by Johna Hansen, LCSW

After a long morning of driving to Maryland, then taking the metro to Washington D.C., and then standing with three children and a pregnant friend for most of the day, we were all getting hungry and tired. As we stood in a line to get into the metro that took us about an hour to get to the entrance, a few people cut in front of me in line. I was annoyed, so I assertively explained my frustration to the people who cut in front of me, pointed to the back of the line, and suggested they go there. They looked at me as if I had three heads and just turned around and kept walking in front of me. A few seconds later, I turned to notice there was a flow of people entering the metro without a line from many different areas. The entrance we went in just happened to be one that had a long line. All of the others had no lines. I began to feel guilty. At the moment I believed, “You should not have said those things to those people” and “You are a bad person for saying anything during this peaceful event you just attended”. Soon after, I started to realize how ridiculous my beliefs were about this insignificant incident. I told myself that I could metaphorically keep carrying the weight of my irrational beliefs or relieve myself of that burden by dumping them immediately. Once I chose to rid myself of the weight, I was able to switch my beliefs to, “You wish you didn’t say those things to the people in front of you, but you’re human and humans say stupid things sometimes. So what? You’ll never see them again and they’ve probably already forgotten what happened. Move on.” Once I changed these beliefs, the weight was gone. I was able to feel regret and stop ruminating about what happened. Then, the seven-hour drive home was much easier to endure.

Johna Hansen