I don't know about you, but most of us - and certainly I do this - go into beating ourselves up when something goes wrong. When I make a mistake or something ends badly I often find my thoughts going into a self destructive pattern. I start thinking how stupid, how wrong, and bad I am. Do you do that?

Most of us do. What I have figured out is that this is based on something that happens in our brains. We have this old "reptilian" part of our brain that splits everything that happens in to safe vs. unsafe, blame vs innocence, and all sorts of other black and white, clear cut ways of understanding. This is useful in that it helps us quickly decide what to do in life and death circumstances, it's a survival mechanism. The problem is, of course, that life is never really that simple.

None us us is as bad (or even perhaps sometimes, as good) as we imagine. Movie stars and millionaires don't have any thing on us. We all have our flaws and our gifts. We are all, what I refer to as "perfectly imperfect." But our brains try to trick us into believing that we are all bad sometimes. That is what "Victim" thinking is, in essence, a lie telling us that we are nothing, no good, stupid, bad or whatever in order to help us survive something that seems life threatening.

We just continued to believe the lie longer than necessary. We had to believe it at that moment, it helped us get through it. But, we have already survived it, so we don't have to keep believing the old brain lies! We can start seeing ourselves as the "perfectly imperfect" and precious human beings we are!