There’s a cliche that instructs us to, “Leave the past in the past”, but what if the past can be good for something? The new year is most associated with a time of reflection and goal-setting. 2023 is behind us, so what now? Take a moment to reflect on the lessons you learned from 2023 and years prior. While some of us may fear that too much reflection may make us sad or hopeless, I’d argue that there’s another side to that. Reflection can be a gateway to hope. While we cannot change our past, we can certainly make sense of it, recognize its impact, and change how we respond to it.
Making Sense of Our Past
“Why did I do that?”
“Why do I push people away?”
“Why can’t I get this one thing right?”
“Why does this always happen to me?”
You’re in good company if you’ve ever found yourself in this line of questioning. While we may never have the answers as to why certain things happened to us, there are certainly ways to assess how our past has impacted us. I’d go a step further and say it’s imperative that we evaluate the impact of our past if we have any plans on recognizing or reducing how it affected us. Most often, our past has much to do with why we do the things we do. Here are some ways to make sense of it:
- Consider the onset of a certain behavior/response. For example, if you notice your first instinct is to give up when you are presented with a challenge, think back to when that first began. As a child? As a teenager? Early adulthood? Where do your self-defeating messages stem from? (Here’s a hint: You were not born with them, so they came from somewhere/someone.)
- Consider how a behavior from your past that you’ve carried over to your present served you then and how it may be serving you now. Does it serve the same purpose as before? Does it provide a sense of safety or power? Using the same example from point 1, giving up when presented with a challenge may help someone to feel like they’re controlling the outcome. “You can’t fail if you don’t try” is often a mindset that we can adopt in order to maintain a sense of control. Again, there is most often a reason for why we do the things we do.
Changing How We Respond to Our Past
What would it be like to look back with grace instead of with shame? Consider the perspective of your past or younger self. This may make it easier to understand and have compassion for that version of you. We often work with clients who have a difficult time forgiving themselves for something they did or something that happened to them as a child. This often sounds like, “I should have known better” or “How could I be so stupid?” We can make the mistake of judging our past behaviors with our present knowledge. For example, we may feel shame for being a bully to someone in school when we were 12 years old. As we reflect on that time in our life, there were probably factors that contributed to our acting out as a bully at that age (i.e. unstable home, witnessing abuse, being a victim of abuse yourself, loss of a parent, etc.). We did not have the insight, awareness, and experience as a child that we have now, so it is unfair to hold that 12 year old to the standard that we have for ourselves now. Instead of looking back with disdain for that child, as we work to make sense of our behaviors, I hope we can grow to look back with understanding for that person with a commitment to healing.
How Reflection Can Be a Gateway to Hope
In the process of making sense of your past, you may find that you’re still responding instead of living. Here’s how reflecting on our past can strengthen our recovery journey:
- Reflection offers an invitation for change, as we cannot change what we don’t confront.
- Reflection provides a lens through which you’ve grown and is a reminder of what you’re most vulnerable to. Looking back helps us to see how far we’ve come and where we have room to grow. Both are important.
- Reflection can foster gratitude.
- Reflection of your journey can encourage someone else’s. In our work through Capstone Wellness, one of the most impactful and helpful interventions is connection through truth. When someone recognizes that someone else has been where they are, that someone else gets it, that someone else understands – it inspires their healing journey.
- Reflection can serve as a reminder that you possess the ability to be resilient. You overcame hardship before, and you’ll do it again.
As we welcome the new year, we hope that you can embrace the grace that is on the other side of shame when you look back in reflection.
Read more about Capstone Wellness and our Core Systems Model approach here.
Brianna Rodgers, LMFT