How to Avoid the Tendency to Dwell on the Past

People process past events in three different ways, which include integrative, instrumental and obsessive reminiscence, according to Barbara M. Newman's "Development Through Life: A Psychosocial Approach." In integrative reminiscence, a person examines his past in order to reconcile feelings about past events. Instrumental reminiscence involves using experience to overcome current difficulties. Dwelling on the past and suffering from misery or guilt is obsessive reminiscence. While the first two types of reminiscence are healthy, the last type can control your life and cause emotional paralysis, anxiety and depression. Use various techniques and resources to embrace the past and find closure.

Instructions

• 1

  Find a group that shares aspects of your past and recount the events that are causing you to dwell on it. Don't fight the feelings associated with those events, but allow those feelings to surface. Allow yourself to weep or get angry. Integrate past experiences into your psyche by processing the experience in front of other emphatic people, and the negative feelings will fade.

• 2

  Take proactive steps to become involved in activities or hobbies that enable social interaction if you're dwelling on disappointments or unfortunate events. Get busy and fill your calendar with activities that help you to stay in the present. Try activities that you've always yearned to do but found excuses to delay involvement. If you've always wanted to train in a martial art, sign up for a class.

• 3

  Reinvent yourself or your lifestyle. Avoid exposing yourself to the same network of friends, situations or places that evoke the past. Separate yourself from those circumstances. Visit new places, such as a recently launched restaurant or theater. Discover new friends via activities, charity work, social functions or dating. Create a new set of memories to replace the old.

• 4

  Consider cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which emphasizes redirecting your thoughts from negative to positive. The premise is that by thinking positive thoughts about something, you eventually will develop positive feelings about it. CBT also focuses on the present rather than the past, which cannot be changed.