Jump to content

Recommended Posts

I know everyone gets intrusive thoughts about all kinds of things, but is it normal for people to have SO many things they regret from the past? And is it normal to still chew over them regularly many years later?

What I don't understand is if you know you have done something genuinely wrong - not just that OCD is telling you so - how do you learn to forgive yourself for it? Surely you're just letting yourself off the hook?

I find myself at work or wherever and half my mind is going over and over my past looking for things I did wrong,and it latches onto so many. I know this is just ruminating but it is over real things.

Link to comment

I know what you're saying. But... I know this sounds crazy... but I'm not really sure what 'forgiving' really means in that sense. I know what it means towards other people, but I genuinely don't know how to do it towards myself. (And I have tried and tried for a long time!) Also, most of this stuff involves drink (in my student days I used to get horribly, blindingly drunk a lot) and so I'm not even totally sure of what occurred, or how bad it really was. It could have been even worse than I remember.

Link to comment

Forgive is an action word. You have to take action to forgive yourself. I think it means to not dwell on the past and certainly it means not punishing yourself for the past. The past is past. Live in the here and now.

Refuse to dwell on those things that may (or in your case may not) have happened in the past. This is very similar to Sarah, now it isn't it?

Link to comment

Aren't we drifting into the "false memory" saga here though.

I used to get very full of booze. when working in a totally male environment early in my career- not healthy but there you go.

I've mentioned to Saz before I had one time when I had driven my car to the station in the morning - had a bender didn't remember how I got home then found the car perfectly parked outside the house in the morning. I must have driven it and it was in sound condition. But?

At the time I just noted i had taken a big risk, told myself to ensure that I never did that again and promptly forgot about it. I never did do that again, and forgiving myself was the right mental decision.

To be healthy we need to try and anchor ourselbves in the present as a pre-requisite - this means giving up our angst from the past.

Edited by taurean
Link to comment

I think it is slightly different to false memory scenarios such as Saz's (and which I have had in the past) - it is about real things and real tendencies I know that I had, just made a little murky by alcohol and the passage of time. (I would just say I never behave this way anymore and haven't in a very long time).

My brain seems to be constantly scanning for them at the moment and then latching onto them. But I know it's up to me what I then do with it - that I should leave it alone and not analyse or ruminate. I suppose there just seems to be a sort of moral imperative to feel guilty over things that I know were genuinely bad.

Link to comment

Aren't we drifting into the "false memory" saga here though.

I used to get very full of booze. when working in a totally male environment early in my career- not healthy but there you go.

I've mentioned to Saz before I had one time when I had driven my car to the satation in the morning - had a bender didn't remember how i cgot home then found the car perfecftly parked outsie the house in the morning. I must have driven it and it was in sound condition. But?

At the time I just noted i had ataken a big risk, told myslef to ensure that I never did theat again and promptly forgot about it. I never did do that aghain, and forgiving myslef was the right mental decision.

To be healthy we need to try and anchor ourselbves in the present as a pre-requisite - tnhis means giving up our angst from the past.

Thanks Roy. That helps a lot x

Link to comment

I guess the issue is that these weren't one off situations, they happened over and over and my friends got annoyed, I never seemed to learn until one day I basically hit rock bottom and after that majorly sorted things out.

I think I could forgive myself more if it was one occasion which I then learnt from. But I didn't, I just went round and round doing it again and again.

I guess I should just think that if it had been really awful they wouldn't have stayed being friends with me. x

Link to comment

You're right, I have learned, and I am a very, very different person to who I was back then.

I just worry that I may have done some damage. What if one of the hurtful things I said has stayed with one of my friends, what if it made a mark - and I suspect it could have done. I know I said a lot of totally unjustified things back then. I apologised profusely at the time and bringing it up now would just stir up a whole river of long forgotten things when we all have a very good relationship now.

I just wish I was one of those people who didn't have anything to regret, and had only ever brought goodness and happiness to others.

Link to comment

I guess probably the former...... :)

I know what you're saying. I really do. And I would be horrified if I knew one of my friends felt like this. I just seem to be surrounded by very moral and upstanding people and I wish I was like them, or at least I wish I was back then. I wish I knew a fellow screw up so I didn't feel so bad! lol

Link to comment

It shows your a decent person, that you still worry about your mistakes, but it's pointless to dwell on them.

Take this oppurtunity to move on & not repeat them.

It's all anyone can do :original:

Link to comment

You do.Loads of us.Including me.

Let he who is not guilty cast the first stone!

