Do you obsess over embarrassing memories?

Have you ever been going about your normal day when all of a sudden you are hit by a memory involving a situation where you felt embarrassed, humiliated, etc.? I will be doing something normal like washing dishes when all of a sudden for no reason a memory will surface that brings me a profound level of grief. I have no idea why these memories will come up, but they vary from the traumatic (situations from childhood or high school that were extremely humiliating or embarrassing) to the trivial (paranoia over how I perceived others to be evaluating me while doing everyday things).

For example, I woke up early this morning to exercise and play with my dog. I was brushing my teeth when out of nowhere I thought about a phone call that I made last week. I started to get anxiety from this, worrying about how poorly I presented myself during the phone call and how weak or stupid I must have sounded to the person on the other line. Of course, I know that I am probably the only person who even remembers what I sounded like or said on the phone that day (let alone actually cares), but that does nothing to prevent me from obsessing over what the other person must have thought of me while endlessly analyzing myself. So, here I am, at 5:30 AM, remembering every single word that I said on the phone that day and thinking about how stupid I must have sounded.

This is even worse when memories that actually were embarrassing or traumatic come to mind. Such occurrences are extremely detrimental to my performance during the day; both at work and recreationally. I do not show this outwardly, but it does prevent me from concentrating on enjoying a movie for example. I understand that the events in some of these memories happened years and years ago, but in my mind they happened just yesterday and the grief over them is something that I have to carry with me every day that my mind chooses to bring them up.

Sometimes I wish that I had an "Easy Button" like in those funny Staples commercials that I could press to erase all of the different memories that haunt me like this for no apparent reason.

i do that all the time, some of the things i remember happened 10 years ago and i will still cry about them when i remember.....

this happens to me... as i start to think about it i can feel the anxiety and embarrasment building again in the pit of my stomach... i really do have to just, well its like you said. i just have to press a switch and forget about it, pick up the phone and launch into a conversation with my mum or something and just try to ignore my thoughts. it works... sometimes.

looks, its like you said... no one else will remember it but you. no one judges us as harshes as we judge ourselves - you know its true. i have made some awful clangers i would have given anything to take back, but as the years have gone on i have learned to try to forget. everyone makes mistakes, and although some people may appear to be perfect, no one is. we're all only human and even the most powerful people in the world can't escape that =) that make mistakes too!

i hope this helps... you just have to stop yourself dwelling on things. it will drive you crazy.

Same thing happens to me, I manage to keep my interaction to a least minimal which helps in some cases but still I dwell about thing I should have said! There was a girl in restaurant the other day passing smiles, the usual to get to know thing, I was with my friends, first fear of criticism, when I surpassed that second fear what if I don’t like her blabla .... I wasn’t finished thinking and it was time to leave. Its two week an I still feel bad about it, these are the negative points which will stay with us, the positive side can be, will these normal people have an imagination like ours?

I used to do that. Suddenly, out of the blue, I would feel profound shame about something silly (but minor) that I'd said to someone years earlier.
But over the years the problem has more or less gone away, just like most of my obsessive-compulsive behaviour. (There is definitely a link there, don't you think?)
And I have absolutely no idea why... Ok, I still feel uneasy sometimes when an embarassing memory crops up, just like I still check everything *very thoroughly* before I leave the house - but I would say that OCD and worrying over past situations has gone down to a level that is "almost normal". All of their own. For some reason.

Hi so when someone thinks this way is it a form of OCD? I am like this all the time, i know i have anxiety problems but i cannot explain how depressed i feel because of the thought of my bad conduct, or feeling i said the wrong thing, i think everyone is speaking about me and my actions all the time.

littlemiss wrote:Hi so when someone thinks this way is it a form of OCD?

I have no idea, really... I was just speculating that there might be a connection. At least in my life those two problems have always come up and disappeared in sync...

Whoops. That was me - Josephine.

I do this all the time and the memories cripple me. I also worry all the time about seeing these people again, the ones I've hurt or wronged or said/done something stupid in front of and they'll hate me so I spend my days alone. I once asked someone I used to chat to whether she would like to carry the conversation we were having on elsewhere and she loudly and forcefully replied "I'm not going out with you." I explained that I wasn't asking her out, merely asking if we could carry on the chat elsewhere over a coffee perhaps and that destroyed me for ages after, I refused to go out for weeks and even now (several years later) I won't walk past her house and if I see her walking towards me, I find myself darting away with my heart almost exploding out of my chest.

I play over every past hurt and slight, imagined or otherwise. Recently, I began chatting to a chap who runs a shop in town and he's a great bloke however one of the people he knows came into the shop while I was there and I could tell he didn't like me very much. I thought it might just be my imagination, so I said jokingly "and there's me thinking you don't like me" and his reply was "I don't, you talk a load of crap" and I felt like someone had ripped out my heart. My smile fell away and he saw this, I made an excuse up and promptly left and have not been back since as I'm worried if I go back he'll turn up. I do talk quite fast but I'm not aware I talk crap and I'm certainly not disrespectful. It's a nightmare!

I wonder if this is a normal situation? Seems like everyone said they do it. I use to but now I have no memory. LOL I remember though, thinking back to when I was a child and hating that I had done something 15 years ago. This was say in my 20's and 30's. I thought it odd that something like that would still be bothering me. You might be on to something there. But I guess there are some blessings from poor memories.

As I get old, I care a lot less. But I do have severe avoidant personality disorder. Doc recently fired me. Missing appointment.

Makes no sense to me that I use to never would let this happen.