Why do we beat ourselves up? Seriously! Could there be anything more masochistic than torturing ourselves day in and day out over something that is either insignificant, beyond our control, or in the past and is over and done with? Why do we do that! Constantly beating yourself up REALLY hurts!
Trust me! I know what I’m talking about. I can name at least a half a dozen things that I beat myself up over on a daily basis. And nothing will make me feel lower than a slugs butt than fighting with myself over the would’ve, could’ve, should’ves of my life.
Here’s some you can take as an example.
- I should’ve been a better husband.
- Then I would’ve had my children with me.
- And I could’ve celebrated the holidays with them.
Now of course all of that is completely irrational. The rational side to that argument is:
- I was the best husband I knew how to be.
- And since I didn’t file for the divorce who can say if I would have my children by my side now or not!
- Not to mention that it’s my ex-wife that is keeping my children from me, not my lack of being a good father.
And even though I believe every rational point, my brain will sit and stew over it like a dog licking a ham bone. It’ll just go over and over every argument, every disagreement, ever decision I made just to prove how lousy of a husband and father I am.
I honestly believe it’s worse than waterboarding. At least with that you believe you’re about to die. With this you’re tricked into believing this is your own personal hell and you’ll have to live with it forever!
So the real question is what can we do about it? I ask my doctors every time about some miracle pill or magic mantras that will make it go away. And unfortunately there really isn’t.
Dr. N explained it best to me while at ANKA CRT.
Imagine every thought you have is just another winding path up a giant mountain. Now the random, once in a blue moon thoughts create a path that is easily overgrown and forgotten. However, by always thinking about those would’ve, could’ve, should’ve thoughts, we end up clearing the path, laying down blacktop, adding handrails and if we continue adding a trolley straight up the hill.
Kinda like a no hassles, express VIP lane just for you.
It’s no wonder those thoughts are so easy to recall and dwell on. They’re riding the express lane where any thought to the contrary is stuck hacking its way through a jungle of obstacles!
Basically the only way we can overcome these thoughts is decide we’re not going to beat ourselves up any more. And as soon as we do, we need to throw in the white towel and find a way to call the fight and work out a healthier, albeit more difficult way.
I found one way is to continually work on cognitive exercises that help retrain my thought processes. I can’t say it’s been easy. And in no way have I been 100% successful.
But I can honestly say that the days I make determined effort to challenge those thoughts by challenging myself, on how it could have been different, why I think it would have been different, what can I really do about it now? All these questions force me to deal with the reality of the situation.
They all force me to stop thinking about the past and force me to work on the now and maybe even plan for a better tomorrow.
So maybe we need to dress up in our sweats, put on our Rocky Workout Soundtracks and start retraining our thought processes.
What about you? How do you pick yourself up and stop thinking about all those Would’ve, Could’ve Should’ves? What have you done to get yourself unstuck and back on the move?
About Eddie Carrington
Eddie, I slip also, into that frame of mind. I try to surround myself with positive people, which is difficult being my husband is out on disability due to depression. My daily chats with my friends and attending the recovery classes keep me on the right path. The other think I do is, KEEP BUSY! When my thoughts are on whatever it is I’m doing or going to do, I can climb out of all those could’ves. Like, I couldv’e prevented my mental illness, even though I consciously know, there is nothing I could have done to prevent this…but there are ways to keep my symptoms under control most of the time. Once again, positive thoughts, positive speech, positive friends and keeping busy.
I think when I get in that mindset I like to wallow in it for a while. I’m not saying that its what I should do, its just what I do do. If I can change to a “gratitude” mindset it helps. Instead of thinking of the crappy things in my life I think about the good things I have going for me. Well, I wish I did that more often, usually I find some kind of escape and waste time or feed some random addiction. But I think the gratitude thing works better than my other strategies.
Sometimes forcing my brain into a rational mindset is the hardest part of many days.
From the time I wake up, I literally start hearing the voice criticizing. “You didn’t fix the bed, you brushed your teeth wrong, you chew too fast, you didn’t clean up good enough, don’t sit like that, you should have taken a bath or washed your hair, your hair looks like crap today, aren’t you going to vacuum and dust today, you waste your time, you haven’t washed the windows yet, why are you wearing that outfit–it makes you look fatter than you are, who would want to be seen with you, you failed at making that recipe again, you are dumb, people don’t like you–in fact they see you coming and go the other way, look at the people who you thought wouldn’t “make it”, their house is better than your’s, boy you look old.” The list goes on and on and the voice in my head most of the time is my father’s. What I have learned to do, and am actually able to do part of the time, is ask myself, “Is that true? Do you know 100% that that is true?” Of course the answer is usually a resounding, “No!” I’m 62 years old and that’s a long time to be walking that negative path. My brain can intellectually know the ways of turning things around, but putting that into real action is still difficult after 7 years of therapy. As I become healthier (and I know and accept that I won’t be completely free,) I wait for the time where I can notice the moments where the voice has been stilled. I will take those moments and treat them as pearls to make a long string of new respect for myself. I wait for the day I can tell that voice, “SHUT UP!”
Shutting down that “voice” takes just too much energy out of me. On really bad days I will start out trying to reason with it, threaten it, put on headphones to drown it. Ya know what’s worked for me these last many trying months. video games. I know some of you are like oh Christ! But think about it. There are so many different types of games and genera that once you start you just kinda get pulled in mentally to what your doing. It gives my brain a heavy dose of information to concentrate on, and before I know it a few hours have gone by where I realize I just actually had some fun and wasn’t thinking of anything else but that little fantasy world for a little while. To each his own I say, but something to think about.