Can't stop obsessing over past failures.

Marletta

Active member
I keep obsessing over my past screw ups with co-workers, customers and bosses that lead me to lose my jobs. I can't seem to stop thinking about it all! It is just so stupid how I screwed up and yet I don't see how I could have responded any other way! I keep replaying various events over and over trying to figure out how I can stop being negative all the time. I know the squeaky wheel doesn't get the oil, they just replace you. I so wish something bad would to those people that canned me. I would never in a million years hurt anyone. I just hope Karma screws them over like they screwed me over. I did great work, they all said that... but they let me go without talking about why they are letting me go. I find out later it's because someone misinterpreted something I said as a negative or thought I was mean or wierd or whatever... Ugh, I wish the memories would just disappear so I can move on.
Please help! Does anyone have any advice?
 
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powerfulthoughts

Well-known member
Forgive yourself. Imagine you are talking to a close friend and they were going through this, what would you tell them to help them feel better?

It really is about forgiving yourself though, and being your own best friend. If you love yourself, you owe it to yourself to forgive, learn from it, and move on. If you hang on to it you are letting it eat you away and defeat you, demoralize you, and then you let it win. I know it sometimes feels good to give in to those depressing, dark feelings of sadness and self-pity, but in the end that will only destroy you. Stay positive, forgive yourself, love yourself, and just keep trying. No one ever wins by giving up.
 

Marletta

Active member
Forgive yourself. Imagine you are talking to a close friend and they were going through this, what would you tell them to help them feel better?

It really is about forgiving yourself though, and being your own best friend. If you love yourself, you owe it to yourself to forgive, learn from it, and move on. If you hang on to it you are letting it eat you away and defeat you, demoralize you, and then you let it win. I know it sometimes feels good to give in to those depressing, dark feelings of sadness and self-pity, but in the end that will only destroy you. Stay positive, forgive yourself, love yourself, and just keep trying. No one ever wins by giving up.

You are right. I don't love myself. Sometimes, I cannot bare to look in the mirror. I am a failure because I cannot stop being angry. I have gotten to the point where I actually have starting picking at my skin (on my arms) I have lovely scars. I guess I need to see a shrink. You are right, in the end, no matter how I get there, I need to forgive myself.
 

planemo

Well-known member
You are right. I don't love myself. Sometimes, I cannot bare to look in the mirror. I am a failure because I cannot stop being angry. I have gotten to the point where I actually have starting picking at my skin (on my arms) I have lovely scars. I guess I need to see a shrink. You are right, in the end, no matter how I get there, I need to forgive myself.

I struggle with those very things. I find it hard to love myself or think I am anything but a failure. I have noticed though that when I make an effort not to worry and although this is difficult, I find it easier to accept myself.

It's almost as if 'yourself' becomes another person. If there was another person who is always negative and is always complaining, blaming, feeling upset and bitter, you would probably not like that person or want to be around him/her. Now you become that person when you are in that negative state. So you do not like yourself. So a good thing to do is to involve yourself with things you like and things you are good at. Things that lift your mood, and you will find it easier to like yourself.

The difficulty though comes when your negative tendencies return and you have to force yourself not to be influenced by them. This I struggle with too, but I'm trying. It's hard to forget but you just have to.
 

Marletta

Active member
I would actually write down in a notebook each circumstance I could not stop thinking about, and then underneath I wrote what I thought I should have said or done.
Then each time I thought about it again, instead of obsessing about solutions over and over in my mind, I just got out the notebook and read what I had already came up with.
That put an end to it.:)

Thanks MandyMouse. Good advice.
 

Lost Girl

Well-known member
I used to obsessively over-think things I had done wrong.
There's no point doing that though. Learn from it, forget it, and move on.

Try to put it in perspective, if other employees had put in complaints and so forth, then it is the boss's job change things, to make their staff as cohesive as possible. They're just doing whats right for their business, and unfortunately, workers are just way too replaceable these days.

I think you should speak to a counselor. Hurting yourself is not okay.
 

Bama_Heath

Well-known member
I have been having the same problem myself lately. I was just fired from a job for the first time in my life about 1 month ago. I can't stop over analyzing the what-ifs. But it is not just confined to that because I have started to obsess in thinking about all the different decisions I should have made in life with regards to past relationships with girlfriends and guy-pals and even my course of studies in school and career choices. I have tried my best to forgive and forget. But I can't seem to really forget or get over any of it...so then I think to myself...well have I ever really forgiven anybody including myself??
 

anomicdeer

Well-known member
When I go out... that is all I think about. Whether I messed up or not. Usually something Im embarrassed about
 

anders055

Member
I keep obsessing over my past screw ups with co-workers, customers and bosses that lead me to lose my jobs. I can't seem to stop thinking about it all! It is just so stupid how I screwed up and yet I don't see how I could have responded any other way! I keep replaying various events over and over trying to figure out how I can stop being negative all the time.
Please help! Does anyone have any advice?

I was like this some time back. Going crazy about how i goofed up in school, then in college, always socially awkward, introverted, scared, fighting severe depression, living with my fathers abuse. I too kept replaying all the bad events and more bad events kept happening...until one day the biggest and baddest event happened..my gf cheated and left...and that day the earth below me shook and gave way and i had nothing left to stand up on. Abusive Dad died. The previous bad events seemed like child's play. I went through massive depression, paranoia and buried myself in alcohol, drugs, gym to numb the pain. But slowly i realized i had to be stronger. I wanted to commit suicide but couldn't. I feel terribly sick, landed up in the hospital, two weeks off work , lost 22 pounds. Imagine being so thin and depressed. I'm better now, gained 25 pounds. But of course still suffer from post trauma. But i know being stronger is the only way out. I still get depressed but have accepted the past.

So, i'm telling you this, you'll have to buckle up and be strong now or else something will happen due to which you'll either have get stronger or you'll get so weak you'll lose everything.

Kind of opened up my life story here, reply if this helped.
 

Fighter86

Well-known member
I keep obsessing over my past screw ups with co-workers, customers and bosses that lead me to lose my jobs. I can't seem to stop thinking about it all! It is just so stupid how I screwed up and yet I don't see how I could have responded any other way! I keep replaying various events over and over trying to figure out how I can stop being negative all the time. I know the squeaky wheel doesn't get the oil, they just replace you. I so wish something bad would to those people that canned me. I would never in a million years hurt anyone. I just hope Karma screws them over like they screwed me over. I did great work, they all said that... but they let me go without talking about why they are letting me go. I find out later it's because someone misinterpreted something I said as a negative or thought I was mean or wierd or whatever... Ugh, I wish the memories would just disappear so I can move on.
Please help! Does anyone have any advice?

I'm really sorry to hear this, I don't know what to say except that I hope things would become better for you. Have you thought about freelance work? If say you work with computers, or write software programmes for a living, you can work freelance from home, which was what my uncle used to do. In that way, you won't have to deal with colleagues, and your work speaks for itself, if you are good, you are good, your boss/client won't be influenced otherwise.
 
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