To Let Go Of The Past, You Need To Stop Avoiding It.

I remember a particular period in my early thirties when I became a mother often revisiting and talking about unhappy aspects of my childhood. 

On one occasion someone close to me said this:

“Why are you talking about the past? It’s done. Just move on.”

Sounds logical, right? 

I hear that statement often from many people in both my personal and professional circles. They believe the same. “Why dredge up the past?” They say, “It’s done and dusted.”

Yet I consistently observe in those very people how their avoidance from learning about the past continues to determine their actions in the present. 

It is true that the past is done. However simply closing the door on the unintegrated and unresolved past does not mean that it stops impacting your present. Not to mention the loss of access to valuable resources that the past often offers. As long as the past is left unresolved, it will continue to impact your present because the impact is unconscious. You are living in the past without realising it and are continuing to react to past events as if they were in the present.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

- C.G. Jung, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

The past reappears every time:

• You go into an inexplicable rage and direct it at someone in the present who ultimately is not responsible for the wrongs you have experienced in your past.

• You are terrified from things that terrify no one else because your body is responding to danger messages carried from your past.

• You sob uncontrollably for no valid reason because you are grieving for losses you had no opportunity to grieve for in your past.

• You laugh in situations that are actually distressing because it is easier to discount their significance instead of acknowledging the pain they carry for you from your past. 

Basically anytime when you find that your emotions and actions don’t fit the current situation. In that moment you have unconsciously time travelled to the past.

Moving on, as logical as it sounds, is not that simple. To move on you need to first look back and make peace with the past. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to do so. 

I invite you to do the same. Take a fresh look at your past, integrate and resolve it, so you can finally stop it from charging or contaminating your present, and affecting your current actions and experiences. This is how you can let it go once and for all. The result is less time travel and more grounding in the present. 

 “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift…that’s why they call it present.”   

- Kung Fu Panda, animated movie.

By becoming aware of the past and gaining the ability to live with it, you transform yourself from an unaware victim of the past into an empowered individual in the present. 

You don’t have to do this alone. You can get the support of a professional if need be, so you can begin to enjoy fully the gift of the present.