Part of having a mental illness like bipolar disorder is having a brain that hates you. A brain that overreacts to the slightest perceived imperfection. All it takes is believing that we have done something wrong for our brain to see it as a capital offense and spend hours or days beating ourselves up about it.

This is pretty de rigueur for someone with a mental illness (especially depression or anxiety).

Bipolar Making You Beat Yourself UpBeating Yourself Up Over a Perceived Error

And this morning I got an email from someone in just this situation. This person had spent some time with friends and felt they were overly-anxietious, overly-talkative, overly-hyper and so on. And unfortunately, this person was using this perception to beat themselves up.

This is wrong. Please read my response to this person. I hope it will help anyone in this situation (which includes me, from time to time).

To those who would beat themselves up over a perceived mistake:

First of all, be gentle with yourself. This is a Buddhist concept. You deserve to be treated as well as you treat others. You’re being far too harsh.

You have to understand that your perception of what happened might be skewed. You may not have been nearly as anxious, hyper, talkative, and so on, as you think. And even if you were, others may not have found that a negative.

You’re basically beating yourself up for something that might not have even happened!

Additionally, try to remember that you’re not perfect, none of us are. Even if you weren’t perfect yesterday, that’s OK, because none of us meet that standard. These people care for you and aren’t going to judge you nearly as harshly as you’re judging yourself because they’re not perfect either.

You try your best, every day, which we all do, and that is good enough. Your flaws are OK. Your imperfections are OK. You didn’t do anything wrong or bad it’s just your brain trying to make you think you did. Brains tend to lie. You were just like everyone else. Which is what we all are.

Try to remember to be gentle. It’s rough out there. You deserve to be your own best friend.