Why Am I Hitting Myself?

It turns out that repeatedly slapping myself in the face wasn’t very productive.

Why I Am Hitting Myself

One of the biggest pains in my life is having to remember all of the mistakes and embarrassments that I’ve had. And trust me, there have been a lot of those.

Having to recall stupid things I’ve said, misunderstandings, and cringeworthiness...

It’s pure torture.

Every once in a while, these memories would resurge in my mind. I’d make weird noises and flail around, trying to get them out of my head. And I’d slap myself repeatedly in the face trying to do so.

STOP *SLAP* THINKING *SLAP* ABOUT *SLAP* IT *SLAP SLAP SLAP*
WHY DID I SAY THAT

I didn’t do it that hard. I also didn’t keep up my momentum through the entire slap. So it’s not like I physically maimed myself.

Of course, it hurt. But that’s what I wanted.

The way I thought of it was like this. By slapping myself in the face, I would make my brain associate these memories with actual physical pain. And because I don’t like pain, I would stop thinking about it.

It was basic negative reinforcement.

However, I don’t think it really helped. As a matter of fact, slapping myself might’ve made those memories stronger. Which made it that much harder to move past the thoughts.

What I Think Actually Happened

I’ve since learned that we have a negativity bias, where we tend to focus on negative aspects more than positives. It’s a survival instinct that no longer plays a useful role in modern society.

So I think that by slapping myself and introducing the negative element of pain, I was only causing myself to fixate more on those stressful memories.

The stronger the embarrassment got, the more I beat myself up. That made the memories more vivid, which caused me to hit myself more. Which caused me to writhe in agony and backhand my face even more.

It was a relentless feedback loop.
(How many times have I used this phrase now?)

I’ve stopped hitting myself since then. The memories don’t feel as strong, nor do they come as often. Technically, all of my emotions feel weaker nowadays. But even taking that into account, it’s not as bad.

I won’t say ceasing to hit myself caused this one-hundred percent. That’s something I’m not a fan of, marketing my own theories with those headlines that are like…

“Do THIS to change your life!”

My surmise about negativity bias might be true. Or maybe it was something else that changed my mindset. I simply don’t know, and will likely never know for sure.

But slapping myself in the face didn’t do me any good.
And I feel better without doing it.

That is something I can say for certain.

Reframing The Past

I feel that changes in my perspective contributed far more than negative reinforcement. It was more conducive to personal growth than literally beating myself up.

Again though, I don’t have a single trick that made the change.

There are a lot of ideas I believe today, that I couldn’t believe before. I saw them as inapplicable to the situations in my own life, so I rejected them entirely.

Today, they’re simply a part of my beliefs.

I can’t pinpoint a moment when that happened. I just realized, one day, that the ideas had been integrated. I no longer saw myself as a special exception. It was all involuntary.

The idea that we all make mistakes, and that we should move on and not dwell on them, was one I had trouble believing. I thought that my mistakes were much greater than the examples given.

They were surely going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

“What a loser…”

(That’s what everyone would say to me.)

However, I’ve attempted to reframe these thoughts. And I did come up with something. It may seem like I’m being hard on myself, but I think bluntness works well on me…

Feeling bad about my mistakes is selfish. Or at the very least, unproductive.

I read an opinion, that feeling bad makes the situation about my own feelings. It does that, instead of finding solutions and preventing it from happening again. This idea made enough sense to me.

If I am incapacitated by these feelings, I won’t be able to focus on managing similar scenarios in the future. So that is why I try to focus on those preventional aspects instead.

It’s not that I don’t feel regret. I try not to feel too bad, but there’s still some shame in recalling those memories. However, it is manageable enough to be able to work with it.

And that’s what I try my best to do.

A Life Of Mistakes

This won’t be the last time I make a mistake. Some may be simple accidents, others may be from poor judgment. But it’s inevitable that it will happen again.

I wish I could avoid doing so. That I could erase the humiliating moments from my past. I’d at least hope that the next ones won’t be of the same caliber.

But I don’t think I would’ve learned anything without those mistakes. I wouldn’t be where I am now. And I certainly wouldn’t be any better tomorrow. Or even a year later.

So I’ve stopped slapping myself in the face. Instead, I’ll keep working through the feelings I have. And I’ll continue learning more through the process.

Maybe then, I’ll be able to stand proud.