Do you remember the last time someone hurt you, let you down, or made you angry?  Or have you lived with betrayal by a religious organization, an employer or volunteer organization?  Does the experience still bring up the same emotions after many years, maybe not quite as painful but still difficult?  In this issue, I’ll talk about “holding on” to past negative experiences, why you might be holding on to them, and how you may choose to work with them in a new and more healing way.

 

Our Difficult Experiences

            Although you may wish to go through life pain-free and happily, no one escapes the difficult times.  You can probably list off those times when you were hurt by, disappointed at, or angry at someone, or some organization’s action or lack of action. Regardless of the specific incident or series of your emotions involved, you likely ruminated about it for a while.  If you ruminated, much of your time was probably spent blaming the other person or organization for what happened, while justifying your own position or defending yourself.  At some point, you may have just “put it in a box” to distance yourself emotionally from the incident, or tried to let it go, only to have it re-surface at some later time, with all the accompanying emotions and pain.

 

Obsessing is Part of the Process

            For many of us, obsessing about what has happened seems to be part of the grieving process.  How much time you spend re-visiting what happened, re-creating the situation so that you can elevate yourself and put the other person down, allows you to feel empowered (at least temporarily).  And of course, you justify this re-creation because you were right, after all!  You may decide that you will never forgive the other person/institution, because he or she doesn’t deserve it, or you don’t want to be hurt again, and you hold on to your anger and justify the separation; in some cases, severing a relationship might be a healthy step.  Or at some point, you might find that you want to let the situation go, but just can’t seem to do it.  Meantime, you continue to suffer; others may suffer, too, from the damaged relationship and the loss that’s ensued.  Your anger and hurt becomes a seeping wound that won’t heal, and its presence might remind you not to get close to others who might hurt you in the same way.

 

Options for Healing

            If you are willing to consider that there are other options for dealing with a painful situation (and its important to point out that you have a choice), you might consider the following process:

 

à        Make a decision that you want to begin letting go of the pain, that you’ve learned what you can from the situation, and you want to move on.

 

à        Let go of the expectation that the other person or organization will ever “own his or her actions.”  (They may or may not.)

 

à        When you think of the situation, focus your mind on your experience of it—your emotions and bodily reaction to the memory—rather than continue to ruminate about it.  If you begin your habitual thinking about it, follow your own breathing and return to your emotional experience.  Believe it or not, if you allow yourself to “experience your experience” rather than mulling it over, you will find the emotions shift and change, and eventually they may diminish in intensity.

 

à        Every time the memory returns, allow yourself to experience the experience again without the obsessive thinking, and breathe.  Over time, you will find it continues to lose its intensity and hold on you, and your pain will continue to diminish.  At the very least, you will find that you experience the original incident in a variety of ways.

 

Ultimately it’s up to you to decide whether you want to hold on to your pain and anger, or whether you choose to heal and let go.  You may have to follow this process for quite a while, but the freedom you experience will be gratifying and healing.