Am I A Bad Person? What To Do When You’re The One Who Messed Up

Am I a bad person? I’ve asked myself this more times than I can count.

We like to choose sides. We feel good about cheering for the good guys. We stand on more certain ground when we can distance ourselves from the bad guys. When something bad happens, we can panic and get defensive, wondering Am I a bad person? We all can become gymnasts at the level of the Olympic Games-bending logic, language, and even reality to prove that we still belong to the “good” side.

But this compulsion to identify oneself as” good “or” bad ” is like watching only the first part of the film before the development of characters and themes. Even if you feel terrible about something you have done, you can agree that even the Harry Potter series is more complicated than if you were placed in the Hogwarts house or the Slytherin house at the beginning of the film.

If you find yourself at an emotional crime scene, and you are not self-aware at all, it’s impossible not to wonder Am I a bad person?

Here’s a part of ” Am I a bad person?”Answer: emotionally unconscious people can do unfortunate things.

But finding yourself at the scene of an emotional crime does not make you a criminal. If you notice a pattern of behavior that you doubt or are ashamed of—the reason may be that you are relentlessly returning to the same scene.

Being emotionally unconscious is not the same as being morally unconscious. That doesn’t make you a bad person. We are all somewhat unconscious-there are times when we don’t know why we do the things we do, why we feel the way we feel, and how we can feel confident about the decision at one moment, only to feel deep regret later.

Related : Why Do Serial Cheaters Cheat? Can A Serial Cheater Change?

I have written about narcissists, and selfish people, and how to release the trauma bond created by relationships with toxic people. When discussing these topics, it may seem as if we are reducing people to a set of characteristics and behavior patterns. The purpose of this is not to slander, bash, blame, or label people as “good” or” bad”;” right “or” wrong”; or” aggressor “and” victim.”

If these characteristics seem a little familiar to you, you may be wondering if you are a toxic person or a narcissist. If you are asking yourself, Am I a bad person? – The answer is probably no. For one thing, morally disadvantaged people don’t sit around wondering if they’re ” bad.”
The reason we identify patterns of behavior is that these patterns are carried by untold stories. While neither of these stories is “good “or” bad, ” both reside in a silent, sleepy, and unaware place on opposite sides of two kinds of pain:

The pain of compulsive attachment to relationships.
The pain of compulsive abandonment of relationships.

There are countless reasons why you may feel these types of pain (which have to do with the beautiful ways your body has developed to help your very survival, to this point). These reasons are your stories, your history, your twisted map, and even the genealogy that got you here.

For people who exhibit a pattern of compulsive attachment to relationships, being aware of their partners ‘ dysfunctional coping patterns makes them more likely to question their tendency to stay in harmful situations, to the detriment of their well-being.

The hope is that they may look through a small crack in an old and very fortified foundation that was built on thinking of themselves as unworthy of seeing: they unconditionally loved someone else at the expense of unconditionally loving themselves.

We talk about the other side of this, those who have “toxic” patterns and characteristics, such as those that must be disconnected and avoided at all costs. For those who hold on compulsively, the cost is only this: giving up the whole self to another person. This is their pattern and their pain, which leads to their regrets, sins, and loss. In this scenario, there is no room for the gray area, for the benefit of the doubt, and for endless attempts to understand another person who insulted them.

But what if I was the one who insulted another? What if I was the one who abused, betrayed, jilted, ghosted, lied to, or misled someone else?

What if I was the one wondering if I was the bad guy? Is it worth the benefit of the doubt towards yourself?

Absolutely. Here are some ways to deal with regret.

1. Playing an uncomfortable story.

Underneath the mistake, pattern, or regret is an untold story. Pathological liars don’t usually come up with a narrator who interjects “You’re doing this because you never felt safe enough to tell the truth about how you felt as a child,” every time they lie. If you don’t know why you feel the way you do, if you don’t know why you did what you did, and if everything feels sorry now, know that there is a meaning in what seems to be meaningless. It may not be clear to you yet.

Related : Dating A Narcissist: Everything You Need To Know

We would like to think that we are in control of our thoughts, but our bodies have developed ways to protect us, long before thinking and reasoning our way through life. Moreover, the way our body reacts to certain situations has a much greater impact on our thoughts than we know.

Alas, we are all so desperate to “understand” ourselves that we blame others for how we feel and what we do (even if these people are not worthy of blame) — all in an attempt to remain internally consistent. For example, if your body bounces or stops when you get too close to a person you like, not repulsive or dangerous, then your reaction will not make sense to you. However, we are both educated and determined to become extremely uncomfortable when our feelings are out of alignment with the situation we are experiencing. As a reaction to this, we are likely to forget to treat others, lie, betray, or abandon them when they sound an internal alarm, even believing that they deserve such treatment.

