A counselor helps Bob see how shame and guilt over past mistakes drive self-sabotage that damages his marriage and family. The real problem is internal: the shame-guilt cycle keeps repeating until he stops punishing himself. Peace with others is impossible while he's at war with himself.
So what happens when you beat yourself up for the past? Talk to me about that. When you beat yourself up for the past and you get stuck in the shame and guilt spiral, how do you normally respond to that?
Well, I have not been responding well to this over the last year. You know, I am self-sabotaging my relationship. I've got a whole list of things that have, you know, really strained my marriage, kind of to almost to a breaking point. Sometimes it's like I don't know how to fix it, so I'm frustrated that I just don't know how to fix it. When I suggested, you know, I'll go up and I'll talk to my daughters and I'll lay it out for them. You know, my wife says, "You don't have the skills to do that." And I, you know, I can't disagree with her. You're going to blow it all up. You know, you're going to blow the whole thing up. And she suggested that maybe I have a discussion, you know, to point out the families haven't blended. The recommendations from counseling is that we move forward, you know, just acknowledging it and just not try and make something happen that's not going to happen. Say it from my perspective, not from her perspective, to my children.
Even if everything was hunky-dory and amicable and everybody got along and everybody was best friends, it still wouldn't fix this problem because the problem is not an external one. Right now you're on good terms with your kids, so it's not about that. What this is about is, this is about, number one, it's about the past and it's about beating yourself up. It's about the shame and guilt cycle, which puts you into a state of self-sabotage. And being in that state of self-sabotage only reinforces the same shame and guilt.
Yes, sir.
Because you sabotage and you end up in the same guilt. So it's more about how do I stop beating myself up for the past? Because here's the reality, this is about you and your inability to keep the peace with everybody else around you, right? But Bob, how could you keep the peace with everybody around you when you can't keep the peace with what's inside you.
I can see that, yeah.
