I think your problem might also be thinking there's a right way to meditate, just lay down and breathe and see where it goes. you can let thoughts come into your head and when they do ponder on it, why is this something thats on my heart, think of it unbiasedly come to whatever conclusion you need to and let it go, continue focus on breathing, if thats all too much then just start with focusing on gratitude and the things that your thankful for, it will relax you

I think your just an overthinker... and it seems like your now overthinking a simple sentence,, i think what the user was trying to say is we go into meditation with expectations, for example" I want to stay in a meditative state for 20 mins" and when we don't reach those expectations we get disappointed in ourselves. Forgive yourself for not reaching your requirements and let it go. its natural for people to feel bad that they got distracted while meditating, and a natural solution would be to forgive yourself when these moments happen, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that? you don't have to start thinking about right or wrong or if i can forgive myself even if nothing is truly wrong, your just overcomplicating your thoughts? Forgiveness is more about peace of mind, not always about right or wrong/morality. my advice to you is to just calm down.. stop overthinking everything in a negative way. thoughts may come for some, and for others they might not, and the more you practice and meditate, the longer you can stay in that state without thoughts "distracting" you

honestly my dear. let me tell you why it’s so hard for you to change. you have a negative core belief about yourself and you’ve even justified it in your mind. because you’ve been traumatized, in your head and heart you don’t think there’s anything you can do that will change your future because of what happened in your past and you hold onto this mentality so tightly without even realizing it. you need to calm down, and when i say calm down i mean actually calm down physiologically, not just what we tell ourselves in our head. calming down takes effort. first you have to understand you have way more control over your life than you like to think. the reason you can’t stop thinking negatively is because that’s all you’ve done majority of your life. to the point it’s now subconscious. you need to make a conscious decision/ choice every time a negative thought pops up you’ll replace it with a positive one and do it till your positive thoughts become automatic or everytime a negative thought pops up, start breathing, or whatever relaxation technique works for you until it becomes automatic. you’re not just going to randomly wake up one day and everything is rainbows and butterflies and they’ll never be a negative thought again. the journey is about being stronger than your negative thoughts. right now it’s way stronger than you and it’s going to take step by step to reach a point where you’re stronger. you also have to stop using your trauma and past experience as a scapegoat and fuel your victim mentality. i understand trauma. you name it i’ve most likely experienced it. but at a certain point you’ll realize that shit happens it was awful you learn from it and move on. come up with strategies to prevent you from experiencing those things again or ways to cope and handle your stuff. this builds assurance which will help with your negative thoughts and whatever is preventing you from forgiving yourself