Redefining a past that used to haunt me.

[Survivalbrain]

For whatever reason, probably from all the mental and emotional work I have been doing, I caught my own mind lying to me as I woke up this morning. There were images and some voice in there describing some information and it was not at all accurate to my current life. So of course I googled it and found a couple articles that spoke very much like most of the other articles I have been reading up on lately about guilt. I have not been finding anything super different in the overall messages but I am finding different ways to describe very similar things.

This led onto an idea about describing what is going on in a simple way. The word that stuck in my mind was imagery. This can be applied to imagery in the mind in the form of thoughts and ideas and it can also be used for the external world as well. I like it because it gives flexibility to what is seen visually whether it’s in the mind or outside the body. What I also like about the term imagery is that it has an emotional vibe about it. When artists create a painting or sculpture, it typically has an emotional element to it. Using that word makes it easier to link how emotions can get caught up in images whether they are imagined, remembered or experienced in real time.

A person can have emotional reactions to all 3 of those types of imagery or if they have some mindfulness skill they can separate the emotions from the imagery. Automatic negative thoughts are simply imagery with some kind of unhelpful narrative from them or about them. What makes something “negative”? Is it an emotional response? Emotions can have very personal definitions and can affect a person's value system. If they are taught to only value joy, happiness and peace and ignore all the rest they can become emotionally ignorant, intolerant and eventually numb which can lead to even worse problems.

I think there is a huge lack in mental and emotional clarity that is available, easy to understand and apply to one’s own life. Some people aren’t even aware that they can consciously question, challenge and change their own definitions of how they experience life. For instance, if a person has a set definition about anger telling them that it is only a bad emotion and should be avoided at all costs, they are going to develop an anger issue when things don’t go their way in life. They will have to forgive their past actions and beliefs about anger so that they can begin to question and confront the habit that has been formed. Once it is in the conscious realm, a person can begin to identify it easier and handle it better and better as they develop their familiarity with better definitions for it. Same goes for sadness, guilt, disappointment and fear. These are all feelings in what seems to be called the emotional pain realm.

One could argue that all emotions are a form of “pain” or rather discomfort that is felt in the body from various sources. But for the sake of emotional clarity I will use those “low” feelings to describe emotional pain and feelings related to joy, happiness and such as emotional pleasure. From my own experience there are some fairly common emotional energies but what makes the most difference is which word is used to describe and react to them.

I have experienced emotional pain changing definitions as time goes on. For me it started out as fear, then it developed into disappointment, then to grieving losses, and then to guilt. That's when everything slowed down once I found the purpose of guilt and how subtly it has been influencing my decisions in life. Guilt and a people-pleasing value was at the core of some decisions that I made and later regretted. I had no idea that I was making those decisions that way until many years later. This also relates to the realm of beliefs but I’ll get into that later.

There are sayings that talk about forgiving and forgetting the past and simply ignoring it. That’s not easy to do if you are a person who is frequently haunted by their own past. Simply ignoring it is possible, but it takes a good bit of effort to do so. Not only that but a person could be missing out on some very valuable learning opportunities. Even though a person cannot change the events that happened in their past, they can change their thoughts and feelings about those experiences. For whatever reason I grew up in a time when guilt, shame and other “low” feelings were considered unwanted and not useful. The feelings themselves began to take on a belief that they should be avoided. At that time not many people really cared to question or challenge these beliefs. It was easier to just go with the flow of what was considered normal and accepted by most people.

As I learn more and more about emotions and their purposes in life both as an individual and socially, I am learning more helpful definitions and purposes of emotions. Even the ones I was basically taught to believe were bad and should be avoided in life. Applying a concept that I learned in my 20’s called the pain of change I started to make a connection. I used to think it referred to physical pain, even physical pain caused by the mind in the form of muscle tensions and such. Then after I had a much better understanding of emotional pain, I started to apply this to other times in my life that I felt disappointed, guilt, shame, fear or some other form of this low. It blew my mind how much differently things could’ve been if I would not have been afraid of emotional pain and had more helpful definitions for it.

I don’t regret thinking about my past in this way compared to how I used to think about those experiences. I used to think of them as failures that were tied to my fate and higher powers. That kind of thinking led to years of depression and anxiety by the way. Thinking about those past experiences of emotional pain in a way that I had failed to act a certain way is what I regretted for a very long time. I was not able to let go of them because I felt like there was something to learn from them but I didn’t know what until recently. The lesson was about how I defined those emotional experiences in my life. The only failure was that I didn’t know how to define the emotional pain in a way that I could use for my own personal growth.

I also was not aware of some other skills that a person can develop for themselves that are helpful as well. These are mind based exercises where a person remembers a time in their life when things went well. It can be exercised for any time period and some people recommend doing it daily. This is commonly referred to as practicing gratitude. Like most other things there is variance in the emotional flavor and intensity of anything. Let’s say that gratitude is in the realm of emotional pleasure that includes joy, relief, happiness and other such feelings that are so highly valued in most circles. There is this concept of the “Law of Attraction” that I am sure many people are aware of that talk about this practice of gratitude. However it is not a cure all by any means. If you are a person like me who has been overwhelmed by negative thinking and beliefs that things are meant to be that way, it is very difficult to muster positive thoughts, memories, or emotions.

Personally, I wasn’t able to access memories where I felt really good about something I did in my life until after I had begun to deal with taking power away from the negativity. I had to learn how to be kind to my past and current self before I could process the emotional pain that had been avoided for so many years. These are skills I had never been taught or learned before either, self-compassion and self-acceptance. It’s one of the few reasons I have been able to begin to question and challenge my own definitions, beliefs and habits when it comes to emotional responses that have been problematic in my life.

I was not able to look into my past in helpful ways before, and now I have begun exploring my past about emotional experiences. Not because I am being haunted by them but because I am curious about what the experiences would look like if I had defined and reacted to those emotions differently. My values and social cues would’ve been different and who knows where that could’ve led. It definitely gives me some inspiration that perhaps I can practice looking for these types of things now and change my future. Instead of living by what I have been doing for the past couple decades.

My theory is that by changing how I define my experiences, within reason, I can change my attitude and my values involved in those situations. Find new and healthier forms of motivation and things to pursue about myself and other people. I have plenty of past experiences to glean some wisdom from in this way. I have only begun to focus on the memories where thing’s could’ve been very different if I had a more mature understanding of emotional pain. Hopefully by doing this I am challenging an unhelpful habit that has been deeply ingrained in my mind. At the very least I am trying new things and seeing my past in a better light and more objectively. Not only that but my mental and emotional flexibility has increased tremendously, at least about myself. Am uncertain about these abilities and other people but time will tell.