How can I break the failure feedback loop?

Post Reply New Topic

You know when people see you make a mistake, and you feel embarrassed, and the shame of it breaks your concentration, which quickly leads to another mistake, which leads to more embarrassment and more mistakes?

How can I break that feedback loop?

The only way...is to think of your initial mistake as a learning experience....so you can focus better on not making the same or similar mistakes in the future.

This focus will also prevent unrelated mistakes.

I have a natural tendency to ruminate on my mistakes, catastrophize, and set myself up for more screwups because I'm so hyperfocused on my original mistake.

This has taken me a very long time to achieve, and only after medication, but I have to set a limit for myself. I can be upset about what happened, but after a certain point, I have to cut myself off and insist that it's done, I can't do anything about it, and the failure is 19289418984 times bigger and more glaring to me than everyone else. And force myself to stop thinking about it. Really, truly get my mind onto something else and let it pass, understanding it's a much worse issue to me than others.

of course, this is MUCH easier said than done... before I got on the right medication, if my anxiety was fixated on something, that was it, there was no not ruminating no matter how much I wanted to think about something--anything--else. and it was insulting when therapists and parents would just tell me "not to worry about it." trust me, I would have if I could :/