Shame, guilt, and self-criticism
And the 5 revolutionary seconds

We are designed to learn from our experience. We're not born knowing everything. There is an infinite amount to learn. We can only ever act based on incomplete knowledge. We have strong feelings and strong needs.

And so we do things that we later regret. This cannot be avoided. It is a part of being human.

There is a global pandemic of shame, guilt, and self-criticism. We are all vulnerable to it. We all need to feel good about ourselves and feel that others approve of us. That's universal. Some of us were raised in families where, unfortunately, shaming, guilt-tripping, and criticism were used a lot, so we have to deal with this even more.

Big Pharma, and the advertising industry take advantage of this human need, and make a profit from it.

Everyone is somewhere on a path of recovery of dealing with this.

Illness of any kind tends to make these feelings worse, because when you're ill, you're not functioning in line with norms and expectations.

"I should be getting better faster."
"I shouldn't have gotten sick in the first place."
"I must deserve punishment and that's why this happened."
"I'm not handling this as well as other people."

And then, you add the fact that *our* particular illness involves temporary neurological damage that makes these feelings even worse. It may be that the prefrontal cortex, which makes us temperate in our assessments, is under-performing. And the amygdala, which is reactive and negatively biased, is over-performing.

Whatever you felt bad about before you took meds is now amplified. Plus things you never dreamt of feeling bad about have been added to the list.

So, now we have neuro-shame, neuro-guilt, and neuro-self-criticism.

This neurological damage will eventually end all by itself. You don't even have to do anything.

The part of this that is psychological can be addressed, too. You can decide whether you feel well enough to do that now, or should wait until later, do it on your own, or with a therapist.

In the meantime, you can do a simple, yet revolutionary act that will make your life a tiny bit easier, and maybe even spur the healing a bit. The way to do this is to practice where you put your attention. Culture, family, personal history, illness, and toxic meds -- all these factors conspire to make you focus on your flaws (real and imagined). So, every time you choose to shift your attention from this for even five seconds, it is a revolutionary act.

You can focus on anything else -- the image of a tree, spaciousness, a beloved pet, your ideal future, God, a compliment someone gave you recently, your breath.

This may seem like nothing, but every time you *choose* where to put your attention, it is a revolutionary act that has profound ramifications. It's revolutionary just to notice that you're feeling shame, guilt, self-criticism. It's revolutionary to permit yourself to try, to dare to try, to dare to hope. These are the really big achievements. Everything else -- like five seconds of focusing on something relieving or cheering -- is icing on the cake.