1.You don’t know what would have happened if you chose differently
Maybe your boyfriend would have broken up with you first. Maybe you two would have stayed together only to watch the relationship gradually succumb to lack of trust and broken up later, wasting more time in the process. There is a big chance that your choices wasn’t so bad after all.
2. You made the choice based on your best knowledge at the moment
It may seem that you had many different options, but because every human being is wired to always try and pick the seemingly (for different reasons) best one you could have picked only the one you picked. Though there are many options, you only can pick one. It’s of course a totally different story why you picked the one you picked. Probably it’s because of your beliefs and values, because you felt that you couldn’t be in a relationship where you are cheated on.
3. Blaming yourself makes you feel even worse
Blaming isn’t productive in any way. It doesn’t make the problem go away, it doesn’t fix anything and it doesn’t even prevent the same mistake happening in the future. The only thing it does is making you feel even worse. Self-blame is common habit while you are in the low state of mind and instead of making you feel better it just sends you deeper and deeper into the realm of self-loathing.
4. Everything usually turns for the better
Dealing with the aftermath of a wrong choice can feel gloomy. But even then keep in mind that with time the negative feelings will go away and everything will start to feel bright again. And when you look back few years from now on, your mind will likely find an excellent explanation to everything. You will feel that “you just had to experience that phase” and be glad that you did, no matter how unlikely that can feel right now.
5. Blaming doesn’t fix the situation
Yes, maybe you made an mistake. Maybe you would have become the happiest couple on earth if you wouldn’t have been so hasty. That would have been possible. But you can’t change the situation, so it’s futile to harass yourself with thoughts about what would and could have been. You just make yourself feel worse.
How to stop blaming yourself
So, blaming yourself isn’t doing you any good. But how to stop doing it when you feel like it’s the only thing you can do?
1. Accepting the situation
So, you made the decision that seems wrong. Yes, you screw up. Yes, its your fault. Yes, your responsible. No, you can’t press ctrl+z. What to do?
The only thing you can do is to accept your blunder. Nobody cares if you want to or not. Accepting it is the first step on the road to feeling better, so before long you have to take it. And the sooner you do, the sooner you will feel better.
2. Understanding the futility of self blame
When you really get that blaming yourself isn’t doing you any good, isn’t making you feel better and especially isn’t helping you to avoid similar blunders in the future, avoiding the self blame becomes much easier.
3. Recognizing that you are in the low state of mind
When you are in a so called low state of mind, your mind fails to function properly and you start seeing the world and life as much gloomier than it really is. That’s normal when you are in that state and there is nothing you can do about it, just accept it. The best thing is, you don’t need to do anything about it. Our mind has an self-mending system which will automatically lift you out of your low state, as soon as you let it.
4. Recognize that it’s just a thought
The reason why you feel bad, is nothing else than a negative thought you keep rotating in your head. As soon as the thought is gone (and it will disappear sooner or later, because that’s in the nature of thought) so is the bad feeling and the need to blame yourself further.
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