Feeling bad long after you've made a mistake

Sometimes we want to ruminate on our mistakes because we hope it might stop us from doing it again. For instance, you over react to your child’s challenging behaviour or forget to do an important errand. Not freely forgiving ourselves and choosing to suffer instead is a common scenario for people with a low frustration tolerance for errors. This type of guilt-ridden behaviour comes about from unhelpful thoughts that tell us that making mistakes is bad and that forgiveness gets us off the hook.

 Take for example yelling harshly at your child for knocking over their drink on the carpet after being told not to leave the kitchen bench. Your anger comes from cognitions that focus on your child breaking the rules, not listening to you and now the carpet is stained and will never look clean again. Words such as should, using hindsight and blaming fuel your frustration levels. 

 Moving away from feeling stuck on what can’t be changed to reflecting on what can be learnt brings down excessive suffering. Ask yourself whether it was helpful to berate yourself. Remember that accidents happen and shifting automatic thought processes reduces stress. Ironically proactive problem-solving increases likelihood of it not happening again.

 Like all unhelpful habits, it takes persistence to shake years of self criticism. Pair reflection with a mantra such as “its OK to make mistakes”.