How do you stop doing the "would have could have should have" sort of stuff to yourself?

[Changing4Best]

For me, looking to the future with hope and working on building a future are the key points. If I look back and see all the mistakes I have made, I try to look at how I can keep from making them in my future. So I am going to ask my T to help me work on relationship skills. Also on how to look out for Mr. Wrong. (I'm up for a T re-eval to determine what we will work on next, so this is a good point to bring these things up, right?). Then also, if I find myself ruminating, I try to do something that occupies my attention. Cooking, crocheting, painting, writing in my journal or Trauma Diary, whatever hobby or pastime or whatever you enjoy doing that takes your mind off stuff like this. Call a friend. Write a letter to your mother and tell her how messed up she is/ was and then tear it up or burn it! Do the same to your rapist(s). [I just read your first email here, so I don't know all the particulars].

 

[Justmehere]

I am vicious towards myself at times for past mistakes. I try to remember my flaws can help me offer others grace and compassion. Because at the end of the day we are all flawed and yet all need compassion. I try to not be a hypocrite and apply the same compassionI can easily offer others, to myself too.

 

[Abstract]

So sorry that was your reality. You deserved to have two safe and nurturing parents and not have to protect yourself within your family environemnet. None of that is your fault and none of being harmed after is your fault. We all do things we would change if we had a crystal ball but we didn't have one. We only do what we know how to do at the time of any action. We do the best we can. Each action you made you did the best you could at that time. Now you know different things and can make different decisions.

Totally understand the shock of only realising a parent was abusive when an adult. Was in my 30's with the first round and am still now struggling in my 50's in the second round of that. Children accept their reality, They don't have anything to compare it to. And our brains can need to see someone as safer than they are if there isn't an alternative. Its about survival. Keeping the so called "caregiver" relationship going.

In my experience trauma seems to come packaged with intense vicious self hatred. Hatred that is hard to put into words. I've notice how it just arrives when the symptoms do. Now that my symptoms are not constantly at atomic levels it is easier to see that. I try to just label it as a symptom these days. Not really mine. What was "given" to me when others harmed me. The other thing that I do that can help a little at times is imagining if it was someone else. How I would see it. What I would say to them. My biggest problem is even acknowledging things happened in the first place and if they did that I was harmed by them so who knows, maybe I am at a stage where I haven't even started with the stuff here.?

You sound like you doing a lot of hard and good work so credit to you.

 

[Kaleidoscope]

I can't stop thinking about how horribly my life went, how I should have done x y z things at x y z points... I've worked on a lot of trauma and made a lot of progress but... I can't help but look back and go "holy f*ck I seriously f*cked up. If I had just handled this one little thing differently..." so on and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, whatever friggin fancy Latin phrase you wanna insert.

I'd prefer to stay positive though, it's kinda pissing me off that I'm having these thoughts, too.

I wish I could just go "f*ck it all" and just be like, "ahh whatever" at my past. I wish I could sit here and go "hey holy shit I'm f*cking alive who gives a f*ck how much I f*cked up, I should be dead several times over by now" and f*cking -appreciate it-... appreciate that I am even f*ckin' writing this. I wish I could be like "hey, 2nd chance at life, forget the past was even there, just, start over, you got a reset button, just recharge and go back at it"

But it's not as easy as just wishing.

I'm having a hard time not thinking about the trauma, but now instead of the very panicky moments, the weapons stuff, the gun stuff, I'm thinking about the other aspects of the traumas. I'm also thinking about the rape a lot, the shame, the guilt, the disgust, so on.

I keep thinking about how I shouldn't have let any of that happen, how I could have prevented it, even with the whole "lol hindsight is 20/20" thing, which I say all the time haha... even with that, I'm like, really being down on myself and feeling like I f*cked up my life really bad.

I don't even know what words to put into it. A lot of self-negativity, with a hint of anger at the people who did this to me. But mostly just self-negativity, feeling like I f*cked up, feeling like I missed out on so much shit, feeling like my life could have been f*cking awesome by now but instead I ruined it.

Feeling like I just ruin everything - I think that's something related to my childhood trauma. My mom basically, my whole life, has gone right to me as the family scapegoat. I was always guilty until proven innocent, at which point I get a scolding to make sure I don't do whatever it is she was blaming me for and... yeah just, horrible f*cking mother. No love for me as far as I am concerned, in regards to the definition of the word "love" in my head.

