Dear Derek:

I hope you do “breathe and relax and not beat (yourself) up over anything”- more and more often. The part of us that beats ourselves, that self aggression, it doesn’t just go away because we want it to.

This part believes we deserve a beating.

I have had the core belief that I was guilty, specifically, of my mother’s misery. Had that belief from a very early age, single digit age. Through life I felt guilty for anything and everything, whether I was in reality guilty or not. I couldn’t differentiate, felt guilty so often, so much, that I didn’t know when I was in reality guilty of something and when I was not. I tried to correct what I was not guilty of and did not correct what I was guilty of. The guilt was overwhelming and so was the anxiety involved in it and my life was a mess.

The incident we’ve been communicating about here, the way I see it, you did something wrong, being in a somewhat sexual situation with people who are not your partner. I am glad you corrected it at the time (your original account). Problem is your guilt is bigger than the incident calls for because of that guilty core belief.

I wish you could differentiate between the true-to-reality guilt of this incident (which should be resolved after the correction you already made and decisions made for the future regarding alcohol and perhaps seeing certain friends only in a public setting) and the untrue-to-reality guilt (originated early in childhood).

These days when I correct my thinking regarding guilt, to fit my thinking to reality, for example saying to myself: I feel sad about a certain situation but I didn’t cause it, not responsible for it, my anxiety resolves at that moment.

Did we discuss your guilty core belief? I don’t remember at the moment…

anita