Thank you, Brooke. I have been thinking.

I’m finding it hard to do models on this. My thoughts ramble instead and I find models are too simplistic (??I can’t think of another word, I’m sorry) for what is in my mind. There isn’t one thought, there isn’t one feeling, there isn’t one action or one end-result. There are lots of all those things, and they change and they fluctuate and they bleed into each other. But here is one model I did, nonetheless:
C: I said things
T: I deserve punishment
F: Guilt
A: Ruminate
R: Hopeless feelings, can’t be truly happy – feel guilty when I am happy.

I know the results I am creating. The results are: hating myself. The results I want? – to feel like a good person. No – to BE a good person. To feel like I have a past that was worth having. This is the thing that upsets me – there isn’t just this one thing I have done! There are lots of things, lots. And so I feel like all I want to do is forget the past, entirely. Move on into the future. But that feels so sad. Like my life to date has been nothing but things to try to forget. The only thing I can remember with any pride is the night I spent taking things to a homeless man near my home in London – a duvet, some hot soup – so he wouldn’t freeze to death. That’s the only thing. Everything else I am just ashamed of, to be honest.

I have no idea how to model this.

“What purpose do I think this harshness is serving me?” When I think about that, I come up with this: if I don’t hate what I have done, I am someone I can’t like. Someone who thinks it’s acceptable to behave in that way, someone who minimises the bad things, someone who shrugs it off – “oh well, we all make mistakes”. I don’t want to be that person, that isn’t good enough for me. I want to be a good person! And I realise that what I think is – if I hate what I did, I may still have the chance of being a good person. But if I hate what I did – all the things I have done – then my past is nothing but a whole heap of stuff to hate. That’s so sad! A past to try to forget. What a life. And I am nearly 40, so it may be I don’t have much life left in which to redeem myself.

To be honest, I don’t think that hating my past is stopping me from fulfilling my destiny, because I think my destiny is to be a decent doctor, and I can do that, I can be a good doctor and still hate my past. So, I can’t find motivation there to forgive myself. My head thinks this: hating my past makes me unhappy, but being unhappy isn’t hurting anyone (except me) and so, it’s ok to be unhappy about this.

I’m not sure this stuff is for coaching. Maybe your response would be – so be unhappy then, what’s the big deal?? Maybe that IS the right response. I’m not sure what’s going on with me can even BE coached? But here is what I am thinking, so……