Feeling guilt and embarassment over past events?

Has anyone here ever experienced this?

Sometimes I just randomly remember embarrassing moments from my past and I feel really terrible about them for a few minutes. I understand that each one of those moments has taught me a lesson, but somehow the awful feelings are still attached to them.

Is there any way of making these thoughts go away (without medication?) Does anyone have any methods with coping with these thoughts rather than letting them get to me every time?

May I suggest CBT, it teaches you to change your thought pattern. I also have a habit of thinking about past events. You can't change the past, nor predict the future, the trick is to live in the present.

Same - I did not find CBT that effective as it did not get to the roots concerning the permanent rid of the past events.

Infact my entire life has been put on hold because of how it affects me on a day to day basis.

Fitness seems to distract from the memories, as I cannot detach from them, but then after the hype from the fitness wares away i'm again left struggling with this issue.

Oh yeah, frequently. When I was with my ex, I was a whole other person. He changed me. I felt that if I didn't meet his standards he wouldn't love me and I was too young, insecure, and inexperienced to just call it quits. So I made a number of majorly bad choices that when they come back to me now, make me cringe, like actually visibly cringe and panic. I start to feel out of place in my "new" life which fits me better as a person because of the person I used to be. I just try to shut it out as best as I can.

Yes I still feel very bad about some past events. It happened in my childhood, Although not excusing my naughtiness, I do now wonder why adults were so mean and not taken into consideration that I was a kid.

I'll mention one that I find upsetting and as a result of this, relatives still don't like me. I was ten years old and taken to a house to visit my uncle's new girlfriend. She was a mum with two boys and her family were there to greet us all. My grand/parents, sister, her boyfriend ect all came. There must've been 15 people in the house, and four of us were children.

Then I remember hiding when everyone pulled a suprise trick on me. I refused to come out from under the table, Then they started shouting at me to get up. I ran into the toilet room and cried. I don't know what it was I did wrong but the adults were so red faced and angry with me from then on. I was accused of being a wicked child for spoiling their party.

Since then none of those relatives have been very nice. My uncle turned cold on me and all of them just didn't care when I was undergoing cancer treatment two years ago. Now the party thing happened many years ago. I'm now a 40 year old woman and the fact I'm made a black sheep of the family because of things like this has traumatised, IMHO.

I'm tortured by this problem. It's called intrusive looping thoughts. My mind constantly churns up random events from the past and I am tortured endlessly about my decisions and what I've done.

Lorazepam eases the problem a bit, but not much.

This happens to me all the time. CBT honestly didn't help that much with it. I've been reading about ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) and mindfulness and that has helped some.

There's a possibility that CBT doesn't work because it doesn't deal with the underlying feeling and events. Rather it seeks to teach the user to redirect their thoughts or reframe them.

However, if you're feeling guilty or shame for something(s) in the past, those events need to be resolved. Intrusive thoughts are often a way for the brain to attempt to resolve a past issue, and extreme example of this is flashbacks for PTSD. The brain is trying to make sense of the event and resolve it so that the person can move on. However, CBT as well as busying our minds only attempts to bury those thoughts, leaving the real issues unresolved.

Finding a source of the guilt/shame can be one way of resolving the past. Identifying all of the deeper emotions and giving yourself time to express each can also help. I suggest talking this over with your therapist though.

CBT wasn't effective on me in the past either. I'll try looking into the ACT though. Thanks.

I get this a lot. Almost like a mild form of PTSD where I re live the emotions I felt in the past in the present.

One thing that could help is to try consciously focusing on positive memories as a balance whenever a negative one seems to dominate. Times when you've been very happy or someone has loved you or said something nice. I'm still trying to get more of those memories but have some which I should bring to mind more often (the negative embarrassing memories always seem to pop into my head more easily for some reason).

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to feel ashamed and embarrassed sometimes over things we've done. It shows you care about how you come across to others and are trying to learn and grow. It's when it dominates and stops us moving on that it becomes a problem I suppose.

I am not tortured by thoughts from the past although they do invade my mind pretty much everyday. Due to bad decision making I lost my car two years ago and every day that goes by I kick myself as I know that due to my poor decisions, I lost my car. Now I have to live my life without a car and it makes things so hard.

Guess what?????? I have been so icredible embarassed you cannot even imagine? HA HA HA HA that is the way friends treat you One time they throw cold water on me I still love them very much

My whole life has been one embarrassment after another. It's why I don't stay in touch with people from my past and don't get close to people in my present.

Sounds like you suffer with a form of PTSD.
Try tapping, l find it really helps its free on you tube, on all subject including trauma
Take a look at this, hes the best.
https://www.youtube.com/user/eftwizard

Quite often - I call them 'remembered vexations'. They mean nothing, and are merely reflections of past stress and mistakes, usually rather trivial (in the great order of things) in my case. But they can come on you unawares and in weak moments have unreasonable effect, especially if you dwell on them. Otherwise except for causing fleeting unhappiness they have no power - you have to sort of face them down.