The One About Our Silent Companion: Guilt

I will never forget one time I felt so guilty at work… It was awful, mostly because I was completely confused about how I was supposed to feel about the whole thing. Long story short, a former colleague gave me feedback that I was working too much, too hard, and that I was setting the wrong example for others. Imagine that.

In that moment, I didn't know how to process it. I took the feedback, nodded, went home, and just felt weird. Guilty. But why? It wasn't my intention to make anyone else feel pressured, and honestly, I come from a culture where the more you work, the better. So, you can imagine: it was a complete short circuit in my system.

Fast forward three years, and guilt has become one of the most interesting topics in my personal and professional life. I've realized how deep and how normalized guilt is for women. So normalized, in fact, that sometimes we can't even see it clearly.

Take the "divine trilogy" of work–motherhood–guilt. Everyone knows it. But here's what struck me: when I started asking friends about guilt at work, leaving motherhood aside, many of them needed extra time to answer. It was almost as if guilt, outside of parenting, wasn't as obvious. But after a few cups of coffee and some long conversations, I was able to identify six patterns that kept coming back. Not universal truths, but recurring triggers women described:

• time allocation
• boundaries and saying no
• ambition and success
• financial independence and power
• authenticity vs expectations
• self-care and rest

Of course, there are many more directions we could go in. But as much as I love digging into understanding why, there comes a moment where we also need to move into how.

So… why is it relevant to talk about guilt? Because this burden, this constant voice about what we do or don't do, shapes our choices, protects the system as it is, and acts like an emotional tax with real consequences.

Talking about guilt matters because silence keeps it in the shadows, where it quietly erodes our confidence and sustains inequity. And the goal of today's episode is simple: to make guilt tangible, so we can start spotting it in real time and change it, slowly but surely.

So, let's bring it all together — work, women, and that guilt.