Wounds from Our Emotional Past
Have you ever been overcome with a sensation reminding you of all the lost time, wasted minutes that you will never have back. It is in those moments that we understand that time is our most precious good. Because time is life. The only thing that doesn’t return.
It’s normal for us to remember our past; what is harmful is living with open emotional wounds. It is these wounds that stop us from walking, that don’t let us get a firm grasp on the present and enjoy what we have.
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is being able to bring them to an end and to leave behind moments in life that have finished.
We cannot be in the present longing for the past. Not even asking ourselves why. What happened happened, and we have to let it go, we have to become detached. We cannot be children forever, nor adolescents later, nor employees of nonexistent businesses, nor have ties with someone who does not want to be tied to us.
Things happen and we have to let them go!
-Paulo Coelho-
Emotional vertigo
Nursing the idea that any past time was better ensures that we will suffer emotional pain in the present. It stops us from letting go, and it immerses us in an abyss of panic whose depth our eyes are too blind to see.
So comes the vertigo. But not just any vertigo: emotional vertigo. The kind that keeps us from gaining closure, from healing our wounds, and from no longer hitting ourselves where it hurts.
Cleaning up our past
There are people who think that looking to the past is a waste of time, that they don’t need to cleanse themselves psychologically, and that the most important thing is living in the present. However, if we don’t confront the past, filth from our emotional past keeps building up and building up, creating an ever-larger mountain of pain.
To put things in perspective, it’s like someone with allergies putting all the dust in his house under the rug, thinking that it won’t affect him there.
We have to let go of the chains that hurt us and stop them from making our wounds deeper. In a way, what you are and what you have today is due to your past. Both the good as well as the bad.
And be aware that by not practicing introspection, you cannot manage to escape this, but instead allow the negative parts of your emotional past to hurt your life today. And this, of course, takes away room for the positive, as well as hurting. Hurting a lot.
Healing the present wounds from our emotional past
Overcoming our fear of letting go of our past is the only way to close the door so that the monster cannot come back in our house.
It’s worth the effort to try healing the wounds generated by our past, to get rid of its heavy burden and so be aware of what is pulling us down.
Imagine that you the pains of your past are a balloon that you’ve been tied to. Loosen the rope and let it go; you look at it while it flies up in to the sky and you lose sight of it, smiling and feeling a great inner peace.
Let them go!
If they don’t bring happiness to your life… LET THEM GO
If they don’t enlighten you or build you up… LET THEM GO
If they stay, but don’t grow… LET THEM GO
If they give you security and so allow you to avoid developing as a person… LET THEM GO
If they don’t lend recognition to your talents… LET THEM GO
If they don’t cherish your existence… LET THEM GO
If they don’t power your takeoff… LET THEM GO
If they say, but don’t do… LET THEM GO
If there’s no place in their life for you… LET THEM GO
If they try to change you… LET THEM GO
If ‘their’ needs win out… LET THEM GO
If there are more arguments than agreements… LET THEM GO
If they simply don’t add anything to your life… LET THEM GO
Break free…the fall will be much less painful than holding on to what was but is no more.
