Over and over again - Healing trauma – reducing stress

At the conclusion of this story, you can read over the internet a lot of good pieces of advice such as:

“Learn to move on”,
“Laugh when you can, cry when you must”, or
”Never let a bad day make you feel like you have a bad life. Just because today is painful doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be great”.

Although all these wise comments are correct there is one important question to ask. Is here “a nugget of wisdom” buried in the obvious?

Why is it that we can cry over the same things for a long time and at least many of us cannot be happy over the past good things over and over again?

We may think that we are crazy or ungrateful and we have to change. However, there is a good reason why we act that way.

Our unconscious mind has several specific functions or “directives” that govern how we process experiences of our lives. One very important directive is to: “always search for more”. It is hardwired in our biology, and it is what unconsciously we do.

So whatever good things happened in the past, after some time we will habituate to the feelings associated with the positive past events and begin to search for more.

There is as well another important thing to understand about positive memories – there is “no problem” with them. It means that they are stored differently in our memory than negative events. They are stored as structural, emotional and skilful resources ready to be used.

Whilst negative and difficult memories are attached to a problem. Generally, the problem is, that we did not go through those past experiences as we wanted or expected that we would. That brings unresolved emotional difficulty. Because our unconscious mind is also in charge of a process of learning, it brings such past negative experiences up for resolution – some kind of closure where we can acquire wisdom from what had happened.

Once we extract that wisdom, the memory turns itself into a resource and never bothers us again. So instead of trying to “let go” things from the past, things that constantly are coming back to us as if they were tormenting us, as if they were some sort of punishment, we may ask ourselves: what is here to learn from that memory? Learning of which will allow us to let go of all the negative emotions easily so the memory never bothers us again?

Next just allow yourself to have: a brainstorming, a moment of contemplation or/and creativity or a period of time with inner silence and curiosity, so these learning and wisdom could emerge. It is a good idea to write them down.

As Pema Chödrön once said:

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know”.

If you want to learn more about technique that allows to extract wisdom from the past experiences, contact us via email.