Dear joanna:

You believe that you are a bad person, and so, you look for and  focus on evidence that supports this belief and dismiss evidence that suggests otherwise. You focused on what you didn’t do for  your friend and her sister and dismissed what you did do.

It is similar to this, and  I think I already shared  it with you.  On my daily walk in this wooded area there are sticks on the (private) road. Sometimes I pick some sticks so to be nice  to  the few  drivers on the road, be helpful this way. When I do, the  voice in my voice says to me: you didn’t  pick that stick! And so, I dismissed the evidence of picking the sticks that I did pick and focused on the evidence to support my core belief: you didn’t pick that  stick … because you are  a bad  person.

This is why there  is  nothing you can do but disengage from the thoughts and  feelings originating from a false  core belief. There will never be enough evidence to refute  it (I can pick sticks for five  hours straight, for example) because there will always be evidence to support the core belief (there will always  be sticks not picked yet, living in a wooded area).

Do you think that you  are ready to consider that  you are not a  bad person, that you are a good person?

anita