Unearthing the Wounds of the Past: A Path to Healing

Our past has a potent influence on our present. We have had a variety of experiences growing up. Many consider ourselves to have had very happy childhoods; others might believe our childhoods to have been traumatic. Our past influences have impacted our lives and how we respond. We have had negative experiences that have limited us in our present.

But the real trouble is that most of us still need to examine our past. We do not understand how our past has affected us today and precisely in what ways it has caused us to act and to have habits that may not serve us. We must go through a conscious process of revealing our past, understanding it, examining it, and attempting to resolve any issues we see internally and externally. This is not an easy process in many ways, but it is critical to free us from a past that has controlled us in ways we do not yet understand.

And our past affects us today in four primary ways. We may have developed negative thoughts or limiting beliefs because of experiences we had growing up. We may feel shame or guilt about something we did in the past that we have not cleaned up. We may feel resentful about how someone treated us. We may regret a professional choice or an opportunity we did not pursue.?

In this newsletter, we will address each of these in order, discuss the gifts of cleaning up our past, and give you tangible tools to overcome all these impediments from our past.?

Gifts of Uncovering Our Past.

Identifying our past and its impact on us is an essential part of our life journey. But there are so many other benefits that many of us have yet to realize. Here are some of the most important gifts you will experience from healing your past:

1. Make space for the good. You will discard the garbage that no longer serves you and create space for new, healthy beliefs and values. You will identify those messages that hold you back and restrict you. We can discard those messages that prevent us from being who we were created to be. We will be able to replace the dark with the bright.?

2. Better you. You will become a new and better version of yourself, with fewer feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, and remorse, and become more serene, cheerful, patient, and tolerant. You will find that you can change what you focus on, alter the messages you tell yourself, and create a new truth. When you free yourself from those negative messages, you will create a new positive outlook on who you are; you will see yourself as successful, talented, and worthwhile. And, most importantly, what you now see in yourself is what you will become.

3. Improved relationships. You will find that your relationships with your spouse, children, friends, colleagues, and coworkers will improve as you enjoy your new outlook on the world. You will no longer feel threatened, frightened, or insecure. You will believe in yourself. You will see the best in those around you. Integrity, accountability, and empathy will be the foundations of your relationships. You will not take hostages in your relationships, and others will no longer be able to control your happiness.

4. Inspire others. Your journey will be an inspiration to others. Those around you will value your progress in overcoming the hurdles in your past and growing to a new reality. They will see not only the growth in you but appreciate your more positive outlook. They will want to enjoy those gifts for themselves. Your growth and change will show others they are capable of the same.?

5. Freedom. Most importantly, you will begin to experience true personal freedom. Old messages, peoples’ opinions of you, and circumstances in your world used to trap you; but no longer. The emotions of shame, remorse, resentment, and regret will no longer control your happiness. You will become independent. You will have the confidence to chart your path. You will not be limited by what others say or think about you. You will realize that your success is not dependent on any other person. You will appreciate that you have the tools and skills to accomplish your goals. Who doesn’t want that?

Hurdles from Our Past

Let’s examine each of these hurdles from our past separately.?

Messages From Our Past

So often, we were told things by our parents, family, friends, and coworkers that were negative and limited us. They may not have been true, but they have become part of our reality. Some of these messages have made us feel unworthy or not valuable. They may have included such messages as? “You don’t work hard enough;” “You’ve always been sloppy;” “You always have toxic relationships; “you’re lazy;” “You aren’t too bright;” or? “You will have a tough time getting ahead,” etc. Messages such as we are not smart enough, not attractive or lazy, or a failure became part of us. Sometimes our experiences still affect us today,? being cut from a team or mistreated in a traumatic relationship. They can control us today, almost without our knowing. Our task is to uncover them and resolve them.?

Past Deeds- Shame and Guilt

Perhaps we wronged someone and feel remorse. We have yet to clean it up or make it right. So, it still plagues us, secretly gnawing at us.

Resentments

Have you ever felt angry at someone for something they did to you and felt powerless to stop it or change it? And that feeling keeps coming back and festering? Resentments are one of the most insidious and harmful negative emotions we feel. But many, even most of us, experience them, and often without knowing or understanding it.

Regret

Have you ever said something that you wish you had not in hindsight, and each day it bothers you that you said it? Or, have you ever made a decision not to pursue something and then deeply regretted that you did not give it an opportunity??

Regret is a powerful emotion that, if not resolved, can destroy our happiness and limit our success.

