Sasha1972

Today I was schedule to give a presentation in a colleague's class at 12.30. At 11.40, I got a text from them saying "Sasha, are you coming??". At 12.00, another text saying "Where are you???". I didn't see these until 12.10 because I was driving.

At 12.10 I get to my office and see my texts. OMG! I've screwed up! I was supposed to be presenting 40 minutes ago! Disaster! I check my previous emails from colleague: there it is, "12.30 on Thursday". So I'm not wrong. I race to colleague's room. It's now too late to do the presentation. Colleague is very apologetic - takes responsibility for giving me the wrong time, repeatedly says how sorry she is for this mistake, thanks me profusely for being willing to reschedule. She could not possibly have been more gracious about it, or more clear that it was her mistake and not mine.

So why do I still feel panicky and guilty, as though I had screwed up in some horrible way, even when I have evidence that I didn't, and even when someone else has told me that it was not my fault? Because I have years of conditioning, which I am still struggling with, that everything that goes wrong somehow must be traceable to me. It must be my fault, even in the face of objective evidence that I had nothing to do with whatever it was that went wrong. When I reread my emails saying that my presentation was for 12.30, it was almost as though I literally couldn't believe them - if something is wrong, it MUST be my fault, there can be no other reason.

I reassured colleague repeatedly that there was no harm done, everybody makes mistakes at some point, I'm fine with rescheduling, it's really okay. But it was definitely a learning moment - this is one facet of the insanity of alcoholism, I've been trained to see myself as the cause of everything bad because that's what the alcoholic told me I was.