7 Ways To Let Go of Painful Feelings and Memories
There is no future without a past. These wise words by Simon Wiesenthal succinctly point out the importance that the past has for the rest of our lives. After a certain age, everyone carries around quite a bit of emotional baggage. These bruises can be manifold, but sometimes they can all be summarized under the term disappointment. Some people find it easier than others to put negative experiences behind them and start over again and again. In fact, the point of life can be seen as how to overcome bad occurrences, but what are some ways to deal with painful feelings and bad memories? In this article, we'll show you seven strategies that might help you do just that.
1. Create distance
Out of sight, out of mind. This adage has held its own for generations. The reason is simple: it's true. If someone has hurt you, keep your distance and try to maintain as few points of contact as possible. This is easier to do in the private sphere than in the professional sphere. Nevertheless, you should clearly give your self-protection top priority. You should not only create distance to this person, but also to all things that remind you of him or her. If there are still personal objects in your apartment, photos from better days or music that always brings back unpleasant memories, remove all of this from your immediate environment. You don't necessarily have to toss everything in the trash right away, although this kind of trauma coping can actually be quite healing. Just put everything in a box and banish it from sight.
2. Work on yourself
This part won't be fun for you, but it's extremely helpful for the future. There are a lot of things you can do outside of professional therapy to get clear about some things in your life. For example, start keeping a kind of diary. Write down your thoughts and feelings in very simple words. As memories come up, jot those down, too, and try to write them as the person you have since become. Ask the question about each painful flashback: A year from now, what meaning will these events still have for me? You will soon find that some of the pain can be put into perspective at least a little bit. If you are someone who likes to work in a group or under guidance, you might want to look into courses on writing biography, on resilience and on psychodrama. Some meditation seminars also focus on working out psychological and emotional needs. And if you have creative assets, use that energy and channel your negative thoughts and feelings using your creativity. Feel free to live them out, to process them fully and be done with them, you won't harm anyone with it. However, the benefits to you will be enormous.
3. Practice mindfulness
Don't let the dark clouds of your past prevent you from missing the beauty of the present, there are always bright spots. The better you learn to recognize and appreciate them in your everyday life, the easier it will be to replace the negative with the positive over time. At least try to savor a joyful moment now and then and enjoy it without restraint. Every time you succeed in doing this, you will be a step closer to peace of mind.
4. Face the pain and your responsibility
Pain is always a symptom that desperately needs to be heard. Your heart and soul can also cause you real, physical pain and even make you seriously ill in the long run if you don't allow this suffering space. Even if it is not at all compatible with our striving for perfection and the unconditional avoidance of weaknesses, it’s okay to cry and suffer without restraint whenever you can. It is perfectly fine to temporarily give in to grief and anger over injuries inflicted. The more intensely and honestly you allow this to happen, the sooner the pain will pass, even though some experiences may make you feel as if everything else is pointless from then on. You carry the responsibility, and you are the one to face it. Just because your life seems to be over for you from a moment of disappointment or loss, there are certainly people around you who continue to count on you or perhaps even depend on you. Giving up, unfortunately, is not an option.
5. Decide to let go
The most powerful weapon we have in fighting emotional and mental wounds is our willpower. Anyone who has ever studied the survival stories of prisoners of war will recognize the power and superhuman strength that sheer willpower can bestow, even under the most adverse circumstances. It is 100% up to us whether we want to allow wounds from the past to spoil our present and perhaps even our future. Do we really want to allow these people to have so much power over our lives? Should their evil deeds really ruin any prospect of happiness for us in the present and future? The choice is yours.
6. Acceptance
This point is easier said than done. Some things occur simply for the one reason that they teach us a lesson. Some people enter our lives only to leave destruction and despair in their wake. The moral of this may seem unclear at first. However, the fact is that, viewed with the necessary distance, it is from these experiences that we have learned the most. This view of things helps us immensely to accept injuries, disgrace, disappointment and losses for what they are: Stages of life. Mark the bottom, and it's up from there.
7. Forgiveness
It is, of course, the highest good when it comes to dealing with injustice and pain. All major religions preach it, but unfortunately none provides a manual for it. However, those who gave it to us as a commandment for our coexistence were, strictly speaking, not exactly ordinary people and definitely worth listening to. For us simple-minded citizens of the earth, forgiveness is usually simply an impossibility, and that is perfectly okay. But it is never too late for forgiveness. If it cannot succeed at the moment, then perhaps sometime in the future.
Today’s Conclusion
The past may cast many shadows. We all wish for a happy, carefree life on the sunny side. Most people learn quite early on that this is a pipe dream. Some events are as easy to move past as stubbing your big toe, while others seem to rob us of our will to live and pull the rug out from under our feet. In theory, simply getting up and moving on is the best way to avoid being dragged down by catastrophes. Mental toughness, however, is not given to everyone equally, some of us have to grow into these things first. That's it for today.