How to Make Peace With Your Past & Get on With Your Life

Traumatic experiences from the past can feel like a lead weight around your feet, holding you in place despite your best efforts to move forward. Struggling against them and painfully forcing yourself along does not help you shed them; you are merely dragging them along with you as you try to build a more positive life for yourself. Releasing the darkest parts of your past can take time, patience and dedication, but with inner work and self-acceptance you can slowly make peace with your history and free yourself from the things that are holding you back.

Instructions

• 1

  Identify the things that are holding you back. Perhaps they are particular events; perhaps they are the general attitudes of the people who raised you; perhaps they are errors you made or things or people you lost. Looking at them can be painful and difficult, but in order to make peace with them, you must first be completely clear on what they are.

• 2

  Identify the feelings you have that are associated with these things. Hatred is different from anger, and fear is different from remorse. Figure out precisely what you feel. It will help you recognize the emotions connected with your past each time something triggers them.

• 3

  Listen to the negative voices in your head and what they are saying to you. They may be telling you that you are stupid, foolish, undeserving or wicked. Whatever they are saying, recognize them as the voices of the things that have hurt you in your past, not the truth. Every time such a thought passes through your mind, label it as a voice of the past. This will not silence these thoughts right away, but gradually it will make it easier to ignore them.

• 4

  Accept the traumatic things in your past. Recognize that you cannot change what has happened, and accept that your past has made you who you are. This acceptance is an early step in forgiveness. Recognize also that these traumatic things do not define you -- your entire past brought you to where you are, not only the negative parts.

• 5

  Choose to move forward. A difficult but critical part of recovering from a traumatic past is the decision to let it go. It means breaking habits of thought and emotion and overcoming deep-seated beliefs about yourself. You cannot begin to do these things until you decide that you are ready to release any guilt, shame and fear associated with your past. These emotions do not serve you or protect you. Recognize that it is safe to let them go.

• 6

  Forgive the person or people who hurt you. Whether you are angry at a parent, a spouse, a teacher, God or yourself, the final step to fully moving on is forgiveness. Be patient with yourself while you work on this. It may not happen overnight. Every time you find yourself feeling angry, hurt or afraid because of your past, remind yourself that you are working on forgiveness, and try to let it go. Once you are able to release your negative feelings easily, they will no longer stop you from living your life to the fullest and enjoying every day.