I’m letting people who hurt me in the past live rent free in my mind.
One episode involves a former landlord that tried to run me over in an intersection with no traffic cameras.
Another one involves a manager that fired me for informing that one of his favorites yelled during night shift and ignored alarms to talk. He fired me the next day, used the exit interview to tell me everything I didn’t do right (but kept quiet about his favorites, even though I did the job like them), still had the utmost confidence on his favorites, accused me of being lazy and instead of simply firing me and keeping neutral he chose to take it personal, proceeded to try to scare me insinuating I wouldn’t work for his system again, when that failed, tried to humiliate me and then fired me. This was in an non union hospital.
When I think about it I get angry. Id like not to be so thin skinned, but here I am.
i spend a lot of time alone and so my mind wandering out unattended can be a real problem. years ago (45 now), i finally traced back to the single moments in my life that caused my demise and since then my brain LOVES to torture me repeatedly with the pain and betrayal and shame and anger of those moments.
1.5 years ago i found something that helps. i made “elevator music” for my mind.
i have always had a bit of a problem getting songs stuck in my head. so i found one that i like but not love (not a favorite song) that i have known for forever, and put the chorus and bridge on permanent replay.
the tune and lyrics are available as a reflex, last for about a minute before the loopback, it is calming and centering and allows me to manually wrest control away from thought processes that are harming me but seem to be happening automatically.
it may be that this is too specific of a solution, but it aids my sanity. good luck to you.
(the song is: “Spinning the Wheel” by George Michael)