Where do we start?

Now that we know the need to uncover our past and some of the benefits of doing so, how do we get started? Exactly what do we do to discover our past and how it has affected us?

This will take a lot of work. You should accept that it is a process that will take time. Begin by finding a quiet place to be alone and uninterrupted. Remove all distractions. Have a pad of paper or a laptop to make notes. Review the various stages of your life, and see what memories you have and what emotional feelings. These are some topics to help:

Past messages. Reflect on what stories you were told about yourself, your characteristics, life, and your surrounding circumstances. Consider what was said about you. These are some questions to help you to identify these messages:

What were you raised to believe?

What did your parents tell you life is all about?

What did your friends and family tell about you, who you are, your capabilities, and your limitations?

What family sayings and mottos do you still think about today?

What did your friends teach you, and what messages did you receive from them?

Have you had any traumatic events, and how did they make you feel?

When you think about your youth, is there anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, hurt, or sad?

Shame and Guilt. Sometimes we feel guilty about something in our past that still eats at us. Have you harmed any person or institution? Have you done something you are ashamed of? Is there something in your past you wish you had handled differently? Is there anyone who you wronged that you haven’t reconciled?

Resentments. Reflect on anyone against you have any resentments. Makes a list of each person or circumstance you resent.?

Is there anyone who wronged you? Do you have any resentments today? What part of your core was affected by their actions? How did that make you feel? Did you play any part in the events that led to that resentment? Have you ever addressed that grievance with that person?

Regret. Is there anything you did in your life you wish you had not? Or some choice you turned down and wished you had made a different choice. Do you contemplate any of those today? Do they still bother you?

Cleaning up the Mess

?How do we clean up all this mess? How do you free yourself from those experiences that still influence you today?

We will address each separately.?

Past messages.

Many of those messages may not be true, and most may be unhelpful. Are the stories you were told in your past by friends and family ones that help you? If they don’t support your journey now, throw them out, and remove those thoughts from your mind.? Choose to be no longer influenced by negative stories from your past. They are not real. They do not define you.?

The key is being aware of them and mindful of your thoughts. Choose not to let those messages be part of your belief system today. If they do not serve you, choose to eliminate them from your conscious thoughts.\

Shame and Guilt.?

Are there things you did in your past that you still need to rectify? What are things you might have done wrong, someone you might have harmed, that you still think about? Is there anyone you harmed in your past that you have not reconciled with??

Now is the time to clear up your side of the street. In doing so, you will be free of that gnawing secret that eats away at you. You will be free of the remorse that you carry with you. Often those secret wrongs continue to trouble us today.?

If you identify something you did that is still bothering you today, make an amend to the person involved and free yourself from that influence.? Let the person know what you did, that you were wrong, and that you want to make it right (whatever it takes.) A little scary? Yes. But so worth it. You will feel truly free after you have made amends for any of those events.?

Resentments

To start with, what is resentment?

The dictionary defines resentment as a "bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly." Some have called it "victim anger." Resentment is an adverse emotional reaction to being mistreated. It often involves an underlying sense of being wronged by another person without justification. Resentments are negative feelings of ill will toward someone or something, usually in our past. We re-experience past injustices, whether real or perceived, and our anger flows from them. We get angry towards a person, institution, or situation and persist in holding onto that anger. When we struggle to let go of our resentments or keep the resentment alive by remembering the wrongs done to us, and that person hurt us,? we feel like a victim long after the original injury happened.

I suspect that most of us have felt resentment over things that happened in our lives. Many of them are personal or arise from broken relationships. Some of us experience them professionally.

Professionally, many lawyers I've spoken to have experienced resentments over such things as partners who treat them abusively, clients who file malpractice claims against them without a basis, other attorneys who engage in nasty conduct or make groundless claims, and support staff who regularly drop the ball on their assignments.

Of course, for many of us, the more difficult resentments arise in our personal life, whether it is a broken relationship, some false accusation, or some harm done to us. We relive the pain of each of these experiences and continue to experience the harm and anger we felt.

How do resentments affect us?

When we hold onto those feelings of anger toward someone else who wrongly harmed us, the pain starts to eat away at us inside. I have always liked the phrase, "Feeling resentful about someone else is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." When we feel resentful, the party who harmed us does not know, does not care, and is not affected. The only person we are harming is ourselves. We allow the person who wronged us to control our happiness. Ultimately, when we continue to feel that resentment, we are the ones who suffer the most. We give power over our happiness to the person who deserves it the least, the person who harmed us. The resentment can even become obsessive, and we may be unable to stop thinking about what happened and reliving it, feeling the pain repeatedly.

