Latest / Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic / 68: Have You Suffered Enough Yet? | Why We Punish Ourselves for Getting It Wrong

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68: Have You Suffered Enough Yet? | Why We Punish Ourselves for Getting It Wrong · Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic

• 0:03
  Tania: Welcome to Banish the Lies, the podcast where we outsmart that sneaky inner critic and get closer to the truth that sets us free.
• 0:10
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, your host and fellow work in Progress here to share real stories and small shifts that help you reclaim what fear and doubt once stole.
• 0:21
  Tania: Let's jump in.
• 0:27
  Speaker: Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Banish the Lies.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Today, I wanna talk about regret, but not just regret, regret that transforms into rumination and ultimately self-punishment.
• 0:43
  Speaker: I found myself doing this, well, just a few days ago actually, and because it was incredibly painful and quite frankly really difficult to stop, I started getting really curious about what was underneath it.
• 0:59
  Speaker: Like, what was actually going on?
• 1:01
  Speaker: What were the lies or the beliefs that were keeping me in this pattern of just beating myself up?
• 1:07
  Speaker: And the funny thing is, the situation that started all of this was actually not that big a deal, and that's what was so fascinating to me, just, just how big a deal I was actually making out of it So I was looking to travel, you know, a domestic flight, and I found a flight for $285.
• 1:29
  Speaker: I was astonished because I remember thinking, "Wow, I had no idea it could be this affordable." And my next thought was like, "Wow, I should just book this because this is a great price." But it was the weekend, and I thought, "Well, the prudent thing would be to wait until Monday and just to confirm that I could actually get the time off work." And then I hemmed and hawed a bit.
• 1:53
  Speaker: I kinda went back and forth.
• 1:54
  Speaker: I don't wanna lose the flight, but I wanna make sure I get my vacation, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:59
  Speaker: But at the end of the day, I just, I decided it was prudent to wait, and I also didn't wanna act out of panic or anxiety or scarcity.
• 2:09
  Speaker: And I was basically telling myself, like, "Tania, just chill out.
• 2:13
  Speaker: Take one step at a time." So at this point, you might be guessing where this is going, and Monday comes.
• 2:21
  Speaker: I check on my vacation time, which I was able to secure no problem, and then I go back to the flight, and the price has doubled.
• 2:30
  Speaker: Now, at $285 originally, and now more than double, we're still not talking about thousands of dollars, but I have to tell you, I was so fricking angry with myself, and I couldn't let it go.
• 2:44
  Speaker: I was just furious, and it wasn't just about the money.
• 2:48
  Speaker: It was this idea that I couldn't let go of, the idea of like...
• 2:53
  Speaker: Well, this is what the voice sounded like: "Tanya, you knew better.
• 2:57
  Speaker: You're an idiot.
• 2:59
  Speaker: You...
• 3:00
  Speaker: Yeah, you should have known better, and stupidity has a price, and now you're gonna pay it." And apparently, that price was not just the extra 300 and whatever dollars.
• 3:09
  Speaker: Oh, no, no.
• 3:11
  Speaker: It was also the price of continuing to replay the scenario over and over again in my head.
• 3:17
  Speaker: You know, the whole like, "Oh, if only I had booked it.
• 3:20
  Speaker: If only I had, you know, texted my boss on the weekend to check about vacation.
• 3:25
  Speaker: If only I had looked at the terms of the fare.
• 3:28
  Speaker: If only, if only, if only." You get the picture.
• 3:30
  Speaker: And let me just say, there's nothing abnormal about regret.
• 3:34
  Speaker: I think it's totally human.
• 3:35
  Speaker: There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that, you know, you'd wish you'd done something differently or made a different choice.
• 3:41
  Speaker: And certainly, if our choice impacts somebody else, of course, it's important to take responsibility if there's, you know, something that you need to repair or something to learn, et cetera.
• 3:53
  Speaker: But that's very different from believing that because you did something, quote, "wrong," you now need to suffer for it.
• 4:01
  Speaker: And let me tell you, I spent at least, at least 24 hours creating all manner of suffering for myself.
• 4:08
  Speaker: And there was, of course, a cost to that, too.
• 4:11
  Speaker: I was all up in my head, so I was less present, which meant I was less available to my daughter.
• 4:17
  Speaker: I had this low-grade headache.
• 4:19
  Speaker: I felt exhausted and cranky.
• 4:21
  Speaker: And eventually, this got me, like, really curious as to why I was continuing and, you know, what was the payoff?
