Post by NemesisOnly 3 years ago actually..............events where a cowardly bully
who still posts on here, showed that he may well have the guts to
attack others on usenet, but when it comes to the crunch cant follow
through with any of his innumerable threats.....................
What do you mean _only_ 3 years? That is over a thousand days you have
lost from your life and something that should have been long forgotten.
How to Leave the Past Behind
When the nights are long and you cannot sleep for all the sadness of a past
left unresolved; when you cannot grasp the future squarely and move on; when
the past haunts both your woken hours and your dreams... you are in the grip
of anxiety and inertia. There will always come a point at which you must
cease to stay stuck in the past or it will define you and mark every step
you take from now on.
1.. Prepare to face the challenges. A past left unresolved will continue
to haunt you if you don't address the underlying sorrow, pain and anger. You
may not want to revisit aspects of what happened in the past but if you
don't, you allow the part of your mind that conceals and glosses over hurts
to dominate and instead of fully comprehending what happened and learning
from it, you live in its grip subconsciously and let it eat away at you. If
you cannot take a clear view of the past alone, seek professional
therapeutic assistance to guide you.
2.. Accept that you cannot change what happened. What has passed, has
passed. It is not possible to rewrite the facts of what you experienced and
went through. But it is possible to rewrite the way you perceive it and
handle it from now onward. If you don't, your hurt self will carry over this
pain into all new experiences and relationships, possibly poisoning them and
dooming them to failure without any conscious desire on your behalf.
3.. Let go. Acknowledge that you are living in real time carrying the
baggage of old time. And then let go of it. Are you playing out a past habit
in a current relationship? Does your fear of anger, loss, raised voices,
silence etc. now set the tone for how you relate to others? This requires
careful consideration to untwist the tendrils of who you really are and what
experiences from childhood onward shaped how you react to situations. Most
of us feel a deep inner core of who we are at best and we are capable of
separating the triggers from the solid core of self if we sit still long
enough to tease apart that which triggers our habitual behaviour and that
which is truly what we believe ourselves capable of being.
4.. Remove the past from your future. This simply means that you must
learn to stop letting past experience morph into future probability. This
happens when you have a bad experience and it immediately conjures up
memories of where similar bad experiences have led you in the past. Instead
of thinking positively and remembering the means by which you ultimately
overcame these negative challenges, your immediate, habitual reaction is to
transfer the bad outcomes from that prior experience and transform it into
the worse case scenario for your current experience, with full-blown
expectations that tomorrow things will only be worse. And with that comes
the habitual actions, on cue rather than a series of chosen reactions
defined by you as the person you are now.
5.. Create a positive future. Combine the knowledge that you cannot change
the past with the knowledge that you cannot predict the future but you can
make sure that the person you are right now is strong, whole and healthy
emotionally, so that any future negative scenarios are something the person
you are now can definitely cope with, no matter what gets thrown at you.
This is really about taking responsibility for yourself and how you react.
Once you have faced the challenges from your past and accept that while you
cannot change the past, you can cease to let it be role-played out every
time a new challenge arises, you are beginning to remove the fear of more
bad things happening as directed by your past experiences. Instead, you now
learn to embrace the reality that the future is as yet unwritten and if you
want it to be a positive and strong experience, the power lies within you to
achieve this.
6.. Take it slowly but surely. No overnight transformation will occur when
you are trying to move yourself through past habits. It all takes time and
you will only achieve the best and soundest results by allowing yourself
time and space to move on. However, there are some simple and practical
things that can help you to leave the past behind and, while largely
symbolic, key into the mind-body connection aspect of our humanity and
assist with your thinking processes:
a.. Get a large box and throw into it anything that reminds you of a
past failed relationship, a dead or missing person, a job that left you
feeling sore, anything physical and tangible that hangs around your neck
like a noose;
b.. Decide whether this box should be tossed or stored. Either way, you
are coming to a conclusion about its contents that they can no longer
influence you. If it is a failed relationship or experience, it is often
better to toss the box and leave the reminders to memory alone, which will
be kinder to you than physical evidence. If it contains mementos of a lost
loved one, you may feel more comfortable simply sealing it up and putting it
aside, knowing you are doing this as the beginning of a journey forward.
c.. Write down your feelings. You could write a letter to a person or
people in the past who hurt you. You could write poetry or prose. Anything
that allows you to let out the feelings and no matter how horrid you word
things, let it out. You should not be keep this writing - it is simply a way
to open up the emotional backlog and let out repressed feelings as best you
can.
d.. Revisit places where you felt pain and hurt. Go back and realize the
power you have personally to not let that place get to you. This can be an
overwhelming experience, however, depending on what happened. For example,
survivors of concentration camps or sexual abuse are less likely to ever be
able to face a place than someone who had a romantic experience somewhere
but since broke up. Gauge for yourself how ready you are to take what may be
a giant leap and take a buddy for support if needed.
7.. Avoid rash decisions. While you are going through the healing process
to strengthen your ability to deal with the past in a reasoned and distanced
manner, keep aware of the triggers that will send you back to past habits.
Actively aim to put a hold on habitual reactions and challenge yourself to
do things differently, while at the same time accepting why you need to do
this. This also means avoiding making decisions in haste that you may regret
later, such as cutting off all ties with somebody in your family, or sending
notes filled with vitriol to people or quitting from something you have been
doing. While ultimately reasoned judgments that may include some of these
outcomes might end up being the path you take, initially this exercise is
about strengthening yourself to make calm and consequence enlightened
decisions rather than making merry with curses and burning your bridges with
no care for tomorrow. You do care about tomorrow - a responsible, thoughtful
and clear future that is free of being controlled by past habit.
--
Mike
The Royal Naval Electrical Branch Association
www.rneba.org.uk
Luxury Self Catering on the Isle of Wight?
www.shanklinmanormews.co.uk