Why it's bad to make up for your mistakes

One of the most bizarrely toxic things

that we learn to believe is that I can

make up for my mistakes. You may think

to yourself, "But Dr. K, what do you

mean? Isn't it good to make up for your

mistakes?" No. Because if you can make

up for your mistakes, what are you

allowed to do? Make mistakes. I can make

it up. Because when we as human beings

learn that we can make up for our

mistakes, there's no incentive to not

make a mistake. What really gets people

to change, and I say this as someone

who's practiced a fair amount of

addiction psychiatry, is not making up

for mistakes. What propagates addictive

behavior, oh, I'm so sorry I did it. I

was drunk. I'll never drink again. Let's

go to Cabo. Let's do this. I'm going to

make it up to you. I promise I'll make

it up to you. And hey, if you can make

it up to him, you can them over

again. Now, if you do something wrong,

I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't

try to compensate in some way. I'm not

suggesting that you shouldn't make it

right. But be very careful because

there's a very insidious belief that if

I can fix it tomorrow, I can screw it up

today.