This is just an example. If you feel remorse, if you notice that you are making the same mistakes if you do not understand why you are doing what you are doing in hindsight… it’s because you don’t do that, you’re emotionally unconscious, and it’s your responsibility to wake up.

There is nothing easy about it. Usually, there is nothing clear about this either. The patterns you become familiar with may not be your own – they may have been passed down to you through the generations. There is no” beginning ” to anyone’s story, so just start from somewhere. If you are very open to this, then there is a book called” It Didn’t start with you ” by Mark Wolin, and it may come in handy. But again, this is just a book, and it does not contain all the answers. The burden falls on you to become more aware of your patterns, to dig up the reasons, and to bear uncomfortable testimony to your reactions to yourself and others.

2. It won’t be any different next time.

Some of the biggest lies I’ve ever heard and some of the biggest lies I’ve ever said are that I’ll know better next time. You probably won’t know better. You are a soul made of stardust, but you are also a human programmed for your survival. Your survival is a very low bar and does not include your flourishing, let alone anyone else’s flourishing.

There is absolutely no guarantee that it will be better next time, even if you realize the mistakes of your past. The pull towards the familiar is strong. Pulling towards the familiar will feel like fate; pulling towards anything else will feel like a serious mistake. The quote attributed to Freud says, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will guide your life and you will call it destiny.”Until you gain responsibility for your story, you will continue to live the same life, clutch against the same risks, feel crushed by the great weight of your old patterns, and call this fate.

3. How you treat others is how you treat yourself.

If you have lied, betrayed, abandoned, ghosted, abused, and abused someone else. If you have been careless of their feelings, if you have offended them, ignored them, shut up, if you have been condescending, judgmental, or unkind – you can be sure that you have done the same things to yourself. Another step-if you have a pattern of doing these things towards others, then surely you are doing it yourself daily.

If you regret your mistakes, and if you now have compassion towards someone you have to start with yourself first. Pay attention to how you treat yourself. At a basic level, you are simply an awareness of the life you are living. Be a scientist and a collector of evidence of your self-talk and reactions to your daily life. Analyze it and analyze it. You can make changes with other people only when you change your relationship yourself for the first time.

4. Stop using others as prototypes, trying to get closer to the life you want to live.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a “full recovery”.”We grow and heal in loving relationships with others. If you have made a mistake, it does not mean that you are not worthy of love. That being said, no one should be a contestant trying to make your life trial and error.

Related : A woman with integrity will never tolerate these 10 things in a relationship

If you have gained some understanding of your patterns, even if you share this with someone else — this story is still your own. Stop using other people to try out what works or doesn’t work for you in a relationship. The most we can hope for is that our friends, partners, family members, or coworkers will be supportive of our attempts at introspection and self-awareness.

We are not actually “puzzle pieces,” looking for the right match. Achieving an understanding of your patterns, fears, and coping mechanisms can be a beautifully compassionate process by which you finally see yourself as a developed character who is neither good nor bad in your own story. It is not a task to find other people who can or should ideally fit in with your newfound surroundings to make the relationship work.

5. How to say I’m sorry.

If you want to express your regret to someone you hurt, think about what you will say to yourself after you hurt yourself. What do you say to yourself when you betray yourself? When you self-sabotage yourself, How do you apologize?

When you feel remorse towards yourself, you realize that there is a precious soul inside you that has been hurt, and you should have cared for it, yearning for your love and understanding. You will not want to hear excuses, false promises, or grand gestures. I would be willing to bet that what you want to hear is an honest awareness of the harm you caused and confirmation that the harm was undeserved. When there is a break, a sincere apology will try to return love to where it should have been, where it was not.

Despite all this, we will all constantly commit emotional crimes against each other and ourselves. It’s part of being human. This fact is inherent in the loss, sadness, and loneliness that we all feel-which we desperately try to avoid as if it were possible to avoid. It is normal for us to reflexively avoid this pain, to unconsciously float through life, from drama to drama, constantly blaming others, unconsciously blaming ourselves. It is much easier to be an unconscious human being, rather than a person who is aware of how his survival mechanisms cause harm to others. Making mistakes doesn’t make you a bad person. You may be an unaware person, driving a car home every night, not remembering the trip. Making mistakes can bring you out of this coma so that you no longer want to blindly lead to your destiny. So that you can take longer, harder, more consciously, and sometimes more painfully, time to your new home.