Cycle of action then remorse

My all outward appearances, nothing I've done registers on the very bad scale, but every little thing makes me feel terrible for weeks. I get such terrible self-hatred over everything and then I feel suicidal. I've been dealing with this for over 40 years, but I've never mentioned this to anyone. I am already seeing a therapist for something else, and I'm not sure if he'll be able to help with this part.

The latest incident has multiple parts to it.

First my work announces that things are bad and that changes are coming. I assumed layoffs. At first I thought I was ok with this. I had updated my resume and some of my references already and looked into other jobs. That night I'm at a meetup group at a coffee shop where we try to actively work on a project. Some guy comes in with his two kids and the kids proceed to run noisy laps around the tables and squeal while the guy is sitting there looking at his phone. I'm not the only one irritated by this, but I think I can ignore it and keep working on what I'm working on. A few comments pass around our table. 20 minutes of this passes and the kids are getting gradually louder. I'm considering going to his table and informing him it's disturbing us. I don't want to do that, because generally parents get pissed if you say anything about what's going on. I'm getting very tense and pissed. All of a sudden full-blown screaming starts. I don't see what happens, but immediately I think it's one of those kids that screams for fun. I go into a blind rage. Literally,I can't remember what happens from the moment the scream happened until I realize everyone at the coffee shop is staring at me. I know I stood up and yelled at the top of my lungs "Control your kids!!!" (I don't know if the f-bomb landed in there or not.) The guy yells back for me to say that to his face (seemed weird since I was already doing that, but oh well), so I continue my course of action and go right up to him and explain loudly that his kids have been gradually getting louder and louder for the last half hour and it's unacceptable. Anyway, the arguing lasts just a minute as it comes out that the owner said it was ok if the kids ran and played and that the kid had run head-first into a table thus the screaming. So, I'm now the evil child-hater in the place. Yes, I should have asked nicely, but somehow I lost my head completely. Others come up to my table to chew me out. I would have left and never come bad except I was with a group.

I shake rest of the evening and things just go downhill from there. By Saturday morning (the incident happened on a Thursday) I'm at my boyfriend's crying because I hate myself so much over it. I can't shake it.

Monday rolls around and it's layoff day. Instead of laying me off, they lay off my boss. My boss had called in sick that morning, so she was called at home. She called me multiple times that day, because she was upset and wanted to know what was going on. I can't shake the feeling that she thinks I did something to make things turn out this way. The only things I was doing all along for years was taking classes to increase my skills so that I could move upward or move on. I heard from other employees that there had been some problems with my boss all along that I wasn't really aware of.

All week I kept thinking I should go to the boss and tell them they made a mistake and say I want to be laid off and my boss brought back. I can't just quit, because I'd need the unemployment while I look for another job. I didn't do that, because the boss said they were going to need me for supporting some programming work, which is something I really want. I still feel terrible over the entire thing.

Not only did the layoff make me feel bad, but my boyfriend seems unhappy too. We had been working towards me moving to his location (he's 4 hours away), and me being laid off would have essentially pushed me over the edge for a move. The thing is that the job is better for me right now. I worry that he might give up on us eventually. We've been long distance for 7 years now. Since we don't want kids, we have never been in a hurry, plus, I'm a bit old for having kids at this point.

Now I can't seem to work on my schoolwork or do stuff at home. At the most recent meetup at the same place, I shook all the while sitting there, just waiting for the owner to tell me to leave. He definitely frowned at me when I showed up, and I think he'd be just as happy if I'd go.

I've had blind rage before, but there are years between incidents, so I'm probably good now for another 2 years. The last incident involved me slamming my office door at work, because I was getting sick from fumes from roof tar that was being applied and everyone thought I was faking it. I can't seem to tell when one is going to happen. If I could, I have anti-anxiety meds that would help, but I never get one taken in time.

So, my brain is completely obsessing over these two incidents, and a lot of self-hatred is going on. Logically I know I should just shrug it off and move on, but I can't seem to make that happen.

Since this is very, very long, here's a ...

tl;dr: Yelled at a parent and kept my job over my boss having a job. Now can't stop hating myself. This stuff happens over and over throughout my life.

I'm guessing the self-hatred is a toxic combination of shame and embarrassment too, since both incidents you describe were very public. Nobody wants to be seen raging and out of control. But I wouldn't worry about being seen as a "child-hater" in a restaurant - we've all had those feelings about loud kids. You just made it really obvious how you feel is all . And I don't think "permission" from the owner is any excuse for letting your kids run around screaming in a restaurant. But it sounds like (and you know this) a little preemptive assertiveness could have avoided the blow-up. It may be that your exaggerated shame and embarrassment over the incident and your reticence to confront the parent in the first place may be related.

I would definitely talk about this in therapy. For me this is exactly the kind of situation where therapy is a huge benefit - when I have extreme emotions about some incident. Therapy allows me to get some perspective, understand why I have such strong feelings, and hopefully avoid a future repeat.

SOunds like there might be a few things going on here. The losing your temper publically is one and I think it would be good to think about how you could be somewhere more in the middle - those kids sound really annoying but it might be good to think about other ways you could handle this type of situation - without beating yourself up tho. Then there is feeling that you should have been laid off- to me this sounds like a self esteem type of thing possibly. The upshot is I think that talking to your therapist about this would be great and hopefully really helpful to you - what do you think?

Cracked