• 4:29
  Speaker: Because if I'm continuing to do something that's painful despite n- you know, logically knowing that it accomplishes absolutely nothing, then presumably something in me believes it's serving a purpose.
• 4:42
  Speaker: Now- The main question was, why couldn't I simply, like, let it go?
• 4:48
  Speaker: Why couldn't I say, "Okay, I didn't book the cheaper fare.
• 4:53
  Speaker: It's gonna cost me a few hundred dollars more.
• 4:55
  Speaker: That really sucks, and now life goes on"?
• 4:58
  Speaker: And honestly, if you're sitting there judging me right now and thinking, "For God's sake, Tanya, this is a plane ticket.
• 5:05
  Speaker: Like, get a grip," that's totally fair.
• 5:08
  Speaker: I wouldn't blame you for that, because on the surface, it makes absolutely no sense.
• 5:14
  Speaker: So I started reflecting on why I seemed so hell-bent on beating myself up.
• 5:20
  Speaker: I mean, what were the beliefs, you know, feeding this need to create suffering?
• 5:25
  Speaker: And here's what I saw.
• 5:26
  Speaker: The first was this: if I blame myself, I can hold onto the illusion of control, and the thinking goes something like this.
• 5:36
  Speaker: If the real problem was that I was stupid or careless or irresponsible, then maybe I can guarantee a different outcome next time if I'm just more careful, smarter, more patient, more whatever.
• 5:50
  Speaker: And as strange as that may sound, I think in some ways it feels less frightening to keep looking for all the ways you screwed up than to accept that even when you make a reasonable decision, things can still go sideways.
• 6:04
  Speaker: Because that means life is more uncertain than most of us are probably comfortable admitting.
• 6:10
  Speaker: So convincing myself that I could have prevented the outcome, even if that comes with, rumination and self-condemnation, you know, somehow that feels safer than accepting how many things are truly outside of my control.
• 6:24
  Speaker: And it also made me wonder, have I confused being responsible for my choices with being responsible for predicting their outcomes?
• 6:35
  Speaker: Because those are not the same thing.
• 6:38
  Speaker: And then the second belief I saw was this.
• 6:42
  Speaker: If I suffer enough, I'll learn the lesson for good.
• 6:47
  Speaker: I'll really brand it into my mind.
• 6:50
  Speaker: If I beat myself up enough, maybe it will really sink in.
• 6:54
  Speaker: I'll remember to be more careful next time.
• 6:56
  Speaker: Except I have personal experience that tells me this doesn't work.
• 7:00
  Speaker: During the years I struggled with an eating disorder, I was incredibly punitive with myself.
• 7:08
  Speaker: If I ate something on my imaginary do not eat list, I could be absolutely abusive towards myself.
• 7:15
  Speaker: You know, saying things like, you're such a fat pig.
• 7:18
  Speaker: How do you ever expect to be thin if you keep eating pizza?" for example.
• 7:22
  Speaker: But here's the thing, The more I criticized myself, the worse I felt, and the worse I felt, the more vulnerable I became to binging or otherwise treating myself poorly.
• 7:34
  Speaker: And on the somewhat rare occasions where I managed to respond to myself with kindness, the opposite happened.
• 7:42
  Speaker: And I think that makes sense to me now because in general, we're more likely to care for the things we love and value.
• 7:51
  Speaker: So I already have evidence from my own life that cruelty isn't necessarily an effective teacher, and that this belief that punishment leads to correction is remarkably hard to give up, which raises an interesting question.
• 8:06
  Speaker: If punishing myself doesn't actually help me make better choices, why, oh why, am I so reluctant to stop?
• 8:15
  Speaker: And I think there's another reason.
• 8:17
  Speaker: When we're ruminating, we're doing something.
• 8:21
  Speaker: It feels active.
• 8:22
  Speaker: Yes, we're essentially going around in circles without end, but still it feels busy and active.
• 8:28
  Speaker: When you compare that with the alternative of simply acknowledging things like, "Oh, I'm disappointed.
• 8:35
  Speaker: I really wish I'd booked that flight.
• 8:37
  Speaker: I hate that I can't go back and change it." Those kinds of thoughts, the feelings that it brings up, that, that can be harder because there's nothing to solve.
• 8:48
  Speaker: There's nothing to change.
• 8:49
  Speaker: There's just a feeling that needs to be felt.
• 8:52
  Speaker: And I started wondering whether all my rumination was, well, at least in part, a way of avoiding those feelings.
