How to Deal with Mistakes · 1:33am Nov 20th, 2016
I made a mistake today. It was a tiny mistake, but it feels like a humongous one. 
Learning to put mistakes in perspective is something I'm still learning how to do, since finishing my course of electroconvulsive therapy.
This silly pony helps me in so many ways.
It was one of those "say something mistakenly bad but super-stupid, which gets seen in the wrong way" kind of things, one that led to a possible falling out with a group online. It wasn't an important group or anything (thank goodness), but for me, social errors like this are the ones that sting the most. 
These used to be the sorts of things that would make me firmly decide I needed to die and was a terrible person wolf pony. Actually, merely remembering these sorts of things, even tiny social errors that happened years and years ago, would have that effect on me. The memories would bombard me several times per minute, leading to some terrible things spontaneously exiting my mouth. 
Pretty near constant, horrible self-talk, whenever I was alone. It was the most disturbing symptom of the depression, because it couldn't be ignored.
I'm struggling to keep that from happening again, with good success so far. I'm constantly afraid of relapse, though. So I've been spending a lot of time reminding myself that it's okay to make mistakes, and it doesn't make me terrible to err from time to time—in particular when those errors seem much larger than they probably are. I try to rebuff the thoughts with positive talk, telling myself good things instead of bad things.
It also helps that when I sleep, it often feels like something is still actively fraying the edges of my memories, yanking them apart to make those associations harder to rebuild. The effects of the ECT appear to linger even now, providing relief.
I'm not giving up. Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully sleep will be reparative again. Plus, I just entered two minifics in this month's Writeoff. One of them is really good (as far as I'm concerned, anyway—and that's what matters) and the other is silly but fun. I might publish them both after the Writeoff ends.
Before then, however, I'll be updating Veneer, starting a new blog, and probably return to work on Twilight's Secret Journal (which should probably still be embarrassing me more than a casual wrong-thing-said online). 
See you in the morning. 
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I've had similar experiences where I feel shame for real or perceived social faux pas I've made. I also have them just randomly come up from the memory sometimes and bother me. But, now that I can recognize that phenomenon it helps me to stop it from happening. For some unknown reason though I'm stricken by it badly when I wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night occasionally, such that I'll be seized by anxiety and I have to let the thought form just run its course. Anyway I'm glad it's getting better for you and I hope you keep making progress with it and that the write off goes well for you.
A particularly potent video on failures that I keep archived in case of a relapse into failure/fear-of-failure-induced depression.
https://youtu.be/zLYECIjmnQs
Oh geez, I get that too. I HATE it. When it happens I'm just firm with myself, and just say 'fuck that shit' and think of other things until I eventually have my mind off of it. Either that, or (depending on the scenario) repeatedly put blame on the other party.
So you're not alone in that, trust me.
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Hey, um, I don't know if I can help at all, but, um, based on my experience, it sounds like you're doing exactly the right thing. Do you know, I wasn't always thinking about social faux pas, just how bad I was at everything, including being productive, in general, but I did something very similar? I had to do positive self talk with my therapist and a group I was in for managing my medical stuff including depression, and then even at home my mom would tell me over and over to stop the negative self talk and make me say something positive before she'd leave me alone (I wasn't capable of living alone at the time). It took a long long time, maybe even years, but one day I was completely shocked to realize I didn't actually believe the negative self talk any more. I believed the positive self talk, and it was really true. My mind was absolutely blown. I'd never thought I'd believe the positive stuff! I'm not saying I'm perfect--far from it--and I got into bad habits struggling with college (which I have re-entered at a full time level) this semester, so it's definitely still tricky at times to believe the positive self talk, but those moments of just knowing it was the truth when I did it were so, so worth it.
...I guess I'm sharing this because I was so convinced that positive self talk didn't do much--it felt a lot like a lie, honestly--and I found out how wrong I was. I want to encourage you and anyone else who may read this to keep up the positive self talk, because it may take a long time but it really does pay off in the end.
And remember, the good things are true, and the bad ones are lies. You aren't telling yourself nice falsities just to make yourself happier. You're siding with true beliefs about yourself and discarding false ones. I have to do the same thing all the time: that's the secret to being a "positive person". Positive people aren't just magically happier than anyone else. I'm certainly not. I have to tell myself positive things all the time (and I tell myself them because they're true), and find little ways to improve my mood, like buying candy I like or getting a new book. The more you do it, the easier it'll get, like any habit. There are embarrassing memories that will still throw me into the fetal position, and when they strike I just immediately throw them out of my head and think of something else.
Good! That's what I want to hear
I've had that problem often. Still, some things are annoying to deal with because they inevitably drag up an association of a social mistake made in the past.
My way of dealing with them was the observation that nobody but me actually remembers these things. People, on average, don't have a very good memory, and in general, don't care enough about you to remember every little mistake you make.
For me it's more those "let the mask slip and give someone a glimpse of the true darkness of my soul" faux pas. You just have to kill those people and get on with life.