Most of us at some point want to do this. Perhaps sadly, you cannot. But really, there is very little point in beating yourself up for why has happened. The past which has led to the present is not as important in practical terms as the present which leads to the future. Learn from your past for sure, but so that you can try to avoid repeating mistakes and hopefully learn to do better overall going forward. It’s easy to be mad at our past selves for the positions they’ve put us in or for not knowing what we know now, but if you find yourself wanting to slap your pst self every 20,10,5 years- you don’t seem to be looking to the future and should probably slap your present self until you get the message that YOU have to change your own life and set the path for your future.
I get where you’re coming from, but still don’t see the point. What good does slapping your oases self do? How does it help the person you hurt? How does it help to make amends or take accountability for your actions? If they are “over it,” what is the point, to punish yourself? Why do you need to be punished if you are sincere? If you have resolved to change that behavior, you aren’t the same person that did that thing. The “punishment” is knowing you did that harm, and if you’re truly sorry, that punishment is more than any slap or whatever else is worth.
If they aren’t “over it,” what do you do? Are you going to “slap yourself” until they are, or forever? If you do that every time you hurt someone in life, you are going to spend most of your time slapping yourself- and slapping yourself is hiring yourself, or hurting those who care about you, so every time you slap yourself you’d have to go slap yourself exponentially for eternity.
It makes no sense. People who are really sorry don’t do it again, or try their darndest and have some success at not doing it again. They try to make amends to the hurt party, and do the hard work of changing as people. The concept of slapping one’s past self for wrongs shows an inherent mindset that is more likely to wrong again. Slapping your past self who becomes you is slapping yourself. That is also slapping your future self you have no real idea of their deeds. You are at once a different person minute to minute and the same single person in every moment of time. So that is already a red flag to our way of thinking if we “slap ourselves.” The next problem is that If your instinct is to slap yourself for wrong- your instinct is likely to slap others for what you see as wrong no? Which is the very sort of behavior which leads one to hurt others. A drive to punish vs. a drive to nurture or connect.
You still have a problem if you’d never “slap another” and reserve it for yourself. A fundamental disconnect between self and other. A failing of empathy, which is itself another fundamental cause of hurting others. If we are hard on ourselves but not others, we clearly believe there is a distinction between us and others just the same as someone like a narcissist or self centered individual who believes that they are so different from others, a “special case.” In fact, the behaviors of being hard on self and considering less of those around us can often be linked. That is that “you,” a “unique entity” is somehow different on a core level from others and deserve different treatment- wether “positive” or “negative.” Many who belittle themselves would not talk to others the way they talk to themselves, treat others or expect of others as they do themselves. If we expect so much better of ourselves than others, it follows though we may not realize it,
That we believe ourselves more capable or of a “better” potential than others. If we penalize ourselves harsher than others, we are tacitly admitting that we don’t believe they should or can meet the same standards as us. Since to even want to hit ones past self one must have done wrong, we are obviously capable of the same wrongs as others. In simple terms: “no one is perfect.” So to hold ourselves to a standard higher than others ignores this simple truth and implies we are supposed to be perfect when they are not. Conversely if we punish ourselves for every perceived mistake or harm and we hold others equally and demand punishment to them as well- then we are laying the foundations by which we will hurt others again and again in their imperfection.
Ending this up- these wise words are hard to digest but: “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Some primitive part of us thinks that there can’t be repentance without “adequate suffering” or accountability without punishment. Many reformed criminals and reformed “toxic personalities” even will say that the worst punishment they ever received for their deeds was when they came to the day they truly understood what they did and took accountability, and had to live knowing they couldn’t undo what they did wrong.
I will leave you with this- let us take this literally, if you could actually travel through time and slap your past self, why would someone who was sorry for what they did do that, and not try to stop the wrong in the first place? Why would someone fantasize about a slapping themselves vs. fantasize about fixing the wrong? “Punishing the guilty” is a cheap way to write things off as all ok in the mental ledger. It’s immediate and simple and satisfying comparatively.
Actually, my younger self would travel to bear my ass cause I wasted all their possibilities, but I would counter and say that, no, it was the middle years guy’s fault for being lazy and wasting your potential and f’n up my present. So we’d gang up and beat the crap outa him.
If they aren’t “over it,” what do you do? Are you going to “slap yourself” until they are, or forever? If you do that every time you hurt someone in life, you are going to spend most of your time slapping yourself- and slapping yourself is hiring yourself, or hurting those who care about you, so every time you slap yourself you’d have to go slap yourself exponentially for eternity.
I will leave you with this- let us take this literally, if you could actually travel through time and slap your past self, why would someone who was sorry for what they did do that, and not try to stop the wrong in the first place? Why would someone fantasize about a slapping themselves vs. fantasize about fixing the wrong? “Punishing the guilty” is a cheap way to write things off as all ok in the mental ledger. It’s immediate and simple and satisfying comparatively.