• 9:03
  Speaker: You know, maybe beating myself up was easier than grieving what had already happened because grief requires surrender.
• 9:12
  Speaker: Rumination doesn't.
• 9:15
  Speaker: Rumination keeps the whole situation alive.
• 9:17
  Speaker: It keeps me mentally returning to that moment when the other outcome was still possible.
• 9:24
  Speaker: I keep replaying the scenario as if something different can happen.
• 9:28
  Speaker: And, you know, when you do that, there's always another, "Oh, if only.
• 9:32
  Speaker: If only I had done this." And what I notice is that when I actually name the feeling, something shifts.
• 9:40
  Speaker: So saying something like, "You know, I'm just really disappointed," and sitting with that, and suddenly I'm not back in the past trying to fix it.
• 9:49
  Speaker: I'm right here.
• 9:50
  Speaker: I'm out of my head, and I'm into my body, and it's really in the body where emotions can be met, where they can be processed and dissolve.
• 10:01
  Speaker: And in that moment, it's not so much about just mentally trying to choose to let go.
• 10:06
  Speaker: Maybe it's simply letting it hurt, like sitting with the emotion without making myself the enemy in the process.
• 10:16
  Speaker: That's the key.
• 10:18
  Speaker: And then there was one more belief underneath all of this: If I stop punishing myself, I'm letting myself off the hook.
• 10:27
  Speaker: If I just move on with my day, you know, maybe that means I haven't taken my mistake or its consequences seriously enough And this one kinda made me think of my Catholic youth, like that whole notion that sin has consequences, so there needs to be not only remorse, but repentance and then penance.
• 10:49
  Speaker: Now, I'm not suggesting Catholicism was responsible for this whole self-punishment pattern, but it's funny how there was a bit of an association there But unlike Catholicism, where at least absolution is possible, my own system of self-inflicted punishment had no defined endpoint.
• 11:11
  Speaker: I mean, how long do I need to suffer to ensure I've paid the price for my stupidity?
• 11:16
  Speaker: Is it an hour?
• 11:17
  Speaker: And, uh, is it a day?
• 11:18
  Speaker: Is it a week?
• 11:19
  Speaker: And who gets to decide when I've suffered enough?
• 11:22
  Speaker: And this is where I think it gets even more insidious.
• 11:26
  Speaker: Sometimes we can mistake self-inflicted suffering for accountability, but self-punishment and accountability are not the same thing.
• 11:37
  Speaker: And I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my youngest sister years ago.
• 11:42
  Speaker: I don't even remember the situation anymore, but I remember going on and on about what a horrible person I was.
• 11:48
  Speaker: Clearly, in my mind, whatever I did, I thought it was, you know, unforgivable.
• 11:52
  Speaker: And my sister essentially told me that all this drama that I was creating, all this mea culpa and self-condemnation, was actually a sneaky way of avoiding truly taking responsibility.
• 12:04
  Speaker: And at the time, it felt like a slap in the face.
• 12:07
  Speaker: I mean, I was already feeling terrible, and now you're telling me that all this guilt and shame and self-blame is an attempt to avoid responsibility?
• 12:15
  Speaker: I mean, whoa, seriously harsh.
• 12:19
  Speaker: But as I sat with it, I could see what she meant, because feeling terrible can masquerade as responsibility because it keeps all the attention on me.
• 12:31
  Speaker: Like, "Look how awful I feel.
• 12:33
  Speaker: Look how terrible I am." But actual responsibility asks a different question.
• 12:39
  Speaker: It asks, "What needs to happen next?" You know, "Is there something I need to repair?
• 12:44
  Speaker: Do I need to apologize?
• 12:46
  Speaker: Is there something I need to learn?
• 12:48
  Speaker: Is there something I need to change?" And once I've done whatever genuinely is mine to do, continuing to punish myself doesn't make me more accountable.
• 13:00
  Speaker: It just makes me suffer.
• 13:02
  Speaker: And in that sense, rumination can become a counterfeit version of responsibility.
• 13:09
  Speaker: And I think moving forward also requires something else.
• 13:15
  Speaker: It requires a degree of self-forgiveness.
• 13:19
  Speaker: But self-forgiveness requires something that's pretty difficult.
• 13:24
  Speaker: It requires me to give up the fantasy that sufficient suffering could somehow settle this whole situation, that it could settle the account, that if I hurt long enough, if I make myself suffer long enough, somehow I'll have made amends.
