Letting Go of the Past - Losing Your Identity

Healing the past involves letting go of wounding events when you were younger. You must release your anger, your fear, your rage and any other emotion accompanying your past. Even though "letting go" is the way to peace, many people just aren't able to do so.

Why?

Let's say you were molested when you were in third grade. The event changed your life in ways you didn't know at the time. As an adult you entered therapy, joined support groups, read books and went to workshops to assist you in resolving the issue.

You may find that wherever you go, whoever you talk to, stranger, acquaintance or friend, you talk about what happened when you were eight.

Your life revolves around what happened when you were eight. You may have a job, family, hobbies and more, but your emotions, your thoughts continue to be focused on what happened when you were eight.

The healing process can involve being immersed in the past in order to resolve it and let go of it. However, when all your free time revolves around abuse issues, you run the risk of becoming your issue. You entered therapy to heal what happened.

Healing can only be done if you move beyond the past.

When you don't release the past, "the event" is who you are. You are stuck in the emotional turmoil of a young child. This keeps you from becoming a healthy, joyful adult.

People who immerse themselves in their jobs, form their identity around their work. When they retire, are fired or laid off, there is a major shifting of who they think they are. It can cause havoc in one's self-image.

The same is true for recovery work. The goal is to work through the past so that you can be who you truly are. The quick sand of the process is identifying yourself so much with the event, you don't know who you are without it.

If you heal, what do you do with all that extra time? Now what do you read? If you don't attend the support groups, who will you talk to? What will you talk about with others?

Releasing the past means it does not pervade your life.

You've done grief work on what happened when you were so very young. Now, to truly heal, you will need to say "Good-by," even do some grief work, on "losing" the support that has brought you to the side of healing. If you can't allow the past to be the past, you won't come to peace.

It's time to unshackle the chains of what was and enter fluidly into what is.

Cathy Chapman, Ph.D., LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker assisting people achieve their dreams of health, wealth and abundance through Mind-Body Psychology. She works from a spiritual and energetic model employing BodyTalk and Psych-K to balance the body and change beliefs.

by Cathy Chapman, PhD, LCSW -

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