How to Get Passed Your Past

There are many purposes for our memories: Remembering old friends, a database of facts, knowing the deadlines at work, etc.  But perhaps the most profound function of memory is its ability to influence present day feelings and guide decision making.  Past experiences are what help you to make good choices and steer around life’s landmines. 

But what happens when your past experiences show up uninvited?  Reexperiencing the dark, unimaginable moments of your life can feel inconceivable, surreal even, like casually slipping in and out of a nightmare.  But before graduating to the difficult experiences, let’s talk about grapefruit. 

When I was a child I hated grapefruit.  I mean really hated it.  I mean “the smell of skunk up close” hated it.  But everyone else in my family liked it so there always seemed to be grapefruits around.  I avoided them at all costs all the way up to adulthood.  That is, until a few years ago.  My wife brought home a grapefruit from the store one day, cut it up, and set it on the table.  I had long forgotten my disdain for the bitter fruit, so I was most surprised to see one cut up on a plate one morning. 

“Want a slice?” she asked me. 

I sighed.  “I haven’t seen one in years, but I used to hate the things,” I told her. 

“Want to try one now?”

“I don’t know if I’ll like it,” I told her. 

“Try a little bit.” 

I gave in, tried a slice, and the darndest thing happened… turns out I like grapefruit now.  I can’t even be sure why I didn’t like them in the first place.  “Did grapefruits always taste like this?” 

“They have,” she said.

“They couldn’t have,” I said. (My wife is patient)

“They have,” she said. 

Of course, like so many other things, she is right.  Grapefruit has not changed.  Instead, it seems that I have unknowingly learned a new way to experience the flavor of grapefruit.  This phenomenon explains many things.  Like why I felt sad or embarrassed about getting in trouble as a child, but now when I think of those same experiences I laugh.  Or sometimes in reverse- things I thought were funny at the time that cause me to shake my head and sigh like I’ve been offered grapefruit.

But perception does not always change so delightfully. 

I was once working with a woman whose presenting concern read, “I want to learn how to stop hating my mother.”  When she was a child, her Mother’s boyfriend repeatedly abused her until she was old enough to move out of the house.  The woman had told her mother about the abuse, but it never stopped and the mother remained committed to her relationship with the boyfriend.  More than 10 years after moving out, the woman’s mother was still in the same committed relationship with the same abusive man.  “I want to learn how to stop hating my mother.” 

When something small happens, like a childhood mishap or a mildly unpleasant food, there is a good chance that our mind and biology can expand its openness to accommodate the fluctuation of experience we once found uncomfortable- like my taste buds dulling enough to be able to enjoy the bitterness of grapefruit.  But some experiences are too big for that. 

Deep and dark experiences are welded into our memories for good.  When you wake up tomorrow, you will continue to remember the most gripping experiences of your life, and unless some form of memory loss sets in, there is nothing that would make you forget.  But that’s not the end of the story.

I have to ask an odd sounding question… That extremely difficult thing you wish you could forget… why is it so unforgettable?  There are lots of reasons why.  But among the reasons exists an important one: That difficult experience directly inverts something you know to be deeply important, and good.  The woman I mentioned- she had recently had a child of her own.  She knew exactly what she did and did not want her new baby to experience, and among the many wonderful things she eventually became in her life, she was a damn good mother. 

What she had to learn was that her challenge was never forgiving her parents for what happened to her, but accepting what her parents had done to her.  Choosing acceptance does NOT mean condoning or forgiving.  The Latin root of acceptance means “to take willingly.”  And though atrocities are nothing we want to “take willingly,” life often does not offer you a choice between comfortable things and uncomfortable things.  Rather, life says, “here’s some terrible experiences, and that’s all you’ll get for now.”  To accept those experiences is to orient yourself to your life, and only by being in your life can you truly address the content within it.  Orienting to the extremes of your experience can be one of the more challenging things humans can do, and it is also the road to relating to your difficult past in a helpful way.  Know that forgiveness is something else entirely, and at times need not have a place at the table of your experience. 

So how do you orient yourself?  How do you come face to face with your past and give your pain a voice?  In a word, gently.  Take a moment right now and recognize where you are.  Take note of how you physically feel.  Notice your physical sensation, whatever it is, and also notice that your sensation exists separately from your past experience.  Notice that your present moment exists in a different place from your past, but that you can notice your current moment and your difficult past experience simultaneously.  It is in this place that we can begin to gently acclimate your current world to make room for difficult memories - acceptance. 

“Where we are right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.”

                -Chuck Palahniuk