How To Leave The Past Behind
When the nights are long and you can't sleep for all the sadness of a
past left unresolved; when you cannot grasp the future squarely and move
on; when the past haunts both your waking hours and your dreams... it's
likely that you're in the grip of anxiety and inertia. There will
always come a point at which you must cease to stay stuck in the past or
it will define you and mark every step you take from now on.
Steps
1. Prepare to face the challenges.
A past left unresolved will continue to haunt you if you don't address
the underlying sorrow, pain and anger. You may not want to revisit
aspects of what happened in the past but if you don't, you allow the
part of your mind that conceals and glosses over hurts to dominate. And
instead of fully comprehending what happened and learning from it, you
live in the grip of the past subconsciously and let it eat away at you.
If you cannot take a clear view of the past by self assessment, seek professional therapeutic assistance to guide you.
2. Accept that you cannot change what happened. But,
still remember you CAN change your past. You can't change it physically,
but you can change it mentally. It is not possible to rewrite the facts
of what you experienced and went through. But it is possible to rewrite
the way you perceive it and handle it from now onward. If you don't,
your hurt self will carry over this emotional pain
into all new experiences and relationships, possibly poisoning them and
dooming them to failure without any conscious desire on your behalf.
3. Don't believe anything someone said to hurt you.
Abusers, from the mildest situational bully like an obnoxious supervisor
to a bone-breaking abusive parent, do not want you to think well of
yourself or question their unjust authority. If they say you're too
independent, that's because they wanted you to be dependent of their
opinion over your own. If they say you're too sensitive, it means you
still have the capacity to feel if it's true or enough self respect to
reject an insult. If they say you're too cold, it's because you're not
gullible enough to fall for their excuses. Compare their insults to what
people who like you and hold a high opinion say about you. When both
groups agree, it's probably true about you but that doesn't always make
it bad.
- This kind of sorting can take some time and introspection. It's deep healing. Start it by making a list of the things you like about yourself, to separate your feelings from your detractors. You may find some traits on both lists, accept them as part of yourself. You may find some of their insults are just flat lies. It's common for bullies and abusers to lie to keep people emotionally dependent on their good opinion. Often they project their flaws, which you might not share. A personal journal is good for this, followed by discussing your observations with a trusted friend or therapist who has a high opinion of you.
4. Be grateful for friends who support you and will always be there for you. Don't upset yourself by thinking about people who did not respect and appreciate you.
5. Let go.
Acknowledge that you're living in real time carrying the baggage of old
time. And then let go of it. Are you playing out a past habit in a
current relationship? Does your fear of anger,
loss, raised voices, silence etc. now set the tone for how you relate
to others? This requires careful consideration to untwist the tendrils
of who you really are and what experiences from childhood onward shaped how
you react to situations. Most of us feel a deep inner core of who we
are at our best. And we are all capable of separating the emotional
triggers from the solid core of self if we sit still long enough
to tease apart that what triggers our habitual behavior and seek that
which is truly what we believe ourselves capable of being.
6. Remove the past from your future. This simply means
that you must learn to stop letting past experience controlling you.
This happens when you have a bad experience and you let it continue. In
this case, instead of thinking positively and remembering the means by
which you ultimately overcame prior negative challenges, your immediate,
habitual reaction is to transfer the bad outcomes from that former
experience to a current situation, assuming the worse case scenario for
your current experience, with full-blown expectations that things will
only be bad. And with that comes the habitual reactions, on cue, rather
than a series of chosen proactive actions defined by you as the person
you are now.
7. Create a positive future.
Combine the knowledge that you cannot change the past with the
knowledge that you cannot predict the future but you can make sure that
the person you are right now is strong, whole and healthy emotionally,
so that any future negative scenarios are something the person you are
now can definitely cope with, no matter what gets thrown at you. This is
really about taking responsibility for yourself and how you react. Once
you have faced the challenges from your past and accept that while you
cannot change the past, you can cease to let it be role-played out every
time a new challenge arises, you are beginning to remove the fear of
more bad things happening as directed by your past experiences. Instead,
you now learn to embrace the reality that the future is as yet
unwritten and if you want it to be a positive and strong experience, the
power lies within you to achieve this
8. Take it slowly but surely. No overnight transformation
will occur when you are trying to move yourself through past habits. It
all takes time and you will only achieve the best and soundest results
by allowing yourself the time and space to move on. However, there are
some simple and practical things that can help you to leave the past
behind and, while largely symbolic, key into the mind-body connection
aspect of our humanity and assist with your thinking processes:
- Get a large box and throw into it anything that reminds you of a
past failed relationship, a dead or missing person, a job that left you
feeling sore, anything physical and tangible that hangs around your neck
like a noose. Decide whether this box should be tossed or stored.
Either way, you are coming to a conclusion about its contents that they
can no longer influence you.
- If it is a failed relationship or experience, it is often better to toss the box and leave the reminders to memory alone, which will be kinder to you than physical evidence.
- If it contains mementos of a lost loved one, you may feel more comfortable simply sealing it up and putting it aside, knowing you are doing this as the beginning of a journey forward.
- Write down your feelings. You could write a letter to a person or people in the past who hurt you. You could write poetry or prose. Anything that allows you to let out the feelings and no matter how horrid you word things, let it out. You should not be keep this writing - it is simply a way to open up the emotional backlog and let out repressed feelings as best you can.
- Revisit places where you felt pain and hurt. Go back and realize the power you have personally to not let that place get to you. This can be an overwhelming experience, however, depending on what happened. For example, survivors of concentration camps or sexual abuse are less likely to ever be able to face the place where bad things happened than someone who had a romantic experience somewhere but since broke up. Gauge for yourself how ready you are to take what may be a giant leap and take a buddy for support if needed.
9. Avoid making rash decisions. While you're going through the healing process
to strengthen your ability to deal with the past in a reasoned and
distanced manner, keep aware of the triggers that will send you back to
past habits. Actively aim to put a hold on habitual reactions and
challenge yourself to do things differently, while at the same time
accepting why you need to do this. This also means avoiding making
decisions in haste that you may regret later, such as cutting off all
ties with somebody in your family, or sending notes filled with vitriol
to people, or quitting from something you have been doing. While
ultimately some of these outcomes might end up being the path you take
after reasoning it with great care, initially this exercise is about
strengthening yourself to make calm
and enlightened decisions rather than making merry with curses and
burning your bridges with no care for tomorrow. You do care about
tomorrow - a responsible, thoughtful, and clear future that is free of
being controlled by past habit.
Tips
- Set a goal for yourself if you follow this new goal it will help you make a better future for yourself.
- Some losses are not forever. Many of the pleasures you may have been denied as a child are still available to an adult and still enjoyable. Maybe not in exactly the same way sometimes, but in adult equivalents. Others are a joy exactly as much as if you were small. Go ahead and start collecting comic books even if you're grown, or dolls, or whatever mattered that you lost out on. You can grow to the point that a childlike wonder remains lifelong even if you feel that you were never a child as such because you survived your literal youth.
- You can start again any moment you choose.
- Every time you need to let go follow the steps again. The fact is that we will have to let go some time or the other. But the time is chosen by us.
- "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!" – Owens Lee Pomeroy.
- Always believe in yourself,never listen to any put downs or take them personally,they are said to deliberately put you back.
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. It’s an excellent read on conquering perfectionism.
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