Sooner or later, you're going to have to forgive yourself.

Isn't that the issue here?

You have not forgiven yourself. You either refuse to forgive yourself, or the thought hasn't crossed your mind.

So you second-guess your decisions, let your emotions rule you, don't trust your intuition, then beat yourself up when it all goes wrong.

That's what the question, "What's wrong with me?" is really doing: punishing yourself for being human.

Now, you may be asking: What do I have to forgive myself for?

Or you may already know.

Sometimes, thinking about these sorts of things is difficult. It can bring up feelings that you don’t know how to deal with. If you need someone to talk to, it’s okay to talk to them. Anyone you feel safe with will do. Could be a counselor, your religious leader, your local mental health helpline (international and US). They can help quite a bit.

How about forgiving yourself for:

• not being perfect

You are a human being. You're allowed to make mistakes!

I used to tell myself (back when I was religious) that the only perfect person was god, and I am not them.

Take that as you will.

The point is that everyone that has lived, in the history of the world, has messed up at one point or another. You are no different. Stop holding yourself to unreasonable standards of perfection.

• trusting the wrong people

Stop blaming yourself for what someone else did! They are the ones at fault if they betrayed you, cheated you, or scammed you. It is on them, not you.

• not listening to your intuition

Think about all the times in your life where intuition was seen as something weak, non-rational, "being too sensitive," or some other such thing. Maybe by people you looked up to and admired.

So is it any wonder you're having trouble trusting your gut now? You have a LOT of conditioning to overcome.

It's going to take time to learn what your intuition even is, how to know when it's speaking, and figure out how to act on the knowledge.

(if you're a woman entrepreneur, this group is excellent in helping with this)

• not seeing the red flags

You're not seeing the red flags because you're dumb. You're not seeing them because you either don't know what they are, or other things are getting in the way.

• not wanting to admit that the red flags were there when you saw them

You trust someone. You may even love them. You may have a history with them, own property together, have the same social groups. They're part of your life.

So when the red flag appears, even if you know it's a red flag, you may do the internal math and think it's not worth putting this issue up to priority alert.

• excusing people's behavior when they showed you who they were

A person you have known for a while does something that raises alerts. But maybe they were just tired, or they didn't mean it, or they were joking, or there was some other reason that what they did made sense.

This is why you have to listen to your intuition. It's raising an alert for a reason: this person isn't someone you need (or even want) in your life. They may have bad morals, or be unreliable, or even be dangerous to you in the future.

You have an intuition for a reason. Listen to it.

• going on emotion instead of engaging your brain (super smart people fall for this one more than they want to admit)

Sure, they're raising red flags, but they're so hot! They're telling you all the things you want to hear: how they love you, how smart you are, how they're going to make you so much money (etc).

Your intuition is screaming at you, but you don't listen. This time, it'll be different.

Emotion is a good thing. But when you don't use your brain along with it, you are sure to get into trouble.

Here's the thing (two things, actually):

1) I don't ask you to do anything I haven't done, which is why it takes me so long to post these.

Why? I have to get there (or at least start on the path) first, before I can see what direction to go, and what to write here.

2) This is a lifelong process. You WILL make mistakes. You WILL have whatever happened happen again.

The goal is not perfection; it's improvement. If you catch a red flag sooner, you can handle it sooner. You can put an end to it before you're sitting on the side of your bed at three in the morning wondering what's wrong with you.