My mom has always had no confidence in me, or my decisions - I guess writing this all out has helped me kinda maybe pinpoint some of the source of these sorts of thoughts. Having it beaten into me as a kid, and having a f*cking dickwad of a mother.

But anyway...


What do I do to stop having all these thoughts of regret? These feelings of loss? What can I do about this shit I typed about?

Anyone relate? Any pointers?

Hello...
Allow the sadness to come... and be gentle with yourself during these difficult times.

I have allowed myself to grieve the feelings of loss and each individual loss.
I too have regret...
With much regret, I realize I can’t change what happened or choices that were made with the best of intentions or because I didn’t know how...
GRACE.
Give yourself grace.
I would give these very words to someone I cared about...
I had to learn to give these words of compassion to myself.
I wish you well. Keep reaching out. The world can be much kinder and is a beauty to behold.

 

[Freida]

I don't know why I didn't see that shit as abusive.

Because it was your normal -- which is heartbreaking. You didn't realize at the time you were being abused because you didn't know any other kind of life. Now you do.

. Guess I'm kinda digging into shit, writing this.

Yep -- and it's ok. Write what you want to write -- it's ok. I'm pretty confident that nothing you endured will make anyone here look at you as damaged or disgusting or awful. And yes- I know I'm fighting that same battle too so I'm a bit of a hypocrite but that's not the point! :laugh: The point is - dig away. You T call help you process it and we can help you make it ok to talk about

I'm kinda thinking about that shit a lot even though we only did reprocessing on the adult stuff.

Doesn't that just suck!? I've been processing some assault stuff and out of the blue some hospital stuff popped up. damn emdr. T keeps telling me to just let it flow because it all ties in together eventually.

Don't even know if I sound manic

I don't think you sound manic. I think you sound like someone who has a shit ton of stuff that she working through and shes busting her ass to get on top of it

I just have a reeeeeally hard time doing it with trauma stuff. Lol.

Gosh - you say it like it's a hard thing..... Yea - I couldn't even get thru that sentence without laughing my ass off! :roflmao: seriously though -- you have got this. You can do it!

 

[Tinyflame]

A friend of mine who's a fireman says, "don't go there". I figure he should know, he 'gets' it. So I try not to. Outwardly at least.

 

[Survivor3]

I can relate to this thread a lot and it plays on my mind often. I've found it very interesting to read other peoples responses. One of the big ones for me was not being able to 'open up' when I was a child. I didn't tell people what was going on at home (my father was an insane alchoholic) because I was ashamed and it affected my ability to even speak. Seen as a freak at school because I was so insuler, not being able to socialise properly and so on.
The amount of times you can look back and think 'I wish I'd done that differently' or i wasnt able to deal with that situation because of this and I f*cked it up... Partly my fault partly others.
The thing is that there's no time machine and constantly beating yourself up is not constructive so give yourself a break. I try and learn from it as best I can. Trying not too repeat the mistakes and to trust other people again and let them into to how I feel about things. I can't change the past but I can have a positive effect on the future.
Good luck everyone?

 

[shimmerz]

In my experience trauma seems to come packaged with intense vicious self hatred. Hatred that is hard to put into words.

I kind of feel like the words tells me what state I am in. I have seen it in others I support as well. The self damning; never happy with myself; I am a piece of shit who can't do anything right idiot.

That attitude isn't supported by 'hey, I would like to go out'. No. That mindset is supported by tyranical spouting off of what a person - a real person - a person who isn't a f*cking idiot like me - should be doing (if I wasn't so lazy, useless, stupidly disorganized). Could be doing (if I wasn't such a moron, unmotivated, undirected, unfocussed). And should have done if only I could have beaten the shit out of myself and bowed down to the would'a could'a then we wouldn't be talking about the should'a because I would'a, could'a already done it.

So I change my wording. I write down what I want.
I want to go to the park. (Which is harder than one might think)

And then I write down why I am not going to the park.
But I can't because I am terrified of getting bitten by a tick and subsequently dying.

Now that ^^^ is useful internal dialog because it gives me something to work with (fear of ticks) so that I can keep moving forward.
Maybe I will make up a tick spray and bring it with me.

Much more helpful than having thoughts bounce around in there that are helping to undermine the very foundational and healthy core that I am attempting to rebuild in myself.

