Guilt

You say no to a favor and within seconds a wave of guilt arrives, as if you had harmed someone. Often you did nothing wrong at all. For people who learned to keep others happy, the body files any displeasure in another person as evidence of your own wrongdoing, so guilt fires on a fair limit the same way it would fire on a real mistake.

Brene Brown draws a clear line between guilt and shame. Guilt says I did something bad. It is about behavior, and it can be useful, because it can move you to repair an actual harm. Shame says I am bad, and that one rarely helps. A boundary that triggers guilt is usually not a harm to repair. It is a nervous system mistaking the discomfort of disappointing someone for proof of a crime.

Guilt after a boundary tends to peak and pass. You can feel it and still hold the line, letting the feeling run out instead of obeying it.