From Guilt to Growth: Unpacking Your Guilt

Pet Loss & GriefSenior Years & End-Of-LifeThe Forever Connection

Apr. 9

Why do some pet parents feel guilty about their pet's end-of-life (EOL) journey after their loss? Pets are active members of your family, and you often have a profound sense of responsibility for them and the choices that you make for them. Sometimes, you feel you may have failed them in that depth of love and caring.

What influences the feelings of guilt? How your beloved pet's EOL journey went, medical care choices and the circumstances leading up to and around their death can all influence the level of guilt you may feel.

When caring for an ailing or aging pet, you may feel regret and guilt if you have any moments of anger, yell, or feel frustrated with them in their final days. This is due to caregiver tiredness from all the extra assistance/care required, disrupted sleep, extra vet visits, and food changes, all coupled with an array of emotions of an EOL journey and the day of your pet's transition.

Feelings of guilt are common and often present in the early days and weeks that follow their loss as you look back at the care you gave and question whether it was enough, the right thing to do.

After a decade of communicating with animals, I have come to a consistent realization: animals harbour no resentment toward you for any choices, sadness, hesitation, doubt, anger or frustration you may have exhibited toward them during their final days. Instead, they deeply understand the underlying emotions driving such reactions—the fear of losing them.

By recognizing that your fear of your pet’s death is a natural experience encompassing a range of emotions, including anger or frustration, you can begin to understand the complex interplay of your feelings, your level of attachment to them, and the inevitability of letting go. With their wisdom, your pets continue to guide you in discovering a balance between holding on and gracefully accepting their impending transition. In essence, your animal is teaching you the significance of letting go with dignity and peace.

Guilt can be and is a helpful tool for you in your grief process.

When you are fearful, under stress and anxious, guilt is your mind's way of helping you cope with the deep level of pain you feel inside about losing your beloved animal. Guilt is often your mind trying to make sense of and understand the circumstances around their EOL and loss. Guilt offers you the opportunity to ask questions and explore the possibility of learning from the questions that you are asking. These questions you ask and play over can help you learn to explore what you could have done differently. This allows you to make different future choices and enables you to learn, grow, and make changes. At that moment, you made the choice you believed was the best with the available information. You cannot know what you don't know. You cannot know symptoms if you have never experienced a certain health disease in your pet. You cannot know what changes you wish you had made in care while in the active care phase. All you can do is learn and open the door for knowledge to come in for future choices - as only now will you know signs and symptoms earlier, seek attention sooner, make different choices from what you learned for your other or future pets, and be more supportive and compassionate of others and their pets with similar situations.

When Guilt Becomes Unhealthy

This happens when you stay in guilt for months or years, in a loop with your feelings of guilt and cannot move beyond them. Remaining guilt influences not only your emotions but also each time how you recall and go over the situation, halts your opportunity to go into your pain and grief and hinders your grief journey. Carrying old guilt over a loss added to new situations, EOL, or loss adds to the unresolved guilt only to compound your guilt further. When one is stuck in guilt and going over the story of their animal’s care or loss over and over, one's body, heart, and mind are literally physiologically experiencing the emotional overload each time one goes over the situation and circumstances and ends up exhausting oneself. When the fact is, your beloved animal has only died once, and your body and heart continue to experience their death repetitively as if it is happening all over again.

This stuckness leads down a spiral, and this depth of guilt can lead to depression and isolation and affect you physically in regards to sleep and eating patterns, and even affect your relationships with your other pets, friends, or family.

So, in the early days and months of loss, guilt is a normal feeling and a protector of your pain. It's a part of trying to find answers for something you are struggling to come to terms with. Guilt is keeping you from being able to be fully present in your pain as it is trying to help you make sense of your grief.

When you can accept and befriend your guilt as part of the grieving process, it can then lead you to a new space of being gentle and tender with yourself when you know it is your mind deflecting you from the pain in your heart.

The animals I have spoken with in the afterlife have all told me that they don't understand this human-made emotion of guilt because it isn't something they feel or experience. Animals have shared that they may feel remorse over actions or behaviours but not guilt; it is a concept they truly do not understand. They only want you to know that they know all your choices were made in love with good intentions.

Feeling Guilty for Letting Go of Guilt:

Some people have shared a fear that if they stop feeling guilty, they will stop loving or caring for their animals. Others have shared that they feel like they're not honouring their animal if they're not feeling guilty.

Animals have shared with me they don't want you to suffer in guilt or regret for the choices we made in their EOL journey or after their loss. They want you to feel the love that was in your relationship. They want you to open your hearts and move through your grief so you may come back to joy and love. Even love yourself as to the depth they loved you. And they welcome the idea of a relationship with a new animal when and if you are ready.

How Do You Be With The Guilt And Be Okay?

Unpack and spend time with your emotions, recognizing and acknowledging them.
Healing starts by identifying if you are stuck in a guilt cycle and becoming aware of it.
Awareness of your guilt cycle allows you to break free and remember the gentleness you need for yourselves.
Guilt is a protective mechanism to help you process the gravity of your loss.
Viewing guilt as a helper reduces its charge over you and enables you to be gentler with yourselves.
Adding positive memories of your pets challenges negative thoughts and lifts you from guilt.
Understanding guilt's role in protecting you fosters self-compassion and gratitude for time with your animal.
Accepting that you can't change the circumstances of their death opens the door to self-forgiveness and compassion.
Engaging in stories and memories of your animal despite guilt opens your heart to love.
Exploring ways to celebrate and honour your animal opens our hearts to new understandings of their significance in your lives.

Understanding that guilt is normal and protects you from the depth of your pain allows you to embrace self-compassion, leading to gratitude for the time you shared with your beloved animal. This shift in perspective enables you to open yourself to self-forgiveness and compassion, recognizing that you cannot change the circumstances that have already happened during EOL or surrounding their passing. Instead, acknowledge your guilt, pain, and grief and remember the gift of your relationship with them is love. Your heart is big enough to hold the full spectrum of all your emotions. From the other side, your animal guides you towards self-forgiveness, reminding you of the unconditional love they gave you they want you to give yourself. Your best efforts were always enough, as they were rooted in love and care. When you open to seeing the entirety of your relationship with your animal, it transcends any guilt or regrets. It takes the extra weight off your grief and pain and makes it pure so you can be in grief and love simultaneously.

Do You Need Support in Your Situation?

Explore your relationship and experience further and consider joining the next workshop series finding understanding and support in my sessions are tailored to provide you with the compassionate support you need and learn the messages from your pet.