Raspberry Iced M

There is a particular kind of shame that comes with repeating a mistake.

Not once. Not accidentally. But knowingly. Again.

And there is something humbling about realizing I wasn’t blindsided. I didn’t even really lack self control. I was patterned.

For a long time, I thought insight would be enough. If I understood why I did something, or felt bad enough afterward, or apologized sincerely, surely that counted as growth.

But it didn’t.

I think we fail, sometimes, to learn necessary lessons after one mistake because – while consequences hurt – they don’t transform.

Pain alone does not rewire patterns. Pain is just pain. And if anything, it stunts your ability to see things clearly so that necessary digging can be done.

When a behavior is rooted more deeply than logic – when it’s tied to validation, fear, loneliness, ego, survival – awareness itself can’t compete with all of that. So while I recognized my initial offenses as sinful, I still reached for it again. That’s the part I don’t love admitting.

And after those mistakes, I’d set my eyes on the “bandaid phase,” the phase where I would apologize, patch what I broke, promise differently, and feel sincerely remorseful. And then I would quietly return to the same coping strategy once the internal discomfort resurfaced.

What I mean is…my behavior wasn’t random. It was soothing something.

And until I addressed those things, the behavior remained available.

The turning point wasn’t guilt. It wasn’t public fallout. It wasn’t even fear of losing everything.

It was loneliness. Not the dramatic kind – the internal kind. And the moment I figured that out, I realized that I was the common denominator, which feels more isolating than empowering.

And now I can’t just fix the external circumstances. Now I have to sit with myself.

Feelings of regret say, “I wish I hadn’t done that,” and focuses on the mistake itself. It’s reactive.

But reconstruction asks, “What part of me keeps reaching for this?” Reconstruction focuses on the wiring more than the mistake. It’s surgical. And surgery isn’t comfortable.

These days, I don’t attempt to resolve loneliness. I sit in it, as gut-wrenching as it is sometimes.

I forced my patterns to come to a screeching halt, but I didn’t immediately feel strong – I felt exposed. When the coping strategy was removed from office – when the distraction disappeared – and when temporary relief was no longer an option – the only thing left was the original ache. The ache that I hurt other people, over and over. The ache of the emptiness. The ache that it took me so long to even get here.

I have had to learn to just exist with unmet needs, insecurity, the fear of not measuring up and the fear of being too much…

…without outsourcing that pain or seeking any kind of relief.

And that kind of healing is loud in my own head, but externally quiet. Incredibly lonely. Without encouraging applause. Just me, choosing differently. And no one even knows.

I figured out that we repeat mistakes because the lessons we learn from those mistakes aren’t intellectual. They’re structural.

We don’t stop destructive behavior when we feel bad enough. We stop when we value integrity more than relief. We stop when staying the same costs more than changing. And we stop when we’re ready to embrace the discomfort we tend to love to avoid.

Change at the surface is fragile. Change at the core is slow.

But once that core shifts – once I learn how to regulate, tolerate loneliness, and meet my own needs without self-sabotage, the repetition no longer controls the narrative. The temptation might not ever disappear. But I can fight it, because I won’t need to try to escape myself.

I used to think, even as recently as a few weeks ago, that repeating mistakes meant I was broken. Now I think it means I have focused on white-knuckling the habit when I should’ve been focused on healing. Living a life of any kind, when unhealed, isn’t satisfying.

And as painful as it is, I am putting in that work by myself, with honesty and without shortcuts. And I’m doing it for me – no one else. And for the first time, I finally learned the lesson.