SELF-HELP
Ways To Overcome Obsession With The Person Who Wronged You
Someone is bad in everyone’s life story. The tale of how I found emotional clarity.
What’s the use in worrying about
The ways in which the world might come to end
When all along
There’s been a book
On the side of the bed
You never read.
That particular Friday haunts her to this very day. She tries but can’t forget it no matter how much she wants to. That Friday was the day when her school friend made fun of her English. How ashamed she was. How embarrassing it felt. She remembers it all. Sure it is a small thing that happens with many, yet it’s what defines her obsession with getting better at English.
Nevertheless, whenever my friend speaks fluent English, she is taken back to the day when it all happened. She can’t get her school friend out of the mind. Her school friend is her Pit guy.
We all have at least one person in our lives— who said or did something to us in the past which hurt us to our very core. Whenever the memories of the past drag and push the greatest weight of that day on our soul, we suffer.
That person did something to us that we never wanted or imagined having done to us — especially by them. And if we trusted or loved that person from the very beginning, that event hurt us even more. Let’s accept it, we all hate that person. No matter how much we say otherwise, the denial itself is an acceptance in one way or another. That person is our Pit guy.
Who’s the Pit Guy
In T.V series How I Met Your Mother, the lead Ted aspires to become an architect. When he becomes one and adds his first skyscraper to the New York skyline, he decides to call his architecture professor from Wesleyan, Professor Vinick — who once said that his building design was terrible and that he “would never be an architect” — to invite him to the opening of his building to show him that he did become an architect.
Marshall who is Ted’s best friend says that Professor Vinick is Ted’s “pit guy”, which Marshall’s wife Lily explains is someone that a person has been obsessed with for so long that they would throw them in a pit in their basement like in The Silence of the Lambs.
Maybe that person cheated on you or maybe you cheated on them. That person might be your ex. lover, boss, teacher, or a friend — who might not be a part of your life now. Or maybe that person is still in your life continuously doing something you do not like. That’s your Pit guy.
We all have people we want to throw in our pit and we have people who would like to throw us in their pit. Someone is bad in our life story and each one of us is bad in someone’s story. Probably in more than one’s and we have no idea about it.
Years pass by. The Pit guy often forgets the event but we keep obsessing over them.
“Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer”- Norman Mailer
Steps to Overcome the Obsession:
Step 1) Accept
Accept that you are obsessed with a person. That your denial was a way to escape reality — and it’s a problem you need to address today itself.
Step 2) Speak
Stand in front of a mirror and say this from the heart, “Yes, I am obsessed with (say the name of the person). I am not wrong. I am not sick. It’s not my fault, but coming out of this is my responsibility. I have to defeat this obsession. And I will defeat it for my future self”
Step 3) Pat
Pat your back and congratulate yourself for accepting and saying such a hard thing. Say this out loud, “Congratulations Sir! ( or Ma’am. Give yourself some respect) for saying that out loud. It was really hard, but you did it anyway.”
Next time, when you witness obsessive thoughts ruling your mind, repeat these three steps. You can also add your own truths to step 2.
Facts About Pit People:
Scenario 1: Someone wronged you
Sometimes we don’t even know we have a pit guy until we get a chance to push them in the pit. It might be a chance at one-time revenge. Or a chance at confronting them. Such a chance looks karmic to win back our ego and finally heal.
We all want to show them their place. Show them that they were wrong and bad and we’re not them. We want to believe that ultimately we will be the ones having the last laugh and they will suffer because they wronged us.
Revenge fantasies, however, never work out the way we want. Everyone dreams of being famous, powerful and rich, but their pit guy to be miserable somewhere with someone.
We also think their life outside the pit is much better and much happier than ours. So, we don’t want to let them out of that pit until we receive either their apology or approval.
Scenario 2: You wronged someone
Sometimes when we are the ones who wronged someone, then also that person becomes our Pit Guy. Then we push them into the Pit the very day we realise we wronged them.
We know we hurt them, intentionally or unintentionally, in the past and we wish we never had. We wronged them once and now it sits heavy on our soul. We keep looking at ways to apologize to them or somehow make up to them so that they won’t hate us. We won’t let them out of the Pit until they accept our apology and forgive us.
The Question We Need to Ask
Is it really about them? Is it really about revenge or the unreceived apology, or the unreceived forgiveness? One thing, though, is clear. We all want to lift the weight of that event off our soul.
Scenario 1:
We’re obsessed with them because they ruined one event or a day or a whole year of our life in the past. Right? Tell me who really is wasting life now by continuously obsessing over it. We need to understand that even if we receive an apology, that event of the past will remain as it is — unchanged. And, it will continue to haunt us the same as long as we keep replaying it in our mind.
