Tonight, I heard from a close relative for the first time in over a year. He is one of those people who tends to spend a lot of time ruminating on the past. Things he said or did, things he regrets, or about people long gone he wishes he could remember treating better. "The past is passed", I tell him, yet I know he won't let it go.
It's not as if his actions happened only yesterday, yet his pain is just as fresh.
What makes us hang on to the memories that hurt us still, refusing to drop them from our tight grip? Is it the memory that tortures us? Or is it our association with the memory that binds us to our pain?
When I was 11 years old, my parents divorced. It was hard for all of us. But as many adults will often do in times of crisis, they often focus on their pain, and less on the healing. After the split, my parents were bitter towards each other. My father I believe, felt more like the victim since it had been my Mother's choice, and it was her anger and resentment towards my father that was most acutely felt. She worked hard to convince us kids that he was the one in the wrong, and forced a split of allegiances and we were forced to choose who to live with. But we all adored bothour parents, so our Mom's verbal attacks fueled an already unstable situation.
My memories from these turbulent times don't carry the emotional weight they once did, though at the time, it made a significant impact on me emotionally. Years later, I was able to process these emotions and clear the blocks which I had allowed to build up over time, gain perspective, and heal aspects of my relationships which had been impacted. However, this phone call seemed to indicate that the effects of this past still carried some weight with others in my family.
I know I must've seemed harsh to him. But what my parents chose to do or not do had nothing to do with the rest of us. The pain of the memories linger not because of what happened, but by our attachments to the outcomes. I know this, because I released them, and now the memories are simply that...memories, with so much less of the lasting emotional effects. My love for my parents never waned, even if for years I was angry with them. Often times, I felt responsible for them in my need to passify and assuage their conflict. And for years, maybe like my relative on the phone, I felt guilty for "failing them".
We can only love the people in our lives, but we can't live for them, or depend too much on their choices. Their choices are up to them.
We often think we fail people because of our personal internal struggles. We really don't see that our pain gets projected to those we love and we always have the power to change it.
For me, I could see how much I invested myself in "fixing" them. No amount of personal sacrifice will do that. It was up to them to process their own feelings, take responsibility for them, then adjust their mental framework so they could rewrite their internal narrative and change their life experiences.
That's what I had to do. After struggling with my own mental attachments which at least in part, stemmed from my early childhood anxieties of separation, abandonement, and insecurities, I realized I could change my mind. One of the tools I used to help me reframe my thinking was self-hypnosis. At first, I was a little doubtful they would do much. After a few weeks though, I found I could do for myself without the pre-recordings. If you want to know more about self-hypnosis, and what I learned from using this technique, look out for future posts.
Thankfully, with deliberate intention, I evolved to incorporate a lot more forgiveness and tolerance into my life. But the key is realizing that letting the past go isn't simply a dismissive exercise. To truly be free of the past, you have to go in, not out. You have to see that the source of the pain isn't the memory or even the people. It's in you.
Category: Blog