35-year-old Tanya Delgado is taking a short break from her consistent, year-round anxiety to focus on feeling guilty for no particular reason.
“Once I started therapy and got my life in order, I realized there isn’t a whole lot I need to be anxious about,” said Tanya. “But I almost immediately started feeling guilty about having nothing to be anxious about. At least that’s why I think I feel so guilty. Like, so many people out there are suffering from anxiety, you know? It’s awful.”
Tanya has been enjoying waking up without a palpable sense that something is wrong followed by a racing heartbeat and inability to breathe, and is learning to instead appreciate feeling weighed down by a sense of dread over something terrible she has done that she can’t quite put a finger on.
“Part of me wants to get back to the comfortable heart palpitations of anxiety,” Tanya added. “But I’m learning to appreciate the unbearable weight of guilt and the unique sense of hopelessness that it brings.”
“Honestly I feel like a kid again,” Tanya says. “A kid who is attending Catholic school while going through puberty.”
In spite of her vague, unrelenting sense of guilt, Tanya is hopeful that this exhausting cycle of negative feelings may change someday.
“I wonder what I could do if I used this energy for something positive,” she asked herself, before feeling ashamed that this thought literally just occurred to her.
