When I was a child, I would lay awake at night, in retrospect it was anxiety and depression due to loneliness (only child, sheltered, private school with less than 10 kids).

What I did, without the knowledge or concept of anxiety and depression, was that I would let me thoughts run and I would use logic and reasoning to get through them.

“What if a kid makes fun of me for this and that?” “I would then do this”, and then I would play out every single possible situation in my head on what the most common, worst, and best outcomes were.

A decade of doing that helped me.

You can never change the past, but you can change the future.

Your mistakes are going to continue, in fact they will probably get bigger. I’ll be vulnerable, I fucked up majorly and was let go from a previous job. It was a stupid fuckup, I should have caught it earlier, and it caused real money to be lost by the company and I let down my team. That guilt and embarrassment will stick with me for a long time.

However, I can’t let it stop me. It paralyzed me for a bit, I lost my confidence and stopped wanting to try at my position, but then one day I just started thinking about it. What did I actually do wrong, where did I go wrong, how did I let people down, and I decided I wanted to do my best to avoid that. So now at a new job I remember that incident, and I call out things earlier, I’m a bit less cocky, I do several little things that I just had to learn the hard way I guess.

The long point of my anecdote I guess is that those feelings never really go away, you’ll always be laying there at night and thinking about them. Growing though is acknowledging them, not trying to hide from them, and figuring out how you want to better yourself going forward.

Remember how forgiving you are of others and apply that to yourself

Someone once told me that it is wery easy for you to remember these instances and think at how you made a fool for yourself or how you were wrong or maybe even bad towards someone. These things are still vivid after 10-20 years.

However remembering how others were towards you fades a lot easier, to the point that remembering such instances from others against you from 5 years ago is difficult.

It sometimes helps me thinking that others likely moved on and probably do not even remember the episode, so I should let it go.

I can so relate. The mistakes. The regrets. The guilt. The anxiety. The sleep disorders. I’ve got it all in spades.

I don’t know what to tell you? I’m working on it myself. Sometimes I think of people who stepped in and helped me through difficult times in my life, and then I try to pay it forward even in small ways to other people I meet who are themselves in a bad place. I find this therapeutic.

I suppose on the bright side, my past has made me a humble person who is not quick to judge others. But there’s a fragility there too, and I fear for how I would cope with whatever new challenges await. These are rather uncertain times.

Maybe you can take some comfort in knowing you’re not the only one in this funk? I think you’ve actually made me feel better about it a little bit. Anyway, best of luck to you that you find your way.

That’s called ruminating. Are you neurodivergent? Therapy and/or correcting the behavior every time you catch yourself doing it.

brute force new mistakes

The only thing that has somewhat worked for me is to be physically active. I can clearly tell the difference between periods where I am active vs periods when I’m inactive.

Something as simple as taking a long walk in green areas have done wonders in the past. It empties my mind and I become nothing more than a machine that moves. It is the closest I can get to meditation and I think a lot of anxiety is trapped energy that needs a physical outlet.

I’m not diagnosed with anything, but I have been an anxious bitch for my entire adult life due to some bad things I went through, so I know how persistent and irrationally extreme anxiety can become.

Walking in forests and fields are not gonna magically cure life long brain patterns, but they sure as shit make them shut up for long enough that you get to enjoy life a little and are too exhausted to worry about all the stupid things that don’t matter, but your brain loves torturing you with.

When you have walked in a forest for an hour or two or even just 20 minutes, something inside you automatically calms. Nature is so important for the soul and we sometimes forget that. Of course, in case you live in a scorching hot desert, you may not have this option, but if you have a forest around where you live, go for a walk on a well used trail and take in the changing seasons. After a couple of weeks and months, the longterm effects will be apparent. You’ll still be anxious, but a lot less so.

I stay high to keep my long term memory at bay. Unfortunately I’m still covered in scars which makes it harder…

It’s possible to bury old mistakes in a pile of new experiences, but you have to allow yourself to have those experiences

Forgiveness for yourself very powerful.
When I needed to be forgiven and I couldn’t reach that person this practice helped me a lot ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGd1F6QoHsw) Of course, mindfulness practices are very useful too. Best of luck.

I remember how other wildly successful people have made mistakes and try to remember I can’t do a near zero fault run in life.

Did you learn from it, even if it wasn’t a mistake that is called growth, maturity and wisdom.

We are all absolute dumbasses and those of us who survive our younger years either understand how fucking lucky we were or wallow in ignorance.

You recognize your ‘mistakes’…that is the first step and probably the biggest.

Keep going. You’ll do great.

What works is planning. Plan what you’d do, if the situation were to arise again. Once you have a plan, your mind will stop bugging you. Works for me!

You don’t.

It’s okay to remember your past mistakes and regrets since they help you make better decisions in the future