[NickRandom]

If I may answer?

>>In the conversation...<< That is understandable. I often feel the same worry/desire/hindsight. A therapist suggested that doing some gentle mental self-reassurance / self affirmation exercises beforehand would help. (Which for me it does - but only sometimes)

>>Programming..<< Silent timers as suggested elsewhere for that. I.e. it's time to check-in on myself. They don't work well for me but seem to work well for a lot of other people. Currently I am trying to associate a real world ‘what time is it?’ with also doing a self check-in.

>>A man lost..<< I am slowly becoming able to spot those moments and 'shift up a gear' to do a mental check-in (STOP + HALT techniques). Learning how to do this so that it becomes an instinctive/automatic response is hard and I stumble more often than I manage to walk but the fact that I can at times manage it demonstrates to me that it is possible to do and also that if I remember to send a mentally self generated ‘dopamine hit’ immediately when the ‘take a deep breath first’ instinct kicks in then the neurons that fire together will wire together. Regarding the ‘regret’ aspects – true; but you are also human. A heartfelt apology and explanation is the best (least worst?) way of dealing with those.