I 'm not proud of some things i did in those early days - a few where i was really guilty of wrong.

But I learned from them, I got my values back in line - I got into dating, my girlfriends gave me an anchor and a focus, I got into singing again and that was enriching and empowering and just enormous fun - I never wanted the runs of our light operatta to end.

As you know I have the scanning OCD thing - different flavour, different format - but that is what it is - the OCD wants to torment you and say you were guilty you should suffer and be punished.

You are being punished by having these thoughts. I was guilty but learned from my behaviour and turned it around and forgave myself for doing that. That perhaps is the "OCD twin" benchmark you can use to tackle the ruminations and disengage?..

Link to comment

I just wish I was one of those people who didn't have anything to regret, and had only ever brought goodness and happiness to others.

i don't think there are many who fall into this category. I know i don't!

I'm sure all of us have said or done things that are unkind or thoughtless at some time or other. We have probably all hurt someone else.

i won't list all the things that 'I'm sure' we've all done - because I suspect i can list them because I am guilty of them! i do have some things that I have done that have caused me great anguish later (some years later due to OCD) but fortunately, I have been able to put them aside.

The thing to do is learn from our mistakes and try not to repeat them.

Link to comment

Everyone has a history and things that they're not proud of. Making mistakes is how we learn. I learned a lot in my student days but sometimes it took a few times for me to really get it- a lot drink related, losing parts of the night, upsetting people, being an idiot etc. etc.. I sometimes do exactly what you're struggling with and beat myself over the head with the past. Everyone, even people with high moral standards, have made mistakes and will regret. OCD does, however, makes us prone to running over the past and feeling guilty. It achieves nothing. It's hard, but try to live in the present. Hope you're doing a bit better today.

Link to comment

Thank you very much the help has been really valuable, as always. I'm going to really try harder not to ruminate on this stuff and walk the walk as legend likes to say! X

Walk tall! You deserve it!

Remember, thinking negative about yourself, whether it be OCD, or anything, will just hold you back from making improvements.

Stay positive & go forward :original:

Link to comment

Obsessional worrying ? Why ? Because you've already said my brain is drawing me into !

People telling you your good isn't the solution

The solution is to work at not taking path a and focusing on the what's, what ifs, the dids, but to

Refoucs and do plan b , and not ruminate and questions oneself

Edited by legend
Link to comment

GB it's very common extremely to chew other things from the past obsessively especially with OCD,I still can do it a bit&used to do it like crazy.I think try your best to say I may've made a mistake but I didn't mean to&I don't surely deserve to punish myself forever.Try to maybe say I wasn't well and what I had done I didn't mean at all,.Anything at all you can counter to attack those thoughts i.e maybe saying there I go again &say maybe stop I'm not going to go over this againI know it's OCD.I've maybe done things in my past I would surely do different now perhaps but at the time I wasn't my best& I surely don't deserve to be punished forever :original: .

Link to comment

I find it very hard to separate individual acts of behaviour from myself as a person and tend to think in 'black and white' terms.

I had a row with my mum on the phone today, which is extremely rare for us - we haven't argued in years. Although I sort of feel I had a point at the time, ever since then I have been chewing it over in terms of me being an awful person, and when I get to thinking like this I go to some pretty dark places in my mind very quickly (I won't go into details but you can probably imagine). I have this constant idea that I am somehow faking it as a good person and that if the people close to me knew the 'real me' they would be horrified. Whenever I say this kind of thing to my partner she says things like 'I know everything about you and I think you're a good person' etc - but then I start to think, maybe she doesn't know everything about me. I did/thought XYZ and she doesn't know about that, if she did she'd be off.... and so on.

A lot of the themes I've had over the years (such as my fear of being arrested etc) relate to this overarching theme of being a bad person and it's a really hard nut to crack - the most frustrating thing is that over the last few years I had made enormous progress with it and it seems to be sliding back.

When I think about it logically, I know I can be kind, loyal and forgiving, I try to be honest, I try to be compassionate and fair, I think I am principled and I stand by those principles. But when I look beyond that, I see really bad flaws that I don't see in others - I am ridiculously impatient, I can be self centred and self serving and I lash out at those close to me, I sometimes find myself being dishonest to people I care about the most. Sometimes I think the good things are just a veneer, to get people to like me and stay with me, and that the bad things are the real me. Sometimes I can see this is stupid. Other times not so much.

Please don't give me reassurance as I get a lot of that and it really doesn't help, I know it.

I'm not really sure what I'm asking for - I guess I just want to put my thoughts down.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...