Navigating the past and managing regrets

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

If there were a kingdom named Dwelling in the Past I would be crowned it’s queen because I've spent a lot of my thinking time there. In fact I've spent too much time there and, no surprise here, it constantly stops me from moving forward, routing my thoughts and beliefs to the royal throne that has become my brain.

I play out stories in my head of who I am, where I am and what I’ll become, all informed by my past, and I get trapped in those stories sometimes daily. Again, it won't surprise you to know, that I am continuously trigged by people, events and situation from my past too. Some days I feel so trapped by it that I drown in those feelings and have to continuously find ways to pull my self out, it's fucking exhausting and I’ve known for a while that it needs to stop for the sake of everyone and everything around me.

That’s not to say that I think or want to dismiss my past, put it in a box and pretend it didn’t happen. It could be so easy to do this and say to myself “Oh well, never mind, what’s done is done!”, but to me this would also be the easy way out because I wouldn’t have to take responsibility for my actions or face any trauma. 

I get why people do disassociate from anything painful in their past because for one, I’m guilty of doing this a lot through my life, and even more so because you do need to have, on some level, some support and courage to start facing the things that feel hard and so many people just don’t have this in place. 

Now for me I've felt a shift happening in the last 18 months, certain situations in my life have thrown up big triggers from my past which has bought about behaviour from me that was just wearing me down, impacting my family and screwing with my mental health. But I guess what’s changed this time is somewhere in my mind I’ve decided I can’t keep going through this all the time, plus I’ve had some really supportive conversations with friends and family lately and I’ve been able to push myself to get curious about why I feel the impact of my past and what can I do about.

I can tell you too, that changing the way I’m approaching this has felt like a massive relief. It’s not been instant though, because I’ve had to figure out a way that I can unpack it all and look after myself at the same time while I do that. This is an ongoing process and I do know that it always will be but I do feel like I’m on the right road now.

Getting curious about my past, and how it impacts me now, has been so key to making it all work though, I can say that this was the first big step. I didn't feel too overwhelming either which is important when you start to work on yourself and any difficult thoughts and feelings. Secondly, it’s been equally important to only have these conversation with people I trust, and with people who have the emotional time and energy to support me through it. I’m dealing with a lot emotional trauma and some mental and physical trauma too and some people in life just aren’t in the right place or mentally equipped to help manage that.

The final step is to refocus what the past means and exploring this has been the real game changer (and actually how I let it define me too). For me this looks like taking the memories that bought shame and resentment and trying to see if I can learn any lessons that impact me positively now. It’s also acknowledging those words that I've attached to the past that make me feel less than, like failure, rejected and never good enough and working through the trauma that’s associated with them. To make this easier I examine the good bit’s too, like when I didn’t fail or feel rejected or believed that I was good enough, by doing this it’s starting to build up a picture in my mind of the best part of me, like a resilience bank that I can dip in and out of. Having this part of the puzzle in place is creating a big shift for me now, it’s slow but I just keep working on it.

It’s important to be clear though that doing this work isn’t an overnight magic wand, in fact I believe that as people we need to be constantly working on our personal growth to show up as our best authentic selves. I can also tell you from experience that you will still find yourself being triggered, especially when you start facing whatever is upsetting you. I can’t stress enough that having support at this time is important, and if you don’t have it in the people that surround you in life then seek it elsewhere, asking for professional support is brave, sensible and the most responsible thing you can do for yourself, I know I have hugely benefited from counselling in the past.

Over time these stories about the past are starting to change for me now, sometimes I make huge leaps in progress and other times it’s slow or I get triggered again by something and I struggle to see a way forward again. There’s a famous quote though that I love from Henry Ford that goes like this “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. This reminds me that if things aren’t working then it’s time to try something new and this is normally the shove I need to switch gears and figure out what I can do next.

Change is good, change in how we approach life and wellbeing is good, change feels hard and uncomfortable a lot of the time but this change in how I’m now navigating my past and managing any regrets, frustrations and trauma is leading me somewhere that may just finally set me free.