Dr. Mort Orman here and today I’m going to wrap up my three-part series on Guilt, Regrets And Verbal Self-Flagellation by sharing some thoughts with you about the final piece of this stress-generating triad—verbal self-flagellation.
Verbal Self-Flagellation is just a fancy term for “beating yourself up” verbally (not physically), which most of us are very good at and some do incessantly.
Verbal Self-Flagellation: Why Do We Do It?
Given we are all autonomous, self-regulating, usually reasonable human beings, with free choice and rarely anyone holding a gun to our head, why do we so easily engage in verbal self-flagellation?
One of the key answers, it turns out, has to do with our social and cultural conditioning.
In addition to being conditioned to think in erroneous, distorted ways that cause us to feel guilty and have regrets in the first place, we’ve also been taught to believe when you do something wrong, you should admit your wrongdoing, offer to make amends, and/or be punished.
It is this “punishment” requirement that drives us to commit these self-inflicted verbal put-downs and wounds.
As we saw in the first part of this series, when we are feeling guilty, we have judged ourselves to have done something “bad” or “wrong” that negatively impacted someone or something else.
We also concluded that we were 100% responsible or to blame for whatever harm was done.
Thus, based on our historical societal conditioning, we “deserve” to be punished.
And since there is often no one else around (externally) to inflict the required punishment, we take on the job ourselves.
Similarly, as we saw in part two of this series, when we are having regrets about the past, we are also judging ourselves to have acted weakly, stupidly, neglectfully, irresponsibly or otherwise in a punishment-worthy manner.
So we keep thinking about the past from a negative, self-demeaning perspective, so we can keep verbally beating ourselves up to atone for our “sins.”
But What If?…
But what if we weren’t actually 100% responsible for whatever happened that caused hurt or harm to another individual?
Or what if we overestimated the degree of true hurt or harm that was inflicted?
Would the need for self-punishment still exist, or be nearly as strong?
Probably not.
And what if the 100% negative way we look back on our past actions when we are feeling regretful wasn’t really all that negative or might even be seen as having positive value in our life?
Would incessant verbal self-flagellation still be necessary?
Are You Really Telling The Truth?
You see, much of our verbal self-flagellation arises because we haven’t told the truth about whatever might have happened in the past.
We might think we are telling the truth, but often we are not.
For example, we might focus on the “facts” about what happened in the past and think we are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
But focusing on the “facts” or actual events alone is only half the full truth.
What about all the stories we have told about those past facts or events?
What about the all the “meanings” we’ve attached to them, either correctly or incorrectly, or how we’ve otherwise interpreted events that took place in the past?
How deeply have we told the truth about all these internally-generated drivers of our emotions and verbal self-flagellation behaviors?
Do You Really Deserve To Be Punished?
One could argue that when you really do something wrong, and you truly do hurt someone else, you deserve to suffer and be punished.
But others might point out that there is rarely a true need for all this verbal self-flagellation.
Either you exaggerated or misperceived the degree of your wrongdoings, or you didn’t inflict as much actual hurt or harm as you imagined.
Or maybe you really did inflict significant harm and that’s the truth about what really took place.
Either way, the past is in the past, and once it is over—it’s over.
To revisit the past in your mind, and find reason to punish yourself in the present, is totally unnecessary.
Our society may have trained you to do this, but remember you have free choice.
You can choose to leave the past in the past—where it truly belongs—or you can continually focus back on it and beat yourself up for no good reason at all.
In fact, you can even look back on all your unnecessary verbal self-flagellation activities, and beat yourself up for those as well.
Why not? They are just as punishment-worthy (or not) as anything else in your past.
So if you enjoy that sort of thing—knock yourself out.
But if you don’t enjoy inflicting needless self-punishment and verbal abuse upon yourself, then do something different—knock it off—and do so for good.
To your health, happiness and success,
Dr. Mort Orman, M.D., International Speaker, Author And Founder Of The Stress Mastery Academy | www.DocOrman.com
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