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10 Ways to Get Over a Hurtful Past
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We are all one. If we all knew it, we could not hurt one another. By sharing this message, perhaps we can change the world. Visit OneJourney.net to learn more!
Here is a life-saving fact, so welcome the healing it brings by being willing to see the truth hidden within it: There lives nothing real in our past — regardless of how disappointing or painful it may have been — that can grab us and make us its captive, anymore than dark shadows have the power to keep us from walking into the sunlight. Now, add to this fact the realization that there is never a good reason to go along with feeling bad about yourself, and you’re on your way to living in a world without self-pity. Call upon the following special self-study guides as needed. Use them to help strengthen your wish to be free of all dark self-compromising states.
1. The only thing feeling sorry for yourself changes about your life is that it makes it worse.
2. No matter how you look at it, you involve yourself with whatever you resist!
3. Being wrapped up in self-pity completely spoils any chance of being able to see new possibilities as they appear; besides, no one likes sour milk!
4. The only thing that grows from cultivating any dark seed of sorrow is more bitter fruit.
5. Feeling sorry for those who want you to feel sorry for them is like giving an alcoholic a gift certificate to a liquor store.
6. Anytime you embrace a dark inner state, you increase the size of its stake on your heart and mind.
7. Feeling sorry for yourself is a slow acting poison; it first corrupts, and then consumes the heart…choking it with dark and useless emotions.
8. You cannot separate the reasons you have for feeling sorry for yourself from the sorry way you feel.
9. The heart watered by tears of self-pity soon turns to stone; it is incapable of compassion.
10. Agreeing to live with sad regrets only ensures they’ll still be with you tomorrow.
posted March 13, 2012 at 6:48 am
Excellent to the last word and very true indeed.
posted March 13, 2012 at 9:28 am
Amen ! ! !
posted March 13, 2012 at 11:28 am
Very well stated. We all need to read this again and again!!!
posted March 13, 2012 at 11:34 am
Thank you, these are all so true. I really needed these.
posted March 13, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Thanks, I needed that!
posted March 13, 2012 at 9:56 pm
These are all very good, but I still need something more to really make it click, been this way along time.
posted March 14, 2012 at 3:10 am
What timing that this was in my e-mail inbox just when it was. I have been having this problem for nearly three years now, and I know that I really need to quit. Thanks!
posted March 14, 2012 at 3:54 am
I agree with most of those, but…
“Feeling sorry for those who want you to feel sorry for them is like giving an alcoholic a gift certificate to a liquor store.”
…is one that could lead to lack of compassion if we’re not careful. “Out of work? Tough, we shouldn’t give them any welfare benefits.” “Unwell, but have no money? Tough, they should have had a better paying job so they could afford treatment.” etc, etc.
As I said, we need to be careful over this one.
posted November 20, 2012 at 4:25 pm
It’s not that I feel sorry for myself..its that I am not getting a chance to make things right after a man left me after 8 years
posted November 21, 2012 at 7:37 pm
I feel sorry for anyone who is suffering from depression and undergoing treatment for depression who will come across this dismissive post.
posted November 26, 2012 at 3:41 am
Hi Lucy — My name is Kate and I help to manage this blog for Guy Finley. This post is not meant to be dismissive about the painfully real situations we find ourselves in that lead us to feel sorry for ourselves. It is actually meant to shine a spotlight on the fact that it is what we are in relationship with inwardly that determines our experience of life outwardly. But this requires self-investigation and, above all, self-honesty. The only power that dark states such as depression, resentment, anger, etc. have over me is my belief that I have no choice but to do their bidding. But I must be willing to find out for myself what happens when I challenge that dark state by NOT doing what it tells me to do, e.g. not feel sorry for myself, not give in to fear, not agree to feel hopeless. Only then can I start to see how I have been unconsciously compliant with these states — meaning, it’s not that these states have power over me, but that I’ve been *giving* power to them unconsciously. Once a person begins to suspect this, then true self-observation can begin — and the truths that Guy Finley talks about in this post begin to come to light in a helpful and healing way.
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posted March 24, 2013 at 3:54 am
I agree with Lucy. This post is deeply, deeply unhelpful. It tells me that how I feel is bad (I know that already) while giving no assistance. It’s like a hit and run driver.
posted April 2, 2013 at 1:57 pm
ChrisS — Kate with Life of Learning here. The first step in changing any unwanted condition in our life is to clearly see how we unconsciously strengthen it. For deeper insights into this topic of feeling sorry for yourself, please see this helpful Q&A on Guy’s website:
http://www.guyfinley.org/free-content/writings/q-and-a/1403
Kate