I know I’m being U - how to stop being bitter

[FifiVoldemortsChavvyCousin]

I am eaten up by bitterness
About things an ex did 20 years ago
Various injustices
Missed opportunities

People say ‘practice gratitude’ but I find that hard. ‘So I don’t live in the black hole of Calcutta, whoopdee doo’

I can’t be happy for friends when good things happen. I say the right things but inside I’m thinking ‘that’s so unfair, why not me’

How do I stop being unreasonably bitter?

Stop trying to be not bitter. Try to consciously think 3 nice things a day. Your focus needs to be on the positive thing you are trying to do, not the negative thing you want to stop...

Can't remember the exact phrase but something like 'being bitter is like eating poison and expecting your enemy to die'...

Concentrate on you - what makes you happy?

And investing in counselling.

Don't spend the next 20 years like the last 20.

Why give the ex that power over your life?

20 years of negativity for what?

Why are you wasting your life thinking about an idiot ex from two decades ago?

Stop letting him live rent-free in your head!

"Allow" yourself to be cross/upset/angry/exasperated/disappointed/upset or whatever (delete as appropriate).

Just because there is somebody worse off than you, does not make your problem/loss any less bad for YOU to bear - acknowledge that.

When you are ready, LET IT GO. Really buy in to the concept that none of us can go back in time and change what's in the past but we do have power over shaping our future. Focus on that.

If you find you cannot get past thinking about past events in a kind of circular manner, you know, going round and round in circles, making yourself feel ever worse, see your GP and see what kind of service is available for CBT counselling in your area. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is really successful to address unhelpful thinking.

It IS a learnt skill, the more you do it, the better you get at it

I’ve just started cbt but it seems a bit useless. I’m going to try though.

Some great advice here. I suffer with negative thoughts and will try some of these. Thank you!

Write it all down like a letter to him and then burn it.

Keep refocusing your mind when you find it wandering off. It takes time but practice is necessary.

Talk to yourself out-loud if you have to. Just keep telling yourself that you are your most important person.

Write a letter to yourself advising what you'd tell someone feeling a similar way to you.

Just keep going. Sometimes the bitterness is all-encompassing but with concerted effort, you can get through it.

"the black hole of Calcutta"

What the fuck is that?

It’s a prison they had in India in the olden days which was just basically a hole or something.

‘that’s so unfair, why not me’

V good question.
I have found it helpful to counter that with 'well, why the hell not me?'.
I don't mean to be flippant, but I find it useful to not consider myself any more special or entitled to good luck than anybody else.

Ask yourself how your thinking affects you and if it is not helpful challenge it every time you find yourself doing it. It feels very unnatural and counterintuitive but the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Even the most unmusical person can learn to play chopsticks on the piano - even the most entrenched thinking patterns can be changed, even if it does not come natural to you

Lots of online support for your kind of problem, try the following websites:
MoodGym
MoodJuice
MoodScope - my favourite. If you sign up to it (only email address required) they send you a bit of 'homework' every day

Thanks for the suggestions. I’m going to try them.

Volunteer or travel far-flung places.
It's not about seeing folks worse off. It's about shifting the focus (from your ex/self) and broadening your horizons. Meet new people, experience new things.

CBT should help, but by god it made me angry with the world. I was bitter about the past and so angry after every session, that I thought I'd never get past it. I did though and I'm so glad I persevered. You will be too and I wish you luck

Angry is really different from bitter - angry can be entirely appropriate and a necessary step to move to acceptance and then moving forward.

The 'Tasks' of grieving - they apply to lots of other difficult adjustments life sometimes forces on us.

I feel your pain. My exh raped me. After I left him he raped me. I didn't report him to the police and because I didn't he now seems to have been afforded things happen to him in life that would not have happened if he had been reported. It eats me up inside. I confided in a police friend recently who told me, it was very unlikely that I would have been believed anyway. So in a way I'm glad I didn't get to experience that.

CBT can help but it takes a little time as you are learning to re train your thought processes and reactions. It can also take a while for you to open up to a therapist/yourself and get to the useful bits to tackle.

Thanks for sharing.

Agree with the CBT.
It won’t be easy to start with but cognitive behavioural therapy does wonders with changing how you perceive certain situations. You deserve to be happy, OP.

Well done for trying to find help for yourself. I know several women whose whole lives were ruined because they just couldn't move on. You are worth far more than that. . No man should have have that power.

Hi op
My mum is like that, she goes on about things my dad did 30 or 40 years ago ! Constantly . And she has remarried!
She has become a bitter and miserable old lady. My brother barely speaks to her because she started slagging our dad off to his oldest daughter who is just a child.
I feel sorry for her that she can't let go. Please don't become that person.
I know it is hard as I am going through a break up myself and some days I'm so angry with the unfairness of it all...but you have just got to forget the past and move on

When you realise you are dwelling on something - distract yourself - use TV, going for walk, music, book something to change the conversation and narrative in your head.

I have a very negative internal voice thanks to up bring and that's what I’ve had to do. I also try and counter it – when it starts saying you bad at x thinking of all the times I did x really well.

We found ourselves doing it as a couple when we hatred where we were stuck living – we’d start of moaning as something else going wrong then list all the positives of house and location.

It didn’t make everything wonderfully better – we were still somewhere we hated but it mean we tried little harder to make best of what was there and see what progress we had made so I think it was easier to put it behind us when we left.

It's not easy and it takes practise - its idea I picked up from self-help books decades ago but it works and you start to hear the dwelling and negativity earlier and take action quicker.