Finding the exit ramp

As a result of my last post, I have had two illuminating conversations--the first via email from Betty:

"The messages we give children often become the messages they give themselves.   Those old messages run around in our brain.  Sometimes it's difficult to find the exit ramp for the messages that don't serve us well.  I'm trying to practice being kinder to myself, gentler with my self-talk.  How we feel and think about ourselves impacts how we feel and think about others and that affects the way we relate to one another."

Mike put it another way:  "Sometimes you get something stuck in your mind and it's like a scratch on a record.  Every revolution, you hear it.  You can keep listening to the scratch and being annoyed by it, or you can take the record out and clean it."