Solutions to Scenario 1:
Solution a) Take Revenge
“Not being able to take revenge turns into forgiveness”- Nietzsche
The great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that forgiveness is nothing but the inability to take revenge. When a person fails to take revenge, he forgives the one who wronged him in order to heal his own ego which is brutally hurt. He thinks he is high-minded and has so big a heart that he can forgive even the ones who wronged him. Subconsciously, however, he doesn’t want to forgive at all.
I agree with Nietzsche. That’s why if the thought of revenge is already on your mind, I’ll say Go and exact revenge. I will not tell you to be magnanimous and pretend that you forgave them when deep down you know how much you want them to pay for what they did.
“A small revenge is more human than no revenge at all”- Nietzsche
So, the only way to get the thoughts of revenge out of your system and see whether or not it makes you whole again is to go and exact revenge. A word of caution: Do not do anything rash.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold"
Solution b) Using your superpower of Visualization
Let’s accept it. We all dream of having superpowers after watching superhero movies. In childhood, fun was the reason behind the wish which changed to revenge as we grew up. Now, however, you have to use the superpower you had all along —The Power of Visualization — to heal and move on. Consider the following three-step process:
- Put: Imagine a house. Put the person you are obsessed with along with all the thoughts that trouble you in it. Once you do that, Lock the door from outside.
- Shrink: Now visualize that you are shrinking the house and it is becoming smaller gradually.
- Crush: How big are we on the scale of the universe? Like a particle of dust. Right? Similarly, Shrink the house to the size of the particle of dust and imagine it between your thumb and forefinger. Now, squeeze and crush it. After that, blow air from your mouth onto the thumb and forefingers to clean them.
Additionally,
- You can visualize taking your foot and placing it over the house, slowly crushing all the obsessive thoughts.
- You can also crush it between both hands and then wash them.
- You can also write all the obsessive thoughts on the paper. After that burn the paper and flush it down the drain. Consider the following worksheet:
Be brutally honest with your answers. You can also do the above exercise in front of a trusting friend. They can help you write the “Note to future self” with a different perspective, thus encouraging positive behaviour. Repeat this exercise whenever obsessive thoughts trouble you in the future.
However, If you want to burn the paper right away, write the “Note to self” on your phone.
This exercise is helpful because it reveals all the people we are obsessed with. Moreover, once we write all the “if onlys” (If only I would have done this or that differently), we see that none of those would have made any difference — nothing we could have said or done would have changed the event.
Solution c) Accept the unreceived apology
If you have taken revenge before but found it unfulfilling or if you do not believe in taking revenge, then think that they have already apologized to you. Not one, but a thousand times. They, however, couldn’t muster the courage to confront you. They know what they did was wrong and it’s already hard for them to live with that. And it will always be even if you forgive them today. So, at least forgive them. Not for them, but for yourself.
Scenario 2:
When we do something bad to someone, we start relating every unfulfilled wish and every bad event or chain of bad events that happen to us with what we did. We know somewhere in our heart that karma has come back to haunt us and we deserve it. And because we think we deserve it, we make peace with the pain in our life and hence we continue to suffer.
“It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it” -Nietzsche
Solutions to Scenario 2:
Solution a) Stop the Self-Shaming:
“Guilt says I’ve done something wrong; shame says there is something wrong with me. Guilt says I’ve made a mistake; shame says I am a mistake. Guilt says what I did was not good; Shame says I am no good” — John Bradshaw
Guilt helps us discern healthy behaviour from questionable ones. It helps us learn, improve and grow. Shame, however, leaves no room for improvement.
So, we need to understand that acceptance that comes after guilt(that what we did was wrong) is a good thing in itself. We just have to stop self-shaming because we did something bad.
“We all have done something bad, doesn’t mean we are bad people” -HIMYM
How to do:
Fill the above worksheet with Shaming and Anti-Shaming thoughts to overcome shame. You can also use a trusting friend’s perspective to fill the anti-shaming column.
Solution b) Accept the unreceived forgiveness:
You know you were wrong and what you did was wrong, this in itself is the biggest apology. I know how scary it is to confront them, still, if you get a chance, apologize to them. Tell them you can’t change the past but you’re sorry for what you did. It doesn’t matter if you send sorry via some mutual friend. I helped one of my friends send sorry to the one she wronged and now she is in better mental shape after the exchange.
“Sorry shift the emotional burden on the other person and forgiveness shifts it back on you”
However, If you can’t apologize directly(or indirectly) to them, say it while looking up at the moon in the night sky. Moon is said to have dark spots because it hears the dark tails of many good people like yourself. Say sorry and believe that they have accepted it.
