Bad childhood I want to stop thinking about. Any ideas?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by RedMenace

Thanks. I needed that to calm myself down. I do let my inner dialogue talk myself into insanity. That damned mind, always trailing off.

That damned mind is you! And it just functions in the way it is designed, seen that way it functions flawlessly and proves that it is in order. What is driving you crazy is no your mind, and is not your eyes you see with and not your ears you hear with, but is your ever-rambling always self-focussed ego that always takes itself very!!! important and claims an own existence although it is just illusory by nature. It abuses this tool your mind is.

If you want to change that, change the attitude in which you meet the world, in the present moment. Staying focussed on what you do in the present, your mind then becomes clear and settled - and then finds the calmness and clearity and power to take out your ego, like sunbeams penetrate clouds and dissolve them if the sun's warmth is just powerful enough. The ego, like clouds, exists as a phenomenon, but it has no real substance of its own.

This does not mean your history will all of a sudden change, and your memories would be different or no longer be there. They will stay the same. But the pain will not have power over you again, you pick it up if you choose to have a look at it, like you take an appel in the store, and you then put it back if you have decided that it was enough and that you do not like it.

That is freedom from pain: not wishing to fight and supress pain (which is impossible since pain is inevitable part of life in a temporal world), but not getting ruled by it, but to handle it in the way you like to do, by your own terms and conditions.