[CJ] What's a time you actually managed to change your personality for the better?

Fair enough! I should have known that if any of the easy fixed worked for you, you and your therapist would have tried them already.

For me, in that sort of situation, my replacement thought wouldn't be, "It's better this way," but something more along the lines of, "Well, that happened and it sucked. Thinking about the bad thing obsessively is hurting me badly and not helping anything, though, I'm going to try xyz to distract myself. Bad things happen all the time and I've gotten past them before, I can get past them again. I guess I'm going to have to focus on my next steps."

xyz is usually trying to notice my thoughts and redirect them into something positive if possible and something neutral if not -- singing songs or doing math in my head, a short mantra maybe "it's in the past, focus on today to feel better" for the situation you mentioned, trying to remember a subject I learned in school as if I needed to teach it to someone, exercise, or even watching TV if that works.

But this is just what helps me, I totally understand not everyone's wired the same.

/r/OkCupid Thread Parent