I think there’s a lot to be gained by reflecting on your past memories with people. Sometimes you’ll learn new lessons, and other times you’ll simply be reminded why they’re no longer a part of your present.

Do you feel like reminiscing on people from your past is negatively affecting you?

Bodhi is such a great name for a dog, Mark!

Alexandra, I can’t speak for everyone, but cutting carbs worked MIRACLES for me. I went from borderline diabetic to healthy and dropping weight without trying because my sugar cravings are gone. I will say, though, that I had to go cold turkey–absolutely no grains/pasta/sugar/etc for a week, only meat, dairy, and veggies. I couldn’t do strict low carb, but keto (low carb, high fat) was a breeze for me because it kept me full.

Hi Mary,

I think Anita hit the nail on the head. What she’s described is identical to my own experience, and working through that fear is pivotal to your success. What you mentioned, the “knowing” but not necessarily DOING is called cognitive dissonance; you know something is happening, but feel powerless to stop it or change the outcome. Unfortunately, (at least for me) that hasn’t really gone away; what HAS happened is that I’ve found some new tools to keep in my arsenal to remind myself that this is just something I do, and I’ve started finding ways to snap myself out of dwelling on the bad situation. It’s not perfect, but it’s a practice that takes time to turn into a habit, and my bouts of ruminating on the negative have gotten drastically shorter.

Here are the things I started with:

-Identifying why you feel this way (i.e. for me, I didn’t want people disappointed in me because it makes me feel worthless, which only happens because I don’t see my OWN self worth, so I seek external validation from others via people pleasing to ‘create’ my worth; from my understanding, this is a pretty common reason, especially when childhood trauma was present.)

-What it is you’re actually afraid of (since fear is a symptom & not a cause)

-Developing the mindfulness to be able to be a passive observer and recognize these emotions without identifying with them. Tiny Buddha has many articles on this and was a tremendous help to me during this process. If you need help finding any, let me know and I can post some links. (A useful, Google-able phrase for this one is “I am not my thoughts”.)

-Read a book, or find a group, that is about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). There’s tons of useful stuff in there, but it’s a type of therapy that is specifically geared towards retraining your brain to snap out of these vicious, negative spirals. One specific section that helped me a lot was distress tolerance–literally, just learning to function and be mildly okay in stressful situations (i.e. thinking someone is mad at you), and using that to work up to actually being okay with situations that used to be triggering. DBT pairs especially well with mindfulness and meditation practices, which I’d recommend as well.

These things are deceptively difficult to do, and can require feeling a lot of rather unpleasant, usually long-buried emotions; if you find it challenging, therapy (especially DBT, cannot recommend it enough) can help a lot. However, the blessing in disguise is that once you’ve done all the digging, it’s all out in the open air–you can now quantify it, and put the words to it, and get validation that you’re not alone in feeling like this.

I wish you well on your journey.

Chelsea

This is precisely what I realized last year and made my resolution. A year later, I’ve made tremendous strides towards accepting myself as I am while still challenging myself to grow. I think that this realization really does bring an ever-so-slight mindset shift that’s necessary to be able to accept the paradoxical, internal yin and yang that is loving oneself while continuing to push forward to promote personal growth. It’s such a fine line to walk, but from your post, I think you’re well on your way. 🙂