Wind takes away every memory
They forgot what I did;
But here I am, still suffering the same
I don’t know why I am like this
Final Takeaway: Time to adjust yourself emotionally.
“Of all human weakness, obsession is the most dangerous. And the silliest”- Woody Allen
We all have wasted this beautiful life so far by obsessing over someone. However, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for doing so. We all had valid reasons for what we did— no matter how silly they might sound today — that no one else in the world would understand.
We all have done some shitty things we are not proud of but that doesn’t mean we are bad people. It only means we are humans.
Personal Insight on Revenge
“A person obsessed with vengeance is easy to manipulate”
Here’s one thing I learned about revenge — It won’t fulfil you. It won’t make you whole again. It will only drag you to their level. And through it, your own emotions will keep manipulating you without you even realizing it. You’ll see one day that through revenge, you were only trying to connect with them one last time. Revenge was nothing but your obsession to make them part of your story one last time.
“Do not take revenge, the rotten fruits will fall by themselves”
The subconscious need for revenge is really powerful because we believe inflicting the same wounds on the ones who inflicted those on us will heal our deepest cuts. That’s why our come back to any abusive word said to us is the same word with which we were abused.
But always remember, No wounds were ever healed using the weapons.
“An eye for eye will leave the whole world blind”- Mahatama Gandhi
Although, you might feel really good after exacting revenge because it will fulfil your subconscious need to get one. But a day will come when an act of revenge will leave you even more broken. The same happened with Ashoka the Great after the Kalinga war in which he killed 1,50,000 people. After such an incident, we realize that all our acts of revenge were pointless. They never healed us. They only hid the wounds temporarily while we kept bleeding.
We also realize that we were never mad at the ones who wronged us. We were mad at ourselves for a countless number of reasons — for trusting them(which is not a bad thing even today), for hurting ourselves( by repeating the event in our mind) and many others. We only projected the blame on them because it looked easy and valid. Thus, We held them accountable and pushed them into the pit.
But, trust me, once you look closely, you’ll find someone else in the pit.
Similarly, it was never about receiving forgiveness from the ones we wronged. If we dig deep into our subconscious, we realize we were never looking to apologize because we want them to forgive us. We only wanted us to forgive ourselves. It was all about ourselves. We only wanted to hear that from them because then, it will be a testament to our goodness — which, at present, is doubtful in our own eyes.
We were also mad at ourselves for a countless number of reasons — for hurting them(which was not our intention), for hurting ourselves(by doing something that classifies us in the category of bad people) and many more. The ones we wronged are just like a mirror to us. All along whenever we looked at them, we were only looking at ways to forgive our own self. And so we pushed them into the pit.
But again, trust me, once you look closely, you’ll find someone else in the pit.
“The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests”- Nietzsche
Sometimes in life, you’ll make a pit for someone in your mind but ultimately, if you look closely, the only person in that pit is yourself.
This means there is only one person who can let you out of that pit and that’s
YOU.
Conclusion
I know how hard it is for you to think well of them. It should have ended well for you, not for them. The ones who are bad on the scales of society should not be entitled to a happy ending. Right? I agree. They shouldn’t be. And believe me, they will not be. Karma comes back to haunt everyone. Every Damn one. And then, there is no running away from one’s conscience.
“There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.”-Polybius
But still, until then(and even after that), why make your life all about them? Why make your happiness or sadness a by-product of how they are in their life?
I had one person in my pit too. I was also obsessed with that person. I was angry and hurt to the last stretch of my soul. But, you know what, I started journaling the day that person wronged me. That event was the one that led me on the path to becoming a writer. If that particular event is erased from my life, with it what I am today will also be erased.
See this from their perspective as well. Everything in the universe had to align that very day to make them do the worst to you so that you can find the best in you. How hard must it be on them that something like this sits heavy on their soul? The day I understood this, I saw no one but myself in that pit.
So the only thing left to do was climb out of that pit.
Nietzsche says it is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it. He is right. We are all paying ourselves to make us suffer endlessly.
Are you waiting for a transcendental moment in your life when you’ll finally find the emotional clarity to come out of the pit? Yes? Then,
This is that moment.
“Switch your mentality from ‘I’m broken and helpless’ to ‘I’m growing and healing’ and watch how your life changes for the better.
Forgive them or don’t. I leave that to you. But please, forgive yourself. And let yourself out of the pit.
Many years from now
I know you’ll hear me somehow
When our bodies free our souls
The places we will goAnd a tide rolls through our doors
Darling sail, sail with me
To another shore
Where love is all we do
and we do not hate anymore.
