Romanticizing the Past

Getting stuck looking backwards

I often have clients who want to live in the past. Now, the past is important. It shaped our character, it made us who we are. However, the past can also be what makes you someone you do not want to be. When someone comes to work with me, they are usually desperate. Either they have physical ailments or emotional ones. And these ailments come from things that have taken place in the past.

 

Unfortunately, most of the time, they have fixated themselves on a point in time that is gone. They identify themselves with this time period, and have an unrealistic viewpoint of what it really was. The irony is, that this time and the trauma surrounding it is often what is making them sick in the first place.

 

For example, someone who has been through a traumatic divorce will many times want to go back to when they were married. They look upon this time with a remembrance of only the good times. They forget or choose not to remember the fighting, infidelity, or other marital issues that caused the divorce in the first place. But in their mind, if they could only go back then they could change something and get a different result. The problem is, those issues would still exist, and the result would most likely be the same anyway.

 

When we romanticize a period in our lives that involves trauma, it makes it quite difficult to move forward. Why? Because moving forward means stepping out into the unknown. And that is truly frightening for most of us. However, stepping out is necessary to have growth. It is important that we look back at times gone by with a realistic point of view. Every person has regrets. But don’t live in those regrets. Do not spend so much time looking behind you that you don’t see the direction that you are heading now. Remember that there is always hope. And there is always something to look forward to in the future.