I’m letting people who hurt me in the past live rent free in my mind.
One episode involves a former landlord that tried to run me over in an intersection with no traffic cameras.
Another one involves a manager that fired me for informing that one of his favorites yelled during night shift and ignored alarms to talk. He fired me the next day, used the exit interview to tell me everything I didn’t do right (but kept quiet about his favorites, even though I did the job like them), still had the utmost confidence on his favorites, accused me of being lazy and instead of simply firing me and keeping neutral he chose to take it personal, proceeded to try to scare me insinuating I wouldn’t work for his system again, when that failed, tried to humiliate me and then fired me. This was in an non union hospital.
When I think about it I get angry. Id like not to be so thin skinned, but here I am.
I got revenge for them having fucked with me. Unfortunately, once I calmed down I realized that as a result of my actions I had burned a bridge that in retrospect, I’d have rather not burned.
So now I try to think really hard about whether someone deserves the way I treat them.
Also keep in mind that sometimes you can burn bridges you didn’t intend to burn in the process of burning the one you did intend to.
Others can observe and judge without having their own pony in the race. Hell, sometimes they would even be on your side if they knew all of the information but they don’t and might not care to hear it or believe it once they’ve passed their initial judgment on the revenge act. Or you might never even know that they’ve burned your bridge because of that and it just looks like they’ve grown more distant over time.
What instance of needing a burned bridge to be intact can you describe?
An ex was going out of their way to humiliate me, presumably because they were hurting. I revealed one of their secrets and effectively ruined their social life. Years later after going through shitloads of therapy I realized that despite what they did to me, I still wanted to be friends with them. Unfortunately, due to my actions they no longer want to be friends with me.
Was the therapist religious? That sounds too much like “the other cheek” to me…
I think they are? But I am extremely anti-religion so we haven’t discussed it much.
I came to that conclusion on my own though. Our breakup was bad enough to get me diagnosed with PTSD, so I tended to think about her a lot, and come up with my own ideas which i run by my therapist to make sure they’re not monumentally stupid.