Do you keep ruminating and punishing yourself for past mistakes? Research shows it’s your mindset, not the events themselves, that keeps you trapped.
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The habit of staying up at night and replaying all the embarrassing moments of your life while stewing in self-blame isn’t just a personality quirk.
For most people, this recurring phenomenon, often beyond their control, can start feeling like a mental trap where you keep turning thoughts like “you should have known better” over and over again in your head. This can also disrupt your sleep cycle.
A 2022 study published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology found that people most often ruminate or worry about past mistakes, negative experiences and social interactions, with nighttime being a high-risk period for such overthinking.
The reason you stay stuck in this cycle has to do with your mind’s tendency to disguise rumination as “problem-solving.” You might be under the impression that you’re figuring out what went wrong or making sure you will not repeat the mistake.
However, in reality, you’re just reinforcing the guilt and trapping yourself even further in the same emotional cycle. Over time, this habit can end up chipping away at your confidence, relationships and most importantly, your sense of self.
A 2025 study published in Self and Identity explored why forgiving yourself is so difficult for some people and why they can be stuck in self-condemnation.
Out of 80 participants, researchers found that 41 of them said they couldn’t forgive themselves after a perceived failure. For 39 of them, self-forgiveness came easier. Researchers also identified key patterns that keep people trapped in such self-blame.
Here are four reasons you’re stuck in a mindset of self-blame, based on the 2025 study:
1. Your ‘Time Focus’ Keeps You Stuck
One of the patterns researchers uncovered through the study was a difference in time focus. People unable to forgive themselves tended to experience the past as if it were still the present.
This showed up in many ways. They replayed mistakes in vivid detail and reimagined what they “should have done.” Essentially, they emotionally relived the moment repeatedly, and painstakingly. The researchers described this as a “past-as-present” mindset.
“It is a raw feeling. Just like it happened yesterday, but I moved my daughter 4 years ago,” one participant explains, remembering how she struggled to forgive herself when she found out her daughter was being bullied in school.
In sharp contrast, the group that could more easily forgive themselves showed a “future-focused” perspective. They acknowledged their mistake and redirected their attention toward growth, how they could change and what the next steps could be, rather than staying shackled to what had already happened.
“I needed to forgive myself so I could stop blaming myself and stop looking toward the past when I needed to be looking toward the future,” another participant explains, highlighting the power of a future-focus in finding self-forgiveness.
These findings suggest that when your dominant focus is on the past, it becomes hard to even see the possibility of a different future. When you find yourself ruminating on the past, you may start to feel like this is an unchangeable part of who you are. But it helps to remember that you are not frozen in that moment.
Being in the present moment gives you the power to decide what comes next and take actions that can bring about real change.
2. You Doubt Your Own Agency
Moving on from your mistakes isn’t just about where your attention is. An important factor we often ignore is our belief in our own ability to make things different.
The 2025 study found that people who struggled to forgive themselves frequently questioned whether they even had the ability to change the situation or prevent it from happening again.
This “low-agency” mindset left them feeling powerless. Participants who found themselves stuck in self-condemnation harped on their lack of control over their behavior or circumstances. This led to a deepening of their guilt.
On the other hand, those who forgave themselves believed they still had agency. They believed in their capacity to make choices and influence life outcomes. This belief allowed them to move forward.
If you lack a sense of agency, it’s quite possible your mind lingers on your mistakes, negative events and the past as a prediction of your future.
Rebuilding self-trust, therefore, is the first order of business. And you’re allowed to start small, such as keeping a promise to yourself, showing up on time to a commitment you’ve made or making one healthier choice than the day before.
3. You See Your Mistakes As A Reflection Of Your Entire Character
Often, the heaviest part of self-blame isn’t the action itself. It’s what you believe that action says about you that can determine how you see yourself.
The researchers of the 2025 study found that people trapped in self-condemnation often saw their mistakes as a reflection of their social-moral identity, or their sense of being a “good” or “bad” person in their own eyes and the eyes of others.
So, instead of viewing their wrongdoing as a single or isolated event, they saw it as proof that they were fundamentally flawed or unworthy.
“I have a particularly bad habit that has developed over many years. I have tried many times to break the habit without success. This is something I should be able to choose not to do, yet I keep doing it. I cannot forgive myself for developing the habit, and I cannot forgive myself for failing to break the habit. It’s demoralizing, frustrating, and has ruined my self-esteem,” one participant shares.
However, people who managed to forgive themselves were more likely to separate what they did from who they are. They acknowledged the harm but didn’t let it define their whole identity.
Moving forward can feel like a moral battle when your self-image feels tied to every misstep.
4. You Cope By Avoiding Instead Of Processing
When you’re drowning in deep guilt or regret, a natural instinct to quiet the discomfort might kick-in. This can happen in different ways for everyone, say binge-watching something, scrolling endlessly, overworking or distracting yourself in other ways.
Indulging in these distractions can numb the emotions for a while, but that might not always be a solution for the long term.
Researchers found correlations between self-condemnation and this “emotion-reduction” style of coping. The defining characteristic of this style was pushing away uncomfortable feelings and a steadfast avoidance of processing and working through them. While this silences short-term pain, it leaves the root cause untouched, with guilt floating just beneath the surface.
On the other hand, making sense of a certain event or feeling helps give it a proper ending in your mind. You reflect on what you’ve learned, have a compassionate conversation with yourself or reframe the event as part of your growth.
For instance, one participant mentioned, “In order to be the best parent I could be, I had to forgive myself and focus on my daughter. I just had to make myself understand that there were many factors that contributed to my daughter’s depression, and I was not solely to blame.”
Keep in mind that while you cannot change the past, you certainly can change the role it plays in your story and determine how it impacts you and your life.
Mistakes Are Proof That You Tried
To truly break free from self-blame, you need to make a shift in the relationship you have with that moment frozen in time. Your mistakes do not vanish, no matter how much you try. The good news is, they don’t have to. When you learn to approach them from a growth perspective, you can see them as separate from yourself and they become catalysts for insight and resilience.
An easy way to shift your perspective is using a narrative reframing technique for your past. Instead of just trying to push guilt away or analyze your mistake, you can go back to the memory and forage for moments of growth and perseverance.
Done enough times, you’ll likely notice that the emotions you associate with the mistake have taken a 180 degree turn for the positive.
Do you keep replaying your mistakes in your mind? Take the science-backed Mistake Rumination Scale to learn more about this habit.