The good news is that we can overcome our feelings of resentment.? We can free ourselves from that emotional pain we cause when we relive the events.

How do we free ourselves from our resentments?

We do have control of our attitudes and our thoughts. And we can stop that other person from continually causing us pain by continuing to fester on what happened. We can free ourselves from our resentments. Here are seven tips you can use to overcome that continual anger you feel about something that happened to you:

1. Understand our emotions. Reflect on what happened and understand our feelings about it. Why are you feeling the way you do? How did what happened harm you? How were you affected? Allow yourself to feel those feelings. Understanding what happened and how we feel is the first and crucial step. We must acknowledge that we feel resentful. Rather than avoid it, it is healthy to admit "I have a resentment."

2. Accepting our role. Is there anything whatsoever that we did to cause or contribute to it? Almost always, some action or behavior on our part had something to do with what happened. Take responsibility for our piece of the event. Accepting our role is not only an action of personal responsibility but a step towards freeing ourselves from the victim mentality at the heart of our resentment.?

3. Share your feelings. Reach out to a trusted family member or friend, tell them what happened and how you feel. It can be cathartic to stop holding those feelings inside and start voicing them with someone you trust. You may also see the situation differently; or obtain new insight into what happened and why.?

4. Take action where we can. We have the power to choose to take action about what happened. Is there anything we can do about it? Journal about it? Speak directly to the person? Write a letter? There is no correct answer. But, reflect on whether there is something constructive you can do, and then do it.?

5. Practice acceptance. We cannot change the person. We cannot undo what happened. It is what it is. So, accept it. Stop resisting it. Stop arguing about it in your mind and continuing to feel angry. Accept it as being what happened and that we cannot change it. That will help us to move past it.?

6. Forgive. Isn't it hard to forgive someone who harmed us without reason? Of course. But, it is a step of creating our own personal freedom. When we feel angry over what someone did to us, we only hurt ourselves, not the wrongdoer. Forgiveness does not justify what happened and is not an admission that what happened was not wrong. It does, though, stop that other person from continuing to cause us pain. It frees us from the self-inflicted anger we continue to feel. Forgiveness is self-empowering. It ends the other person's control over our happiness.

7. Be grateful. Instead of stewing on some past wrong, what do we have to be thankful for today? Write a list of all the blessings in your life and reflect on them. We feel serene and at peace when we focus on what we have to be grateful for.?

Regret

What is regret? Regret is a powerful negative emotion that occurs when we believe that our past behaviors or actions if changed, would have led to a better outcome. It is often associated with feelings of guilt and shame. We blame ourselves because we think the alternative decision would have been much better. Regret is often a long-lasting negative emotion that we cannot eliminate. It is a genuine reaction to a disappointing event, a choice we made that we wish we could undo, something we said that we wish we could take back. It’s a heavy, intrusive, burdensome emotion that sometimes takes too long to get rid of.

How does regret affect us? Handling regret is much more complicated because of the negative emotions connected to it- shame, guilt, sorrow, and helplessness. When we struggle with regret, we beat ourselves up for our past choices or actions. It is so exhausting. It drains the joy and fulfillment out of our life. We get stuck, looking backward and unable to move forward. It can cause chronic stress and anxiety by constantly reliving what we should have done differently. Most importantly, it destroys our happiness because we feel shame or remorse and blame ourselves.

How do we free ourselves from regret?

The good news is that while regret is powerful, we can manage it. Here are the steps:

1. Acknowledge the feeling. Reflect on why you feel bad. What is the cause of your negative emotion? Being aware of it helps you to know how to manage it. It never works to deny or squash the feeling of regret.?

2. Forgive yourself. It is time to stop beating ourselves up. We are human, not perfect. We cannot change the choice we make or the action we take. There is no benefit to continuing to live in self-blame. We easily forgive others; why not ourselves? Permit yourself to get it wrong sometimes.

3. Use it as an opportunity to learn. Objectively evaluate what happened. What could you have done differently? How can I change my thinking or behavior to achieve a better result next time?

Conclusion

Our past contains harmful messages and negative feelings- resentment, disappointment, shame, and remorse. By examining our past, we can discover those hurdles which affect us today. Applying these steps, we can free ourselves to live fully and happily. You deserve that.?