In her article, The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People, Family Therapist Cloe Madanes, gives us a road-map to misery, and successful self sabotage, even with complete exercises. I myself, mostly identified with number twelve in her list: Glorify or vilify the past.
Glorifying the past is telling yourself how happy, fortunate life was before and regretting how it’s all been downhill ever since…Vilifying the past is easy, too. You were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, you never got what you needed, etc…
Exercise: Make a list of your most important bad memories and keep it where you can review it frequently. Once a week, tell someone about your horrible childhood or how much better your life was 20 years ago. These were exactly my thoughts when I was experiencing my years of depression.
The exercises seem silly now, but there was a time when they were instinctual. I never considered that I had the power to stop thinking these thoughts. Recently, I have learned to stop thinking these thoughts. I am aware of them when they start. I even embrace them, but I have learned to manage them, I stop them as quickly as I can. I suggest you read the article and see for yourself, were you stand with the road to misery.
The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People, By Cloe Madanes
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