I’m letting people who hurt me in the past live rent free in my mind.
One episode involves a former landlord that tried to run me over in an intersection with no traffic cameras.
Another one involves a manager that fired me for informing that one of his favorites yelled during night shift and ignored alarms to talk. He fired me the next day, used the exit interview to tell me everything I didn’t do right (but kept quiet about his favorites, even though I did the job like them), still had the utmost confidence on his favorites, accused me of being lazy and instead of simply firing me and keeping neutral he chose to take it personal, proceeded to try to scare me insinuating I wouldn’t work for his system again, when that failed, tried to humiliate me and then fired me. This was in an non union hospital.
When I think about it I get angry. Id like not to be so thin skinned, but here I am.
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Your life, physical and then professional were both threatened. The things you mentioned aren’t little oopsies. These are well beyond normal. You describe being assaulted and abused. Those aren’t suck it up and learn situations. That isn’t a regular kind of problem. You should seek trauma counseling.
Revenge usually does the trick.
Write a long thorough letter that you don’t send. It worked for me with a friend who was awful to me for a year. Beauty think about him anymore.
Thinking about what hurt them. Being glad I am not them. That’s about it, really. I guess also in these particular situations you can be glad you don’t work/live there anymore, would you really want to be there if the boss was treating your coworker that way?
From “Verissimus”, a comic about the Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius: https://imgur.com/a/FlvGJGT (my apologies for the first two pages being out of order).
There is a section about the Greek philosopher, Epictetus’, teachings about anger. My favorite two are “Being unlike your enemies is the best form of revenge,” and “Goodwill is a virtue, the opposite of revenge, the desire to help rather than harm our fellow man. So replace your anger with its antidote: kindness.”
Didn’t know there is a comic version of his meditations, that is cool! Thanks for the tip, have to check that one out.
Those are pretty awesome! Thanks, I think I can get a lot of benefit from them.
I had to do cognitive behavioral therapy to defeat cycles much like that. Fortunately, if you’re not in a position to have a professional help you with that, it can be self practiced. The biggest take away is allowing yourself time to process it, so it doesn’t occupy your mind when you’re trying to do something important like driving or sleeping. Write out the angry thoughts and reflect on them, why its impractical and how you’re putting yourself at risk for little to no gain. Match each negative thought with something positive if you can help it. Sure this person fucked you over, but you got to play a cool game with a buddy. They don’t need to be connected but try to force yourself to spend equal or greater time on good experiences as much as your mind is trying to drag you into the gutters. Regret is one of the more powerful emotions you’ll experience and you don’t need to cause yourself unnecessary burdens. If you feel you’re a risk to yourself or others, please seek out professional help. This isn’t medical advice, just myself reflecting on my own experiences. I’m told this service is pretty decent. https://www.betterhelp.com/
Just be sure to spell out “cognitive behavioral therapy” if you search it. Other results for getting started with CBT might bring you somewhere other than where you intend to go.
This would be my advice. The books “Feeling Great” or “When Panic Attacks” by David Burns are the go to resources for CBT. Honestly I never got much out of years of (on and off) professional CBT, but books make the whole thing a lot more digestible.
For OOP, CBT might help to really understand why these particular experiences are so meaningful to them.
It’s quite rational for you to feel angry towards people who seemingly went out of their way to wrong you. One thing that helps me is contemplating the inner existence of that type of person. It must be awful to walk around without a teaspoon of empathy. To walk around disconnected from basic humanity. To find pleasure in hurting others. What a cold existence.
Do you have a release for emotions period? Burn out the anger with a crazy workout and intense playlist. Write about it poetry style or otherwise. Buy a punching bag.
Although I am an atheist, if I am wrong, I am fairly certain they are going to hell.
I got revenge for them having fucked with me. Unfortunately, once I calmed down I realized that as a result of my actions I had burned a bridge that in retrospect, I’d have rather not burned.
So now I try to think really hard about whether someone deserves the way I treat them.
Also keep in mind that sometimes you can burn bridges you didn’t intend to burn in the process of burning the one you did intend to.
Others can observe and judge without having their own pony in the race. Hell, sometimes they would even be on your side if they knew all of the information but they don’t and might not care to hear it or believe it once they’ve passed their initial judgment on the revenge act. Or you might never even know that they’ve burned your bridge because of that and it just looks like they’ve grown more distant over time.
