Reply To: Follow our own advice?

[ricmParticipant]

Yes, I do that too.

I think the reason is because, with me, any small “messing up” raises the scary possibility of a large “messing up”. This is presumably a kind of catastrophic thinking.

I feel this may be because I felt generally unhappy as a child, and assumed I must be messing up – just to find a cause for the unhappiness.

But also, I actually did mess up as a kid; at school I had bad results, and was often pretty lonely. I now know much of this was due to various mental difficulties. But it all hurts, and leaves the memory of “messing up”. End result: today if I mess up at all, it raises the spectre of this past stuff.