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How to Heal wounds and Traumas of the past to live in the present in Peace and Happiness?
- Mar 2, 2023
- 4 min read
Author: Ivelisse Ginorio Master's student in Clinical Social Work. Ana G Mendez University Online English
The painful experiences that we develop throughout our lives make up our emotional wounds.
These wounds can be multiple, and we can call them in many ways: betrayal, humiliation, distrust, abandonment, and injustice among others. But there are people who think that reviewing the past is a waste of time and that the important thing is to focus on the present. Healing the wounds of the past is essential to be able to enjoy your present. Many times, this reasoning is born from the fear of pain caused by remembering that past. What this flight forward produces is precisely the opposite effect of what is intended to be achieved, to be happy today, at this moment. A metaphor that could illustrate this mechanism would be if someone allergic to dust puts all the dirt under the rug so as not to see it and thinks that it does not affect them.
The psychologist Linares Rosario (Linares, 2021), expresses that there is no doubt that the past no longer exists, but for better or worse what you are currently you owe to your past. All the decisions you have made, each path you have left behind, and each experience you have lived have made you the person you are today. Some situations have led to valuable learning, but it is likely that other facts have hurt you and continue to determine your behavior, even if you are not fully aware of it since your brain stores your emotional experience. On other occasions, the problem does not lie in the traumatic experiences but in the beliefs that you acquired during childhood and that do not allow you to move forward. That is why it is so important that you look back, review your past, and free yourself from the weight that both unresolved problems and limiting beliefs represent. In this way, you can concentrate on living in the present, once you have freed your brain from the burden of the past.
When the past lives in your present. The fear of repeating past stories and suffering again makes you not live your life to the fullest. Sometimes you will avoid contact with others in order not to feel pain. In addition, your emotions will overflow before unimportant things and your present will be invalidated by the irruption of your past.
According to the Head Start study (2021), Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are one of the largest investigations into the impact of child abuse and neglect on health and well-being later in life. The original ACE study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente from 1995 to 1997 with two rounds of data collection. More than 17,000 people who had physical exams completed confidential surveys about their childhood experiences and current health status and behaviors revealing that 2 in 3 people have experienced some kind of trauma or adverse event in childhood (Adverse Experiences Study in the childhood). 4 or more: People who have suffered 4 or more adverse events in childhood are twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to attempt suicide, 7 times more likely to be alcoholics, and 10 times more likely to use drugs (Study of Adverse Childhood Experiences). (Erazo, 2020)
That is why it is so important to heal the wounds of the past. In more traumatic cases, it is possible that the emotions are dissociated from the story, and you don't really know why at certain moments you simply explode. But all this is nothing more than signals that your body sends you, to let you know that there is something that requires your attention. So, take the opportunity and learn to heal the wounds of the past, so they can heal and stop hurting.
Some of these situations can cause injuries:
Abandonment.
Death of a family member.
Domestic violence.
Sexual abuse.
Rejection.
Unaccomplished promises
Alcoholism or Addictions of a father/mother.
Physical abuse, humiliation, and mistreatment.
Negligence.
Divorce.
Illnesses of your own or a family member.
Economic and material deficiencies.
Lack of love and care.
How to heal the past so that it does not hurt us?
Psychotherapeutic work is essential to healing the past and detecting traumatic experiences or inherited beliefs that lacerate the self. The main objective of this type of therapy is to work from the safety of the evaluation with the memories stored in your brain of the experiences that are limiting you in the present, whether consciously or unconsciously, in order to accept them, both from the point of view of rational as emotional view. In this way, they will stop limiting your future.
Remember that the important thing is not what happened, but how you live it now. The past no longer exists, what lasts is the memory that your brain keeps, which thanks to research we know is never reliable. Therefore, it is not a question of erasing the event from your mind, but rather that you can integrate it in another way so that it does not harm you. As our body heals wounds so that it doesn't hurt, our brain also allows us to "reprocess" emotional pain.
Some tips to help us on this path of healing: · Know your wound and evaluate it in depth.
· Create a list of triggers.
· Put guilt aside.
· Remember you are not your pain, you are a human being in pain, remember that your pain is not can define your life. · Find your strengths. · Develop the positive in you. · Look for relationships that make you grow. · Take care and show yourself, love. · Seek professional help.
Videos that can help you improve and heal your past, click on these links to see more:
References.
Erazo, Renato. (2020). SANANDO LAS HERIDAS DEL PASADO. América Latina: Vivenciar: Recuperado de: https://www.vivenciar.net/es/sobre-o-vivenciar/.
Linares, Rosario. (2021). Heridas emocionales: Cómo sanar el pasado para vivir plenamente el presente. Madrid: El prado psicólogos; recuperado de: https://www.elpradopsicologos.es/blog/heridas-emocionales-sanar-el-pasado/.
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