Living with regret

Post Reply New Topic

It's so hard... Every single day I think about the things I've done and said, the people I've wronged, all of the mistakes I made. Finally when I think I may be getting over such regrets, I just think about them again and again and again.... I'm not sure what this is going to accomplish... This is just a sad, depressed rant I will probably regret posting later. I am not sure what to do anymore.

I do that all the time. Or lay in bed at night, re-living agonizingly embarrassing scenes, over and over. It does no good. I recently printed out some affirmations that I found on line, and am trying to replace all the negative, repetitive stuff with these. Maybe you could try that?

Hi yes I do this all the time too but I feel it can be overcome to some extent using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques which is basically cosciously stopping yourself and either blanking the mind or doing/thinking of something else. The thing I've noticed though is that I need to keep giving myself a refresher course [in CBT] or I just forget and fall back into the habit.

There's a book called how to live a complaint free life, no need to buy it as it just tells you to wear a bracelet on your wrist and every time you have a negative thought you switch the bracelet to the other wrist. I never did i t but just having it in mind made me conscious just how negative I was being towards myself and everything else, it also made me realise that with effort I could cut the bulk of it out thus making the inside of my head a much better place to be. The physical action (or in my casethe associated thought) was also enough of a distraction to stop the train of thought long enough so I could get off.

I'm kind of new to this but I do believe this constant repetative self berating is a type of echolalia as it feels annoying in a similar way to other forms of it.

Sorry if this is irrelevant to you but hope it helps.

every night, I keep telling myself "think of something you had a GREAT time doing!" but there I am again, thinking about Connie Templeton giving me piano lessons and her father comes in and cuts her fingernails because she was seeing some boy he didn't like. Yhen I puzzle over that for hours "why did he do that in the middle of our lesson?" "why did he do that at all? "it was so barbaric how she had to sit there crying and begging him not to cut them (they were lovely) and how I felt about being nothing to either one of them that they just did that like I was invisible and I was paying a dollar fifty cents from my own allowance for the hour.

I mean, how many times can you try to figure out what went on in your life when you don't have all the puzzle pieces? hummm. . maybe I will try that tonight, and just tell myself I don't have all the information to figure it out, and let it go, finally.

Yeah . . .right, like that's gonna happen.

After coming very close to dying at 36 from celiac disease I realized that I just had to let all of that go. That is something that makes little sense until you actually experience it.

Familiar. I know the pain of lying in bed reliving social gaffes and mistakes. As for those mysteries, well I think there are some things we will never know.... when I think back to my 20s I know there was a lot happening in the social world I was in that I didnt know about. It makes me want to not go back to those situations, and think about building a future where I can feel more secure about what is going on around me.