheryl9:59

       Making this distinction has the power to entirely change how you parent, because guilt is useful sometimes. Sometimes it's pointing to something real, a moment where you do want to repair.

12. 10:14 – 11:19

    When guilt is useful: a simple 3-step repair and apology

    1. JFDr. Juli Fraga10:14

       Three simple steps to an apology with our kid. Let's say that we lost our cool with them, you know, because they wanted to go to the mall. The first step would be just to own our behavior. "Hey, you know what? I'm really sorry that I snapped at you when you asked, you know, me to take you to the mall." Two is to acknowledge kind of their experience with some empathy. We want to step into their world. "Yeah, I know when I did that, that probably didn't feel great, and I'm sorry." Three is to make the repair or offer to make the repair, and to say, "Is there anything you'd like to talk about? We also don't have to address it right now, but I want you to know that I'm here if you have any feelings or any thoughts that you want to share with me. And again, I'm, I'm really sorry. I, I take full ownership for, you know, losing my cool with you."

    2. SHDr. Sheryl11:06

       Repair doesn't have to be big. It can be three sentences. "I'm sorry. That probably didn't feel good. I'm here if you want to talk," and that's it.

13. 11:19 – 12:14

    “Less is more”: stop overexplaining and stop over-carrying

    1. JFDr. Juli Fraga11:19

       Less is more. You know? You don't have to explain everything that's going on in your world, um, in order for your child to know that you take responsibility for your behavior and the impact that it had on them.

    2. SHDr. Sheryl11:37

       Less is more, not just in apologies, but in how much you feel like you're supposed to carry. Here's what I want you to take with you. Guilt isn't the enemy. Guilt is information. Sometimes it's telling you, "Hey, repair this," and sometimes it's telling you you're holding yourself to an impossible standard.

    3. JFDr. Juli Fraga12:01

       We're not gonna not have an emotion, but the more that we can notice it and then work through it in different ways, you know, um, then we're equipped to handle it differently.

14. 12:14 – 13:04

    Closing perspective for parents of tweens/teens: guilt will come—choose what you do next

    1. SHDr. Sheryl12:14

       Sometimes you're gonna feel guilt. That's not a sign you're failing. The question isn't whether guilt shows up, it's what you do next. Let's end by zooming way out. Okay, deep breath. This in-between time feels like a lot, because it is a lot. If you remember one thing, let it be this. They act like they don't need you. They still need you. I'll see you next week. [outro music]

Episode duration: 13:12