Liz Vigar – Counsellor | Counselling in Reading, Berkshire

This is probably one of Irvine Yalom’s most cited quotes.  I think it captures a rather difficult psychological truth but, nevertheless, one that could have the potential to bring about an enormous amount of freedom to really live in the present.

I believe that our past carries great significance in the sense that what has happened to us deeply shapes who we are now. 

Do you ever find that circumstances sometimes seem to serve to remind you of difficult and traumatic times and events?  You might be going along quite fine until something comes to give a big stir into the murky depths of your past.  It may be a reminder or a past you, one that you would rather forget as there is deep shame there.  Or perhaps it re-awakens some trauma of something that has happened or a traumatic time in your life.

Trauma often responds to themes not identical events.  The nervous system recognises emotional patterns more than factual details – it points to where the wound is, not to who you are now.  The emotional echoes may be similar, but the reality is not.  Sometimes it can be very difficult to differentiate.  

Therapy isn’t about erasing the past, but it is about helping us to increasingly live as though the past does not dictate the present.  Where we have come from is actually an integral part of who we are.  It is part of our story and will influence us for good and bad but it doesn’t necessarily need to define us.  The goal isn’t for the trauma not to matter any more as, although we wouldn’t have chosen it, we can value our identity, our journey and the person we have become.  Rather than clinging to the suffering, it can become a chapter rather than the title of our life.

Healing often involves grieving what cannot be changed – not only what happened, but sometimes what never happened: the protection, love, safety or innocence that should have been there.   Sometimes it is by gradually letting go of the exhausting task of trying to make it become something it never was that we can find increasing freedom. 

We often try all sorts of different ways to fill up the void or cover the pain, but that is a different topic.

So – giving up hope for a better past, is certainly not the absence of hope, but rather a redirecting of hope where we can increasingly live in the present – even though some wounds may continue to ache…