It would be easy to claim that the past doesn’t exist. If we understand time as a one-way line and draw it on the ground, standing on a point that indicates our present, it’s easy to see that the past is behind us. However, for people who have suffered a significant loss, have been victims of trauma, or who simply aren’t comfortable in their present, the past is still very real. For these people, their present is their past.
In these cases, the person lives clinging to their memories, constantly recalling images from their past. For those who live stuck in another time, this paralysis prevents them from enjoying the present and planning for their future. Sometimes, it can feel like the past is an endless loop that repeats itself every day, and no matter how hard they try to erase it, they can’t. How can they escape this spiral?
The first step: Understanding the great inner change that is occurring
Important experiences are etched in our brains, forming our life history. This allows us to look back and understand who we are and how we got to where we are. This life history gives a certain meaning and order to our existence.
However, when we suffer a trauma or a significant loss, these experiences aren’t normally recorded but remain active in our brains. This is why we can relive painful events over and over again, sometimes with extraordinary clarity.
What happens is that we haven’t really processed these experiences; we haven’t incorporated them into our life story because we haven’t yet accepted them. We’re aware that they happened, but emotionally we haven’t accepted them, so they can’t become part of our life narrative.
In fact, when a major loss or psychological trauma with a capital “T” occurs, the first reaction is often denial. Our rational mind understands what has happened, but our emotional mind refuses to accept it. Why does this happen?
Because we’re not ready to accept what happened. We don’t have the psychological resources necessary to process the experience. Therefore, our mind activates a self-protective mechanism, leaving the experience in a kind of limbo.
In some cases, we are unable to process and accept what happened because we first need to make a profound change in our self-image. Since these events must be incorporated into our biography, they also say something about us, something we are not always willing to accept without a fight, as it can go against the self-concept we have formed.
In these cases, the mind considers these contents to be “dangerous” and relegates them to another area until we have the psychological resources necessary to process them and incorporate them into our life history, with the changes in self-concept that this entails.
To achieve this, we need time. These changes don’t happen overnight; we must go through a series of phases in which we gradually accept the events and the changes in our way of seeing ourselves that they bring.
The second step: Assume that time does not heal wounds, it is you who heal over time
To heal the wounds of the past, we need time. But time isn’t enough; we must take a proactive role. When the wounds are deep and cause great pain, letting time pass won’t suffice; it’s essential to make the decision to leave the past behind.
In this regard, Viktor Frankl said: “If it is not in your hands to change a situation that causes you pain, you can always choose the attitude with which you face that suffering.” This means that, at a certain point, after that moment in which we have passed the stage of anger and find ourselves in the phase of sadness, threatening to turn into depression, we must make the decision to hold on to the future and let go of the past.
It’s a difficult decision. In some cases, we may feel that an important part of us remains in that past, or we may believe we are “betraying” the memory of those we left behind. However, if we don’t make the decision to move forward, we run the risk of remaining trapped in the past, sinking deeper and deeper into the dark hole of hopelessness.
There comes a time when we must activate all our self-healing resources and consciously decide that we need to let go and move forward. No one can criticize us for this, not even we ourselves, since we are perfectly capable of coping with the difficult path we have had to travel to get to this point.
From that moment on, we must make peace with our new selves, embrace these new facets of self-concept, and begin to focus on the present. We must learn to enjoy all those little things that can restore the joy of living in the here and now and begin to make plans for the future.
Writer Shannon L. Alder summarized this process: “Before you can live again, a part of you must die. You must let go of what could have been, how you could have acted, or what you could have said differently. You must accept that you cannot change past experiences. When you finally acknowledge that truth, you will be able to understand the true meaning of forgiveness -forgiveness of yourself and others. Then you will be truly free and able to embrace the future .”
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