A Visit To The Past

Sitting at the kitchen table in front of the laptop, she squints as if it hurts her eyes to think. A million thoughts run around her mind making no sense. Everything is connected in a bigger picture but all she can see are the separate elements with no strings attached.  Memories of the past swim around in the pool of her mind.

Days of old have come back to haunt her in ways she never expected. Reconnecting with old friends has brought up names best left forgotten. Old secrets can’t stay hidden forever it seems. Looking back through the eyes of an adult gives it a whole new meaning. This is where she is today.

Emotional healing requires facing the demons of your past. It means allowing painful emotions and moments back to deal with them in the present instead of burying them away. It means seeing people for who they really are, not who we thought they were when we were naive and young.

This is where she is today… there are demons from years ago she would rather keep buried. People who were special to her have proven to be less than stellar personalities. Facing the truth of her younger years causes pain in many ways.

There is good reason not to dwell too long in the past. To begin with, it’s over. We don’t live there anymore. Falling back into the world of the past even in our mind can put us there too long. We can fall under the same emotional manipulations as we did when we were younger.

However, there are benefits to looking at your past if you are attempting to heal emotionally. When we can look back as an adult we can recognize the causes of certain behaviors and use them to adjust our current actions accordingly. Time may have shown us the true side of people we thought we knew.

Dwelling in the past, re-living each day of the past, is not healthy behavior. There is so much of life to experience that can be lost to hiding in the memories of our past. But learning from days gone by can help us enjoy the rest of our lives much more as we heal from the issues holding us back.

Visit the past. Don’t move in there.