What instance of needing a burned bridge to be intact can you describe?
An ex was going out of their way to humiliate me, presumably because they were hurting. I revealed one of their secrets and effectively ruined their social life. Years later after going through shitloads of therapy I realized that despite what they did to me, I still wanted to be friends with them. Unfortunately, due to my actions they no longer want to be friends with me.
Years later after going through shitloads of therapy I realized that despite what they did to me, I still wanted to be friends with them.
Was the therapist religious? That sounds too much like “the other cheek” to me…
I think they are? But I am extremely anti-religion so we haven’t discussed it much.
I came to that conclusion on my own though. Our breakup was bad enough to get me diagnosed with PTSD, so I tended to think about her a lot, and come up with my own ideas which i run by my therapist to make sure they’re not monumentally stupid.
people who hurt me in the past
The pain is inside you now.
Not in them. You can’t give it back to them.
Even the best revenge (if you are maybe thinking about revenge) is not going to relieve the pain inside you - it would only create new, additional pain.
Forgiving is the way to go. And I’m not saying that it is easy, just saying that it is the way to go. Forgiving means to let them go free. Give up any wish for revenge. Decide that you are not going to bring it up against them anymore. Ever. Let go of the bad thoughts and then you can let go of the bad feelings too.
Make sure that you know (maybe tell someone, or write it down in a long letter that does not need to be sent) all of it when you try to forgive. It means, when you decide to let go, you rethink (only this one time) all that has happened and all the feelings it has caused - especially for this purpose of letting it go. And then you can let go.
And then this will set you free.
Holding on to feelings of anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick.
Meditation and forgiveness help a lot.
yoga
distance running
weightlifting
skydiving
stuff like that. I kid you not, it will make all the bullshit everyone has ever done to you, melt away because you are better and awesomer than any of their bullshit.
And you can also file legal proceedings against them to sue their asses for destroying your life.
Do you have any suggestions for people that hates physical exertion and never will risk skydiving?
Physical effort does calm the mind. Even if you don’t like it, we are animals and made to move around, walk, run some, stretch to reach things, climb, dance. There isn’t really a substitute for that.
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I rarely get angry at anyone, which, sadly, means I didn’t gain the skills to deal with it very well. Thus, if someone DOES make me angry, it can linger for YEARS. The record so far is some 50 years with my parents’ abuse, followed by a few friends’ betrayal as a teen (separate incidents). I have about half a dozen incidents where I have been seriously fucked over by people I trusted, and hate my continued anger over it more than I hate the event itself.
I found, however, patience has its own reward. If you’re the type of person who really fucks me over, and it’s definitely not my fault, eventually your behavior will fuck yourself in other ways. I don’t “get revenge” like some cartoon, but years later, I’ll find out, “Yeah, that asshole? After her did that thing to you that took you years to get over, his super-special kid went to jail, his wife left him, his business tanked, and last anyone heard, he’s living with him mom (whom he despised) in his 50s with zero prospects for his future.” If you fucked me over, but it’s partially or wholly my fault, then, well, I deserved it. Sometimes I make mistakes, like screw someone’s lie over by revealing a secret I didn’t know was a secret. I try super super super hard not to do that, even if I hate their guts, or the lie needs to be told for some esoteric moral bullshit (like cheating on his wife I didn’t know he had). But I try to keep my nose clean. I try not to gossip when I can help it. This also helps to know “I did my best, given what I knew.”
Dude. If someone needs you to keep track of their lies so they don’t get caught out, they’re no friend. They’re putting you in a terrible spot for no reason.
If you need to lie, then tell me the lie. Even if you’re a bad liar, never ever tell me any story different so at best I can suspect you’re a dick not not know it. And I’ll never know a different story to tell. And if you need like an alibi and I already know differently, then get someone else to alibi you.
Lying TO me is a dick move, sure; but making me carry your lie for you is worse.
Lying TO me is a dick move, sure; but making me carry your lie for you is worse.
Agreed. For me in most cases it’s a relationship-ending offense.
Be active. Do something like exercise or find a hobby to distract yourself from the pain or bad memories. And yes, people say this one all the time, but it’s true.
