Thank you.

Carpe Diem quam minimum credula postero I think I remember that right

Guilt and anxiety have their place in life. They are adaptive measures for success. But, everyone needs to realize, none of us gets output of this particular game alive. This is a zero sum game. Remember that and live your life accordingly.

Guilt is far from the only symptom related to the past. Depression is often largely about the past, too. Most specifically, we are depressed because we did not live up to what was once our "ideal" or "aspirational" self -- or that life itself did not comport itself with our idealized notion of it. In my experience most of these ideas I had 40 years ago were somewhere between bogus and unrealistic to begin with. You can't legitimately mourn the loss of something you never really had to begin with, but it's a perceived loss just the same, and if you don't make some kind of peace with it the result is likely depression. One way out of this particular thicket according to shrinks is to focus on your present, actual self (and obviously the more you really know yourself, the better) and your current [in]actions and [mis]behaviors, all of which are far more fixable if need be, and certainly, at least somewhat actionable compared to the past, which isn't fixable or actionable AT ALL. The past is just a sunk cost.

I have some personal experience with this because of the wildly unrealistic expectations set by my religion of origin, evangelical Christianity. The bar was set high -- all believers were supposed to be juiced and living the "victorious life" -- and the expectations were downright orbital (god is tipping the scales in our favor, protecting us, enlightening us, guiding us, blessing us). No way can you live up to that back here in the real world, and no way can your outcomes be what those beliefs would predict. So you end up either increasingly delusional, or feeling terrible guilt and regret and depression because you're convinced you've failed god in some way. Or some combination of the two. Or, like me, you just get out and resolve the problem that way.

Once I read that depression is too much past....anxiety is too much future....and the present is the reality we must deal with w/o carrying the past on our shoulders nor forecasting fears that may never be.

Preach!

Thank you for sharing this.

Especially when people tell you some God’s version of the past, which doesn’t happen to accord with science, and thereby tries to determine how you should live your life in the future.

Yep Be Here Now.

That's all easier said than done. Unfortunately.

A great quote