Lately I seem to think a lot about other bad things that have happened to me in my life. I don’t usually dwell on the past. Is something wrong with me now?
Thinking about the past can serve many useful purposes. When things go wrong and life becomes difficult, it’s natural to wonder why such things happen and to try to uncover the causes. A normal response is to want to “fix it.” Common questions for all of us include: “What did I do wrong? Should I have known something like this could happen? What could I have done differently to avoid this or make it better?” Revisiting the times when you struggled in your life can be instructive.
One way to help yourself is by taking an inventory of the different ways you managed problems before and how well your methods of coping worked. You can apply these past coping methods to your cur-rent problems, or develop new ways of dealing that will be better at reducing your distress. For example, previously you may have had another family member who experienced a life-threatening illness (perhaps a parent). Was it helpful at that time to have the involvement and encouragement of other family or friends? Were there any particular questions for the medical team that you wished you had asked, that would have helped to pre-pare you for what occurred later? What ways did you temporarily distract yourself or take breaks?
Experience is not only a means for us to learn how to do things better, however. It also gives us our sense of who we are as individuals and the meaning of our lives. A life is never all negative or all positive; it’s always a combination of both. It’s just as necessary to mourn our losses as it is to celebrate our joys and triumphs. But, if you find yourself thinking only about the negative, only about all the losses in your life, it’s important to balance that by defining everything good and valuable about yourself and your life as well.
Otherwise, you may be practicing an unrealistic, skewed pattern of thought that can contribute to deepening sadness and emotional difficulties. If this is the case, speak with someone whose opinion you value and trust in an effort to regain a balanced perspective. If, on the other hand, you find your-self “stuck,” thinking that everything in your life has always been—and always will be—bad or terrible, it is probably time to seek counseling to explore how your past may be influencing the present