The thoughts are killing me
 

Does anyone else have trouble letting go of the past? This past week I can't seem to stop thinking about all my past regrets and mistakes. I can't imagine I'm alone. My hopefully last encounter with alcohol left me with a wrecked car .... I can't stop thinking about if I hurt someone , my life would never be the same. If I think about it to long I feel like I can't breathe. Not to mention all the other stupid **** I've done.

This question comes up almost every day Itsmytime. And many have the same trouble you do. The thing is, there is zero percent chance that you can do anything to change the past. So there's a 100% chance that worrying about it is a waste of your time.

What you can control is now. Staying sober can help you rebuild trust in yourself and others trust in you. Instead of wasting your time on things you cannot change, use that time to work on your sobriety plan and living your life to the fullest sober.

Stay sober and do some volunteer work. Pay it forward.

Be well.

What are you doing now to build a better life for yourself and contribute to other people's happiness and well-being?

I kinda feel like this problem has a quantitative solution: The more you're doing to put the past behind you and take better care of yourself and others, the less room in your head and time on your hands there will be for regrets or negative memories. You work to replace all of the old/bad with the good/new.

Starting . . . now! :-)

Well, you drank a week ago. Beating ourselves up about that and everything else we've done seems like a fitting punishment, so we do that. But guilt for our actions is not an effective recovery plan.

You need to make amends to yourself for your actions. Do it by working your recovery and staying sober.

It is only natural to worry about this stuff, and certainly when the fog clears it all comes up to the surface. Whilst there is absolutely no point in dwelling on it, these thoughts do serve a purpose. It can stop you from ever doing that again so next time you think about drinking you can use this thought to stop you. Learn from it and move on x

There is a post on how to deal with past issues in the anxiety disorders section, it may help, "emotional memory management" sorry can't post links but you can find it easily.

For me I battle with regrets about all the time I wasted..all the time I spun my wheels and never learned how to grow up and deal with my emotions or how to handle conflict. All the money I wasted and the opportunities I never explored. But there is nothing I can do about..the thoughts come..and they go, cuz that's what thoughts do. The trick is ..don't judge the thoughts.they are what they are. What you resist, persists. They are just feelings and thoughts, they won't kill (booze will though). You are processing rather than denying and smothering your mind with a booze cloud. This too shall pass. It gets better all the time....

This is the link Whipster was referring to. It was originally posted by MorningGlory and it's really useful:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...anagement.html