When I was about 14 years old, I spent an afternoon with my oldest cousin, who was quite a bit older than I was. We drove to the town where he had grown up, a place he hadn’t lived in for years, so he could see his old home. As he walked around the house and looked at it, he was filled with so much emotion. You could tell some of it was good, but a lot of it was not. He clearly had painful, emotional memories there that resurfaced and took him by surprise, as he kept saying, “I totally forgot about this. It’s so different than I remember”. After we left, he remained quite upset for the rest of the day. I believe he never truly dealt with these issues. His life has been very challenging, and some of those internal struggles have sadly manifested in his external life.
While many people have challenges when they’re growing up, it’s not necessarily a bad thing because the challenges we face can make us stronger and more resilient. For example, C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, lost his mother to cancer when he was nine years old. Similarly, J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings, lost his mother to acute diabetes when he was 12 years old. Many people believe that their books were born from their tragedies, in the sense that they used their imaginations to deal with the loss of their mothers. From that imagination, we received two of the greatest fantasy series ever written. But for many people, our past experiences, especially unresolved ones, can linger and impact our current well-being, even if we’re not consciously aware of them.
The “Red Glowing Monster”
It seems to make a lot of sense that past trauma can affect our present. But here’s the tricky part: when we go through something negative, we often don’t want to think about it. We just want to move on and let it go, believing that dwelling on the past is a path of suffering. We feel we survived and are ready to move on. However, what we don’t realize is that these unresolved experiences can create a “red glowing monster” in our lives.
The first time I really saw how impactful our past can be was during an internship at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital while I was at Princeton. I was given the opportunity to talk to the patients who were locked up on the inpatient ward. I met one woman who had been there for many years because of this “red glowing monster” that she believed was always going to get her and kill her. As we talked, we discovered that when she was a young girl, she had a relative who would torture her by burning her with cigars. She had completely forgotten about it, and that repressed memory was the red glowing monster. Once she was able to figure that out, the monster wasn’t as scary, and she began to heal.
This is a powerful example of why understanding our past is so important. We can numb our emotional pain through many different forms, like addictions, alcohol, being overly busy, through relationships, or even through shopping. However, this is not good for us, because in the long run, it just makes our lives harder. It’s like an infected cut that we numb with Novocain instead of cleansing. The infection will just get worse and worse, potentially leading to gangrene.
Performing Your Own “Happiness Audit”
The goal is not to get stuck in the past, but to understand it to gain clarity and move forward. This process is a “happiness audit” that helps us check to see if there is anything wrong inside. One of the most effective techniques is to simply go through old photos. As you go through them, you can reflect on both the good and the bad of your past. I believe it’s good to remember the good events, but it’s also important to remember the things we don’t want to think about, the things we may have suppressed. It’s a great way to help identify recurring patterns or negative thought cycles that stem from unresolved issues. By doing this, you can gain new insights and understanding of past events.
Knowing When You’ve Healed
You may wonder how you know when you’re truly healed from the past. I like to use the analogy of a scary movie. The first time you see it, it’s terrifying. The second time, it’s still scary. But after the fifth or tenth time, you become bored and feel no emotions about it. It’s the same with our past. We know we are done when we can think about a painful memory and say, “Yeah, that happened,” and we don’t have any feelings about it anymore. You can look at old photos of a relative who was mean to you and not feel sadness or anger.
If you decide to do this on your own, I would suggest journaling about your thoughts and feelings as they emerge when you’re revisiting the past. And if you can, try to seek help from a counselor or a dear friend to talk about what’s going on. Working towards the forgiveness of oneself and others is also an essential part of the healing process. Even as a clinical psychologist, I found that having my own therapy helped me explore my past and find things that I thought weren’t bothering me anymore, but they still were.
We can’t change the past, but we can heal from it. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting about the past; it means integrating it into a healthier narrative of the self. When we understand our past, it helps us to make conscious choices and create a happier future for ourselves. I adamantly believe that we all have the potential to have a happy life and, if we do the work, we deserve it. It does take work and effort, but it’s truly worth it. We just have to spend a little time with the past, not dwelling in it, but periodically looking to see if there isn’t something that needs a little bit of tender care and healing, and then allowing our hearts to get better so they can soar for the rest of our lives.
