Is their anything in your past that totally gets you worked up? What can you do about it?

My department at work was outsourced and I was laid off 6 months ago. There is a man at work that never works, that comes in late, reads CNN, Fox news, etc. until around 11 a.m. then goes down the street to get coffee, works for 15 minutes, goes to lunch, and it starts all over again with him reading the news. Yet he kept his job and I lost mine. There is nothing to be done about it, but I still can’t reconcile myself to it.

modded by me. Misunderstood the Q.
No I do not get worked up by the past. I have always considered regrets to be a waste of time. They change nothing. All one can do is live, learn and try not to repeat mistakes. I consider them to be learning experiences. I can look back and say “Yeah, I may wish that hadn’t happened, but it did, so what can I take away from it?”
As for things that happened to me as a child? Some of it was pretty horriffic. In today’s world, my dad would have been put into jail. But I can’t change that either, so I don’t let it ruin my day.

Nothing in my past has the power to get me that worked up ;)

It’s my present that gets me worked up. I was diagnosed bipolar 9 years ago this month, and my life has never been the same sense.

It started with a nervous breakdown. I was driving a hazardous road across the island. In many places the speed limit is 35 mph. Well, I was doing 60, and my mind was racing even faster. I could hold only one thought, I have to kill myself. Somehow, I managed to find a place to stop and turned around. I got myself off the mountain by some miracle and drove straight to the hospital.

Since that day, everything has changed. I am no longer able to work. I have some difficulty with memory. I have spent months in depression. I have been on the verge of suicide twice and hospitalized twice. I’ve had visual and auditory hallucinations.

The most recent auditory hallucination was just last night. Driving home from the theater, I clearly heard the voice of a dead friend bemoaning the fact that there’d been no Shakespeare in the program. I had a conversation briefly. When I got home, my head was racing with thoughts and show tunes.

My head is not my own, and that really gets me worked up.

Before you ask: yes, I took my meds. This just gives me one more thing to talk to my doctors about.

In my opinion, you can’t do anything about your past and the only thing you can do with it is to atone for it, make right what you might have done wrong, as best you can or learn from it. Not much else that can be done, I don’t think.

I’ve worked at jobs where my work as an employee was valued and praised, but my personal self was beaten into submission. I’m as stubborn as they come and it always bites me in the butt. I’m not a demanding person, either. I don’t need to have special privileges that others don’t. I can tolerate jerk-head mangement. What gets me worked up is when they mess with my ability to do my job well and my money.
The last time this happened, which wasn’t the worst one, I was a cashier at a hunting and fishing store. Everything was fine and dandy, until I started to notice that certain things were only happening to me. I was cautious about being paranoid, but other people were confirming it. I refuse to let other people push me around. This was about the beginning of the job market going to crap. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut, but that’s not an easy task. As lillycoyote pointed out, it’s better to learn from it and I hope that I can.

There’s nothing in my past that I am currently worked up over. Paraphrasing a wise mandrill: the past hurts but you can either run from it or learn from it.

Ah, just the same old stuff I’m always whining about.

I’m moving on from the abuse. Made peace with it, learning how to not think of myself in the abusers’ voice.

However, there still are many times I find myself saddened by the absence of something to put in its place. I can displace the negative memories, but it’s not like I’m filling those spaces with Ward and June Cleaver. Anyway, the thought “I wish I had a mommy” crosses my mind far too often.

Plenty of shit, but I found that a good way to deal with it is to like, not get obsessed about it; but don’t forget about it or bury it, either. It can always teach you things, with enough reflection. That’s pretty much the best I can do about that.

I don’t think about the thing from my past that gets me worked up. If he does come to mind, it isn’t that deep. I try not to think about his face, his name, nothing. It seems easy unless I’m asleep.

Yes. And there’s nothing I can do about it except avoid thinking about it.

Anytime anyone and I mean anyone says the words…“I don’t know” in response to simple questions like “why didn’t that get done”” or why did that happen” makes me want to make them stand in a puddle of water while I taser them.