• 13:43
  Speaker: But continuing to punish or destroy myself repairs absolutely nothing.
• 13:50
  Speaker: And now, I will say that I appreciate that this becomes much harder when we're talking about situations that go far beyond losing money because I didn't book a cheap flight.
• 14:00
  Speaker: You know, sometimes our choices genuinely harm us, w- you know, or they harm other people.
• 14:05
  Speaker: And sometimes that harm can't be undone.
• 14:09
  Speaker: So in those situations, you know, regret, grief, remorse, they all may feel very huge, like really enormous, and there may be things to repair, apologies to make, consequences to accept, and I certainly don't pretend to have a magic answer for all of that.
• 14:28
  Speaker: But I do think there's still a question worth asking.
• 14:32
  Speaker: Does continuing to destroy myself, punish myself, does that repair what I did?
• 14:41
  Speaker: Does that repair what I might have hurt or destroyed?
• 14:44
  Speaker: And maybe another question would be, does the amount I suffer prove the amount I care?
• 14:53
  Speaker: I mean, I don't think it does.
• 14:55
  Speaker: So that begs the question, what do we do instead?
• 15:00
  Speaker: Truthfully, I'm still figuring this out, but right now I keep coming back to three things: feel the regret, take the responsibility, and importantly, refuse the punishment.
• 15:15
  Speaker: First is feel the regret.
• 15:19
  Speaker: You know, actually acknowledge the disappointment, sadness, fear, anger, grief, whatever is present.
• 15:25
  Speaker: For me, naming the emotion helps me get out of the endless thinking and into the present moment.
• 15:31
  Speaker: And, you know, depending on what you're carrying, of course, this may be something you wanna do with the support of a compassionate friend or even a licensed therapist.
• 15:41
  Speaker: And then secondly, there's taking responsibility.
• 15:45
  Speaker: So as I mentioned before, asking yourself, "Is there something here for me to learn, something to repair, to apologize for, you know, something that I can change?" Sometimes there will be something you can actively do, and sometimes there just simply won't be.
• 16:00
  Speaker: And then finally, and if you're like me, this will be the toughest part, refuse the punishment.
• 16:07
  Speaker: Accept that you've learned what there is to learn, and you've done whatever you can reasonably do, and at some point, continued rumination is no longer productive reflection, it's just punishment, and that punishment has consequences of its own.
• 16:23
  Speaker: It can even make us more reluctant to take risks.
• 16:27
  Speaker: It can make us increasingly cautious and anxious, and it can even start to shrink our lives because, you know, if every wrong decision is followed by having to face some kinda internal firing squad, then of course I'm gonna become more anxious and more afraid of making decisions or making mistakes.
• 16:48
  Speaker: And now I'm no longer simply afraid of a bad outcome, I'm now afraid of what I know I'll do to myself if I get it wrong, and that makes me rethink what it actually means to trust myself.
• 17:01
  Speaker: Maybe, you know, self-trust isn't I trust myself to always make the right decision.
• 17:08
  Speaker: Of course, none of us could ever promise something like that.
• 17:11
  Speaker: But maybe what we could say are things like, you know, "I trust myself to survive being wrong.
• 17:17
  Speaker: I trust myself to face my mistakes.
• 17:21
  Speaker: I trust myself to have the courage to repair what I can," and maybe the toughest one, "I trust myself not to abandon myself afterwards, no matter how things turn out." Now, of course, I don't have all of this figured out.
• 17:41
  Speaker: I fully expect that I'll need to remind myself of this again, and again probably, and that's one of the things I love about having this space.
• 17:51
  Speaker: As I share these things with you, I, truly hope there's something here that's helpful to you, whether that's today or sometime in the future.
• 18:01
  Speaker: But sharing it also deepens my own awareness and my own learning, so thank you for giving me a place to keep exploring these things with you.
• 18:10
  Speaker: And perhaps the next time either of us gets something wrong, we can remember, feel the regret, take the responsibility, and above all, refuse the punishment.
• 18:25
  Speaker: God bless, and have a marvelous day.
• 18:32
  Tania: Thanks for listening to Banish The Lies.
• 18:34
  Tania: If today's episode resonated with you, take a moment to let it settle in.
• 18:38
  Tania: And maybe share it with a friend who could use it too.
• 18:41
  Tania: Lies, lose their power when we're brave enough to challenge them.
• 18:45
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, and until next time, be kind to yourself.
• 18:50
  Tania: And remember, you're not broken, you're not alone, and you don't have to stay stuck.