I did something wrong.
Isn’t that a nasty little aggravating, or life-crushing gruesome thought?
When humans believe that they did something wrong….it can be devastating in a huge variety of ways.
Some people react to this thought with anxiety, some with defense, some with attack.
The anxious reactor feels they did something wrong and adrenaline shoots through their system. They immediately begin trying to repair the wrong with a new right. Apologizing compulsively.
Please forgive me, I’ll do it better from now on. I didn’t mean it.
It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true, the goal is to make others feel better and love me again!
People with anxiety sometimes can’t sleep, trying to sort out how this could have happened, where they made their “mistake”. Guilt is a predominant thought. Must fix it NOW, I need to have that other person’s approval, I need to have my own approval. Emergency!
Then there is the person whose stressful reaction is defensive. He or she puts up a barrier, draws a line between themselves and that mean person who thinks they did something wrong. The greatest need seems to be to escape the presence of this other human. Go into hiding!
Again, it doesn’t matter whether this “wrong” is true or not, the forces must come in for protection. The Sea Anemone reaction.
And then there is the person who attacks in response to believing they did something wrong. This person might shout, explain, and hold whomever is accusing them of being wrong to be the guilty one. They might come off as “controlling” and angry, vicious, malicious, vindictive.
The attacker might bark “how dare you…!”
All of these are human ways of reacting to the fear that something wrong happened, and I was involved. Even if it’s clear I didn’t commit the crime, even by being accused there is danger.
We all may jump around in all kinds of reactivity, entering all zones and strategies for managing the emotional and mental discomfort.
Whew. As my friends used to joke in high school if any of us got a bad grade or didn’t win the race or got ignored by someone we liked…”that’s rough, girl”.
My favorite way to look at this kind of Big Reaction is to zoom into focus on that original painful belief. There might be several ways to write the belief, there might be extensions to the belief…but getting a core belief identified is an amazing opportunity for discovery.
I did something wrong.
Is it true? Are you sure?
What does “wrong” mean for you? Is it irreparable? Could you have done any better than you did at the time? Do you really need that other person’s approval? Are you sure you don’t have it?
Can you stand in what you did, which is now over by the way, and let it be? Is it OK that you’re human?
What would Martin Luther King, Jr, have done if he was worried about what other people would think when he spoke up, if that rose to the top of his concerns?
What if you did something right? Just perfectly right for that situation, at that time, in that circumstance? What if that experience can teach you…perhaps bring you into a place of love like no other you’ve ever known?
When I went to The School for The Work with Byron Katie in 2005 I identified my absolute worst thing I had ever done in my life: I had had an abortion.
I had such shame, grief, and desperate unhappiness about that experience I reacted every way I’ve described above. I was saying “I am so sorry” to the little unborn constantly, I would be reminded to say it when I saw my children, and many other circumstances. I would calculate how old the child would have been.
I wanted to hide it and never tell a soul for the rest of my life. I felt nauseated thinking about it.
I attacked the bill boards of the organizations that had anti-abortion slogans and felt anger and bitterness towards the groups who displayed them, and renewed sadness.
But when I looked deeply, the deepest I possibly could, given what I believed at the time, I found I could not know that I had done anything wrong.
I would have liked it to go differently, it caused such pain within. I would have liked to have known back then that I could question my own thoughts and give myself love.
I would have liked to have access to another way to do it (or so it seems), but I didn’t. That’s reality.
Are you really supposed to know more than you actually do right now? Are you sure that what you know is not enough in this moment?
“You can’t not be in grace. Everything about you is totally absolutely perfectly appropriate. All the things you think are wrong with you are absolutely right.” ~Tony Parsons
Back in 2005 at that school, I began to find turnarounds to this terrible thing that I had previously believed was wrong, that “I” had done.
I began to see the beauty in that movement, that experience going the way it did. There was great love present in that original “wrong” experience.
You can find it in the things you think you’ve done wrong, too.
Love, Grace