Is there something; an event or a situation; that you keep carefully hidden? Hidden from your current relationships, or friends, or work colleagues? Are you finding the effort of keeping your secret, is becoming more and more difficult? So what can you do to finally put it behind you and move on?
If you’re finding more and more that ‘should haves’ and ‘could haves’ are starting to play on your mind; know that often our own judgement of ourselves or of our actions are far more harsh than anyone else might bestow. But still we carry guilt and soon subtle acts of self-sabotage might begin to appear.
We may start to think less of ourselves, we become anxious, maybe we don’t look after ourselves as well as we did, or we take up habits that erode our wellbeing. In short we punish ourselves for our perceived transgressions. Soon the burden of the guilt we feel, threatens to completely erode our stability and peace of mind. The past is now more important than our present, we are living more and more in the past and now and it’s fast impacting our future as well.
Here are some questions to help you unpick the emotions, thoughts and beliefs which have perhaps developed and impacted your memories of the situation. Realise that you are using a current days lens to view the situation and decisions you made back then. You did not have the benefit of your current knowledge, and hindsight is always twenty, twenty… How much of the original events have been re-written in your mind?
How old were you at the time?
What were your life circumstances at the time?
What genuine choices did you actually have?
What was the rationale you used at the time to make the choices you did?
For each of your answers, ask yourself three more ‘why’ questions to try and get behind the initial responses to help you find new insights into the situation…
It is going to take awareness and courage to stop the downward spiral of negative thinking. It will take a willingness to change and to believe that life can indeed be different, that your life can improve and that you do deserve peace and happiness.
It will take a willingness to be kinder to yourself for the decisions you made long ago. To accept that you can’t change what happened; and to accept that perhaps now it is time to move on with life in the knowledge that you are wiser and more compassionate for the experience.
Know that what happened played a part in who you have become today – but that one event or situation is not your whole story…
If you want some help to work through your options, then give me a call!