Is Your Past Preventing your Future?

Are you holding on to past hurts that are holding you back?

IS PAIN IS YOUR CRUTCH?

When you know you are holding on to past hurts, you can sometimes get into a comfort zone of holding on to them.  Rehearsing them over and over in your mind.  Feeling justified in your conviction of another, defending your position of blame or your right to behave a certain way, all in an attempt to gain the pity of others or their agreement to the life you are choosing.  You may embrace the ritual of licking your wounds all too much and this may keep you from experiencing freedom and your future.

Maybe you have been abused, lied to, cheated on, let down, teased or called names.  Maybe you have been abandoned or cast out of a social circle. Maybe you have suffered a great pain that you feel no one understands.  Whatever the pain, however far back or recent it was, whoever was part of it, and wherever it happened does not need to define you in this moment and does not need to rob you of the happy future that you are entitled to have.  You may feel entitled to hold on to the pain, or entitled to sympathy, entitled to blame, but is that really working for you?  Would you not rather feel entitled to live a happy life, free of the past?  Which sounds more appealing? 

BLIND TO THE BIND OF YOUR PAIN?                               

Then there are some people who may not even be aware that the pain from their past is holding them back or controlling their behavior today.

Some of us are not even conscious that we are holding on to past hurts.  Though we may or may not make the connection, it seems to be evident when there is a trigger that sets us off into a pit of despair, a fit of anger, a blanket of fear, a feeling of inadequacy, a quandary of insecurity or a state of jealousy.  When there is a past hurt harboring beneath, the slightest trigger can set us off.  We become unable to make healthy choices or good decisions.  Our judgement of a person or situation becomes clouded and we cannot see the truth clearly.  We lose touch with the moment, become suspicious of people’s motives, and wonder if we can trust or believe in the good intentions of others.  We start to develop patterns of reacting to situations.  These patterns can be so unconscious to us that we may mistake them for who we are, our character traits or personality, when in reality we are simply acting and responding according to our past pain.

Are you ready to LET GO and MOVE ON?

The choice yours and yours alone and no one can make this choice for you.

Think about who you are today.  How has your past shaped you?  Do you feel there are areas in your life that you’d like to improve upon?  Is the pain of the past holding you back from being the person you want to be today?  Are you ready to be free and happy?  Is there a PEACE missing from your life?

IF YOU'RE READY, here are some steps you can take:

PRAY ABOUT IT – I chose this as the first step because many of us seem to over “think” things too much and this prevents us from fully surrendering our past pain and moving on.  We over analyze the issues to death and never learn to let go.  We may want to hold on to the comfortable patterns we have developed to keep future pain away.  When we pray about something, we are asking for divine guidance.  We are submitting ourselves to trust and faith.  We are surrendering and asking for help.  Praying allows us to acknowledge that our way has not been working, we need help and we will trust God to put the right people in our lives to move past our pain.  Praying puts a seed in our heart that we want change in our life and that we need God’s help.  You can’t go wrong if you put prayer as your first step.  You have nothing to lose by doing so.  Try it!

SHARE IT – This may seem awkward and foreign if you’ve never really opened up about your pain.  You may not know where to start. Start by choosing someone you know to be impartial, trustworthy and able to walk you through the pain, not just pity you or agree with how you have let the pain direct your life.  Be careful of your motive when choosing who you open up to.  Your motive needs to be that you want to be free from the pain, not that you want to feel pitied.  Who is the best person or persons to help you move through the pain and be free?  You may need empathy, but you do not need pity.  Once you start sharing your pain with the right person or persons, you will feel a massive burden lifted. 

LET EMOTIONS SURFACE - You won’t feel much relief if you hold back or conceal your feelings.  Sharing your pain or past hurts may bring out all sorts of feelings.  Feelings of anger, rage, deep sadness, shame, insecurity or fear.  Let them come up.  Acknowledge the feelings, but also acknowledge that these emotions do not define the person you are or your future. You are not the sum of your pain.  When you’ve buried a hurt deep inside and it resurfaces, it’s very uncomfortable and you may feel an urge to push it back down again.  If you don’t let it surface, then you won’t have a chance to be free from it through the letting go process.   Sit with the feelings and they will pass as you move through the next steps.  Be patient as this process will be uncomfortable, but rest assured these feelings don’t need to make a home in your head or heart.  They don’t belong in the present moment or your future once you’ve worked through them.  Keep sharing and keep allowing the emotions to come up until they no longer hurt.  I like the saying “this too shall pass”.  It gives hope that we don’t need to stay in a certain state of mind or sit with the same feelings forever.

