Rewind Unkind

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When things haven’t gone my way — if I have an embarrassing moment or a fight with a friend or family member, for example — I have this habit of replaying the whole scene in my head. More than once. Vividly.

Like a movie scene, I can run the experience through my head over and over, hearing every nuance, seeing everything that happened. It can be torturous.

But honestly, I don’t do this to punish myself at all. Although the memories often make me cringe, that isn’t my goal, to make myself fee worse; The reality is, I keep replaying the scene in an effort to change it somehow.

Now I know you can’t change the past. I do get that. But in my head, I keep thinking that maybe it wasn’t as bad as I think. Maybe what I said didn’t really sound that bad. Maybe I didn’t actually say that last, really cutting, remark. Maybe I didn’t really drop that plate and break it to bits.

I know I did. And I know that replaying it doesn’t change it. But it’s just such a hard habit to break. Before I know it, I’ve hit the mental rewind button, and here we go, watching it all over again.

A big focus of my life at the moment is balance. Not too much, not too little, finding the middle line instead. So, I’m not trying to cut out ALL of my replaying. I’m just working to keep it to a minimal amount.

And be a little kinder to myself about my failings in general.