The young lady worked at the fast-food store on mulberry lane. She was a hard worker and worked hard to make her employer proud. One day, she made a mistake on an order. Her boss was very angry with her. The young lady felt like she let her boss down. She didn’t like the feeling.

The feeling stuck with her the rest of the day. She tried hard to push it away and drown it out with music, work, and other activities. She tried to push it out of her mind, but the feeling persisted. It was an underlying stream of static that permeated her body and muddied her mind.

The next day, the girl went to school. She hung out with her friends. She always took care to be kind and not hurt anyone’s feelings, but that day her friend was having a bad day and misinterpreted a casual remark that she made. Her friend’s feelings were hurt. The young girl felt bad for her friend. She hadn’t intended to hurt her, but she did.

The pain of hurting her friend haunted her that day. The memory of the pain was accompanied by other memories of when she hurt other people’s feelings. In a desperate attempt to make the pain go away, the young lady cut herself. She wanted the physical pain to distract from the emotional.

The next day was a weekend. She was invited on a group date with her friends. Her parents were divorced and it was her mother’s weekend. Her mother lived on the other side of the state. She called her mother to ask if she can forgo her visitation this weekend, so she could go on the date. Her mother acquiesced, but not without making a comment about how sad she was that she was choosing her friends over her.

The young lady tried to brush off the comment her mother had made, but it stuck with her. She hated disappointing her mother. She remembered disappointing her boss and the pain she caused her friend. The young lady’s head filled with noise and pain. Her body was physically in pain. She felt like the roar of a 747-jet engine was inside her head. She wanted desperately for the emotions to stop.

The young lady sat down, alone, outside. She turned off the distraction of her phone. She sat, breathed deep, and relaxed her body. First, she analyzed each situation. Was there anything that she needed to change in her actions and her behaviors? She didn’t think about how her friend, boss, or mother responded, because no matter how perfect she was, she could never be perfect enough that her actions could control the perception of another person. Instead, she focused on the type of person she was. Did she need to grow in any way? After she finished an inventory of herself and identified the small adjustments that she wanted to make, she felt a little better, but she was still in emotional pain. She felt sorrow for the pain that her mother, boss, and friend had felt.

The young lady thought about their sorrow. Instead of blocking it out with distractions, she sat calmly and allowed herself to feel sad for them. She embraced the feeling of sadness. She felt sad for them. She did not analyze the feeling. She did not try to prevent the feeling. She did not make plans to prevent future occurrences of the feeling. She just sat and felt sad for them. She felt sad for her part in the mistake. She felt sad for their perception of the mistake.

The feeling of sadness crashed over her like a wave. It filled her up completely and then it slowly subsided. As it subsided, she felt a renewed feeling of hope and calm. Her mind was clear. She went out with her friends that night and she was able to be mentally present.

The memories of the mistakes did not permanently go away. They would pop into her head from time to time, often accompanying memories of new mistakes. When the memories came, they accompanied painful emotions. The young lady would go through the same process. She would first decide if there were any changes that she needed to make in her. She did not use other people’s perception as an indication that changes needed to be made in her. She did not know the circumstances regarding their perception. She did not know how much of their perception was due to her behavior or due to other mitigating factors.  She did take a personal inventory and made decisions accordingly. She did not make decisions about herself that she hoped would change responses in others. This is often a poor measurement, because there are too many unknown factors that influence other people’s responses. She simply took responsibility for her part in any mistakes and allowed the other person to take responsibility for their response to her mistake.

The next thing she did was to sit with the painful feelings that accompany the memory. She allowed herself to feel remorse, sadness, pity, and empathy. Each time she did so, the intensity and the frequency of each memory and accompanying emotion, would decrease. This became easier to do and didn’t take as much effort, over time. She leaned into the emotion and embraced it, while calming her body. She no longer feared the emotion.