FORGIVE – This one is so hard for us.  We always associate forgiveness with justification.  How untrue that statement is.  There is no amount of forgiveness that can justify another person’s wrong actions, yet we seem to hold on to this premise.  Forgiveness is about freeing yourself – not condoning what may have been done to you.  Do you want to be free?  If so, then you must learn how to forgive – whether you need to forgive yourself or someone else.  I have heard so many teachings on forgiveness.  They all seem to point to two actions. Bless the one who hurt you and pray for them.  You may be thinking that’s crazy! how can I bless and pray for someone who deeply hurt me? They don’t deserve it!

What if I told you that when you pray and ask God to bless someone, you are asking him to bring that person to a place of repentance? What if I also told you that when you pray for someone who hurt you, you are asking God to work in that person’s life so that he or she may begin to learn how treat people better?  Most importantly, what if I told you that your prayers and blessings for someone else will free you and in return you will be blessed?  Now would you pray them?    

When we stay bitter and angry we are no better than those who have hurt us. Our bitterness and anger get played out on those we love most or on ourselves because an unhealthy disturbance of resentment in our spirit festers beneath.  Don’t waste one more day of your life being bitter or angry.  Healing can really take place when we are able to set aside our anger and sadness and really pray for those who hurt us and ask God to work in their lives. If you have a choice between staying bitter or getting better, which do you choose? 

LET IT GO! – An important step in healing is to let go.  This means you need to stop playing victim to your pain.  If you have shared your pain with someone trusted, worked out who and how to forgive, now it’s time to make a shift in your thoughts about who you are as a person going forward.  It’s time now to embrace the strength within for having the courage to surrender, open up and forgive. It’s time to acknowledge that the pain of the past no longer has its foot hold on you, your actions, your self worth or your future.  You are free.  Free to be the person you are meant to be.  Free to live the happy, healthy life you deserve.

CREATE NEW PATTERNS – In the past, your pattern may have been to put up walls and keep people out for fear they may hurt you. But now that you have survived the steps of dealing with past hurts, you’ve earned the passage into creating new ways of handling situations and new ways of reacting.  Your healing can continue to strengthen you if you surround yourself with positive affirmations and supportive people.  In the past, you may have let a hurtful situation take away your confidence and stop you from your future, but now you have a choice to create a new way to react.  It will be easier for you to shake yourself off and move on because you have a keen awareness that past hurts don’t serve you.  When new hurts arise, you know that you can pray about it, share about it, feel the emotions of it, but not obsess about it, be quick to forgive and let it go which will keep you free and peaceful. This will replace the old pattern of holding on to hurts and allowing them rob you of your present and future.

MAKE HEALTHIER CHOICES – Sometimes our pain can become a vicious cycle because we have allowed it to define us.  We have taken it to be such a core part of who we are that we have based our choices and decisions from it.  This may have played out in the relationships we became involved in, the unhealthy friendships we tolerated or in our own shameful behaviors.  When you are sick inside with pain, it’s hard to make right choices.  Once you move past your pain, unhealthy choices aren’t so appealing anymore because you have new self worth inside that’s taking the place of the past pain. Surround yourself with healthy relationships and people who will build you up and keep you on track.

The journey is ongoing throughout life…

It’s important to know that even if you’ve diligently worked through all these steps, you may still be tested in the future and the pain of the past may in some mild form, resurface.  It’s okay if this happens and it’s actually a good opportunity to respond or react to a hurtful situation in a new way and grow from it.  This gives you a chance to really break those old patterns and work on new healthier ones.  Dealing with pain and hurt is a lifelong process but it doesn’t have to define who we are or control where we are headed.

Sheri