| . . . you did "take care of it", in the manner least likely to shaft the waiter. So you got some expensive leftovers out of the deal: it's not as if you can't enjoy them later, even if the way you got them was, perhaps, inconvenient.
As for the pattern: you appear to be obsessing over the difference between circumstances, and the way you believe they "should" or "must" be, even though you have no control over them (or, at least, you certainly don't, any longer).
Albert Ellis (whom some would call the "grandfather of modern psychotherapy") calls this "musturbation", and describes it as a highly effective means for making oneself miserable. The only way I know to break the pattern (learned both from reading Ellis and from having one of his students for a therapist) is to prove to oneself that one's thinking, in such instances, is based on a flawed assumption regarding how life is "supposed to" work, rather than how it actually does work.
I can't cover it in any depth, here, but if you pick up a copy of A Guide to Rational Living (by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. and Robert A. Harper, Ph.D.), you may find it useful. Another Ellis title, How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything—Yes, Anything comes highly recommended, although I have yet to tackle it, myself.
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HadEnuf? |
