Let The Past Pass

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

Whenever we find ourselves fixated on the past or the image of a past person we’ve encountered, we must recognize that we’re nursing some sort of unrecognized regret. Even if it is the longing for an enjoyable past, you must recognize that anything about the past is the subconscious mourning of a loss; the loss of time, youth, opportunity, a person or people. Fixation and regret are birds of same feather.

There are many everyday phenomena that lets us know that there’s no good enough reason to wish to relive the past. It’s likely that we’ve all had that experience when we thought that a novel dish was such a delight the first time we had it, but then the second time ended up tasting almost disgusting.

There’s also a likelihood that we’ve all experienced the phenomenon where we really wanted to be in a certain environment for the second time only to return to that environment and find next to nothing to be excited about anymore.

If we are paying close attention to our lives, we will know that nothing is worth going back to the past for.

I like to have conversations with older folks, and they like very much to talk about how much better life was back then. Maybe they do or don’t realize that if they were to be able to time travel back to those “good old days”, they would hate it a lot.

For one, they would rewind to when they were forty, and pass out in that time because life expectancy was once that low. That means that they’d not make it back to that good thirty-eight they were reminiscing about, and would not also be able to return to the now awful sixty-eight.

Or, they would make it back to thirty-eight and get cleaned out by the bubonic plague or some deadly virus and a poorly advanced healthcare system right before or after they get terribly disappointed with finding that those old days were not so good after all!

Of course there are things in the past that we are all fixated on. We even subconsciously try to re-create that experience, or moment. And if that past is a person, we subconsciously try to actively attract that past person into our future.

Let me just cut this short; whether it was an enjoyable past experience or person, wanting to relive them is a sign of unrecognized regret. And, regret is just an event, person, or experience that has not been successfully converted to useful information.

Simply put, fixation is the coping mechanism that we use for unprocessed regrets. Yes, everything can be immensely positive and still leave a feeling of regret within!

The goal is to recognize that we still want something or someone that must remain in the past no matter how great. Here are a few ways to address this fixation:

1. Accept that the fixation exists and don’t beat yourself up for being human. Abrupt halts can create more chaos than redirection, so don’t take heels when you realize that you’re fixated somewhere somehow.

2. Walk yourself through all the reasons why you think that past place or person (image of the person, precisely) is something you need to experience again. Oftentimes, you’ll find that you have in fact experienced that place or image of the person so many other times without recognizing it.

3. Find healthy ways to release the fixation. Releasing fixation is a huge struggle! Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’ll be an easy process. There’s a whole market of seers and clairvoyants built around fixation on the past. People go there to hear from their loved ones who’ve passed. That’s to let you know that fixation is centered around grief and regrets, and can really “drive” people to do insane things.

4. Process the lesson. It is not easy to process the lessons in any event or experience, especially because we’re often stuck in our emotions and we believe that our emotions are the absolute truth because it’s the most familiar thing to us. But there’s often an underlying truth that elicits shame and anger upon first encounter. Once we can get past these violent emotions, we are better able to process the rest.

5. Make peace with the struggle. You’ll find that the less you focus on releasing or dismissing any kind of fixation, the less fixated you become. If the thought arises, let it run its course. You don’t need to berate yourself for it. Sometimes, stress can heighten fixation by way of intrusive thoughts. You must establish one healthy activity or habit to overcome the intrusive thoughts. Failure to establish a healthy habit or activity ahead of time can lead to negative responses.

Here’s a final trick to fixation; your brain is predictive when you’re in fixation mode. It provides you with a feeling to accompany the thoughts of fixation. This means that your brain tells you how or what to feel when you think of ghosts of past places or persons. What you need to do is put your brain into an adaptive mode when fixation shows up. Tell your brain what to feel about the thought. No, just simply tell your brain how or what to feel in the moment that the fixation shows up.

You can do this by redirecting your brain to the thoughts of something in your future that you’re excited about, and then refocus on all the work you’re doing in the moment towards that expected future!

Fixation can arrest the brain development and prevent future mental growth. It’s one of the reasons that an adult may adopt a teenager’s dress sense with accompanying such behaviors. So, unfix whatever keeps your mind fixed!

Save this post for future reference. And, I hope this helps your life journey somehow.