Being surrounded by love and understanding everywhere except in your own head

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I moved on to a new job, and today was my last day at my old job. My coworkers really let me know how important I am to them, and that I am more than a coworker to them. Plus I am moving a bit away (not very far though) and will not see family as much. And I can tell it will bother them too.

It sucks because I have tons of people who love and accept me but inside my own head I am reliving resentment and bitterness from the past constantly. I have had a lot of problems in the past with various psychiatric illnesses, and a lot of rejection, alienation, powerlessness and humiliation from that. But I have gotten better and my life is pretty good now on various levels. but I am reliving the past constantly, despite the fact that my external environment is pretty good. I feel a lot of good things pass me by because of it. Like I don’t enjoy the good things in life and am constantly tense because things all pass through a filter of bitterness, pain and resentment that colors my worldview.

I have tried therapists. Some are good, some aren’t. But by and large it is more of a growing process where you learn to accept yourself and your failings (rather than relive them and beat yourself up for them), not something a therapist can turn on or off for you. Over time I’m sure it will get better (at times it gets worse but again that is part of uncovering bad things from the past, wounds need to be uncovered to heal sometimes).

Anyway, it is just something I go through. I know there is no anonymity on the internet, which sucks. the internet used to be the place people could talk about things that bothered them that they couldn’t verbalize in person. Abuse, addiction, suicidal tendencies, pain, loneliness, etc. Now with so much transparency online that is going away and it is becoming more sterilized and PC. I really wish I knew how to forgive myself and forgive other people. It seems if I knew how to do that my life would be 75% better about this stuff.

2

Check out The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns.

Also, do you remember how you learned the multiplication tables? You repeated them over and over until they wore a path in your neurons. The more times you think about something, the more deeply worn that thought-path becomes in your brain.

The same thing is happening with your unhappy thoughts. The more you think about your unhappy memories, the more engraved in your brain they become. When your brain is in “idle mode” it starts to wander down the easily followed, well-worn path of unhappy memories. You’ve fallen into the unhealthy habit of rumination.

You have to start thinking about something else, so those new thoughts will become well-worn paths your brain will travel down when it’s idle. Learn a language, volunteer your time helping someone, if you play a musical instrument, learn a complicated piece of music. Get involved in amateur theater and make your brain memorize lines and stage actions instead of ruminating about unhappy memories. Best of luck.

3

I pretty much second this entire post. That’s a great book, very useful if you actually do the exercises.

I tend to have a self-deprecating sense of humor, and although it’s truly intended to be a harmless joke, it does seem to have an unintentional impact on the way I feel about myself. I used to think the concept of ritualized self-affirmation was pretty ridiculous, but I swear it works (for me, anyway). You re-train yourself to think more positively. I still have to work at doing it consistently, but it was pretty shocking to me how much of a difference it seemed to make.

4

I wholeheartedly agree with this, but would like to make a distinction. You don’t want to focus on somethng else because it will distract you from your troubling thoughts. Your troubling thoughts themselves are the distraction. If you can train your mind to come back to whatever you’re doing in the moment, the troubling thoughts will disappear like the ghosts that they are.

Don’t expect that to happen overnight, it’s a practice that you’ll have to do every day.

And here’s a nice little quote to tell yourself as often as you need: “The fruit of negative feelings is endless ignorance and suffering. To realize this is to cultivate the opposite.”

5

Well, as it happens I know a little trick for this, which I once found extremely helpful, in my own world.

You have to sit, still, quiet, clear your mind, close your eyes. Then you imagine, somewhere else, on this busy, busy planet another soul, suffers, just as you suffer now. They also have suffered, cannot stop ruminating, cannot find forgiveness. You can feel their pain. Feel it, where ever you feel it physically, your heart, your chest, your breathing, your gut. Then, will all the focus of your mind, send this imagined suffering individual, all the compassion, forgiveness and good vibes you can manifest. Just send it out into the universe.

That’s it. Pretty simple, right? It only takes a few moments to do, if you focus. Do it several times a day. It works, I think, because it tricks your subconscious mind into manifesting compassion - for yourself. Feeling compassion, for suffering others, is the easy part, the challenging lesson of compassion is to have it for ourselves. Being a compassion heart, means both these things, not just one.

I do hope you’ll try it. I found this little trick extremely helpful to me once, when I was in a very bleak place. I hope it offers you some relief from your suffering.

Good Luck!

6

That sounds like a great practice.

7

Helping other people has helped me.
And concentrating on the future, not the past.
My writing (both here and on my fiction) has helped immensely.
Things will get better.