Random thoughts that confirm my abusers thoughts that I was/am a piece of shit person are not allowed in this psyche of mine. Not ever. And these ARE my abusers thoughts that have been forced upon me. I am old enough to choose to remove them from my working thought patterns.

 

[intothelight]

I use to spend a lot of time in the "would have", "should have" and/or "what if" space in my head. There are times it still slips in and the regrets, guild, self loathing come flooding back. For me, the biggest thing that I found helpful was just trying to see what I did that I wish I did differently and decide not to repeat it. There isn't any going backward, but I take what I can learn from and use it for today and tomorrow.

 

[Ronin]

By taking what is my Would have course of action, having far worse consequences.

I literally do not dig the comforting talk, applied to own guilt. But: Yo, knock it off, that was the LESSER f*ck up, / it was a hot mess all sides, a bad situation with nobody having a clear and smooth and kosher way out of it / check it, people are goddamn human and fallible... I on some level grok.

Eventually, Knock it off or I knock you out, (hugs tight), come on pansy, you are not an inhuman something, works too.

 

[Sweetleaf]

There are literally millions of things that I could have done differently that might have prevented my trauma. But maybe they wouldn't have.

Been thinking of this.

It's actually kinda helping me to ponder this:

-Maybe if I didn't have the trauma I have had so far, I'd have gotten worse, or gotten killed, or gotten into the same shit anyway, or worse, or taken longer to connect the dots on my childhood trauma and address it-

On top of that!

-If I had not started this PTSD treatment "adventure" (lmao), if I had not had my trauma, the adult stuff, the rape, the torture... maybe I wouldn't have discovered my Bipolar 1 diagnosis for ages, and maybe that discovery would have happened in a worse way, that got me into trouble, and ruined my life on its own-

Instead I am treating my trauma, -now-. I can't treat all the childhood stuff while I live with my mom, a horrible abuser - but, at least I now have acknowledged it. Noticed it. Exhumed it. Without the horrible adult shit, that may have never been uncovered, and maybe it would have lead to worse than I have experienced - also now that I have had those bad experiences, maybe they will be less likely to be repeated in the future (especially since part of my degree is in History - those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and historians are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it ?).

I got to discover I'm bipolar 1 with a good pdoc who knows how to treat it and has a lot of experience with bipolar people, some who are extremely successful CEOs and stuff. So. I am in good hands. I know better now, how to handle it. I know it's a thing. I know what to do, when, I have read up on it a bit, I've got good checklists/self-tests-/etc. to determine whether I'm manic or not (seems to be the main issue - I've never been big on depression compared to others, I guess that's a silver lining even though my mania is very severe and I have to have extreme caution and many safeguards to make it through)

Anyway.

I guess today I am in a better mood and sort of thinking about the silver linings.

Shit sucks, the past for me has sucked, and is all f*cked up. But it's also -behind- me. It's not ahead of me. I don't think I'll ever wind up in an abusive situation like that again - especially considering the -moment- any future partner hits me, I am getting the f*ck out of there - this time for real. I used to think I would do that, but I let it slide, and because of letting it slide it slid into torture eventually.

But now I know better, at least.

Maybe I won't hold onto my thoughts I'm having now, my feelings I'm having now, but - yeah.

Shit could be worse, I could still be ignorant of my childhood abuse, I could be in a bad relationship right now -and I am not!-

I just have a shitty living situation, that I'm trying to claw my way out of.

I wish disability didn't take months to go through >.< or that I started earlier.

Oh well.

 

[blackemerald1]

I agree with everyone about there being no possibility of re-writing history - dam it!

I have really wasted a LOT of time indulging in wanting to deny, ignore or re-invent my history. It hasn't worked.

But now I know better, at least.

^^ I think you touched on the beginning of what I feel and think now. So when I start to go down that well worn path of wanting fix my history, I try hard to stop and ask myself what is one good thing that is happening now today, in my life? A person, place, thing - that could simply not have existed if I had not lived and survived the trauma? Or, the potential for that person, place or thing to happen.. if I am falling short.

This is not a trip into make-believe where I have lived a faultless life and never been troubled with anything. It is a realistic appraisal of what I have now and what I can move on with and being grateful for that person, place or thing despite the trauma and sometimes ugh even because of the trauma.