Is it Time to Let Go of Past Hurts?

With the busy holiday season upon us it’s often easier to just go with the flow of family obligations and suffer silently (or, perhaps, not-so-silently) as the holiday parties and gatherings stir up memories, old resentments and, sometimes, pain.

Is this the year you’d like to enjoy the time with your parents, siblings, cousins and distant relatives without regressing to the overwhelming angry and hurt feelings from the past? In the following article, Dr. Judith Sills offers excellent suggestions and advice for how to let go of past hurts by reconsidering the events and people involved (including yourself) from a different perspective. Reading one article may not be enough to heal all your pain before the next big family gathering but perhaps it will be the small step you need to take now.

Let It Go! Past hurts and old injustices have a way of keeping us stuck in our tracks, unable to move forward or experience joy. It can take a radical reboot to get past yesterday. Here's how.

By Judith Sills, Ph.D.

Look Closely. A long shadow may be clouding your future. It's the shadow cast by the pain in your past—the parent who wasn't there, the ex who betrayed, the boss who humiliated you.

Or perhaps you're stuck in place by the unhappy residue of your own bad choices—the job you should have left earlier, the sexual secrets you keep, the doctor's visit you delayed.

It is heart-stoppingly easy to get stuck in the darkness of bad memories. They are emotional quicksand and exert a strong downward pull on the psyche.

Sometimes the past traps us through unexamined clutter spilling from every tabletop and corner, elbowing out the new and the possible. Or it commandeers your daydreams, obsessively replaying old losses, past injustices, nagging guilts about the sibling you tormented or friend you let down...

...The power to get past the past does not lie primarily with the nature of events themselves. They count a lot, sure. But so do the steps forward a person is willing to take and how much effort he or she is willing to expend to push some emotional rock up, up, and out of the way.

Getting unstuck involves remembering an injury, but reconsidering it from a different, more empathetic perspective. Moving forward may mean reconfiguring a relationship so that you are less giving, more realistic.

But it rarely means cutting off those ties. Think alteration, not amputation. Getting unstuck requires being truthful with yourself about how you feel—still angry, sad, or anxious, even though you wish you weren't—but holding out the possibility that someday you might feel better.

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