6 Ways to Heal Your Past Emotions
Jun 22, 2023If you’re familiar with my work, you know how often I talk about emotions and how we can develop emotional resilience.
I’ve noticed that many of my clients tend to focus on thoughts rather than emotions. Because of this, they often find themselves disconnected from the emotions they experienced in the past and continue to experience each day in the present.
So when we begin working together and they start opening up their awareness toward their emotions, they often ask me, “What now? What do I do with these emotions and how do I heal them?"
I want to help you put down the heavy emotional baggage you’ve been carrying from past experiences. Let’s talk about six ways you can heal your past emotions so you can find peace.
Validating your emotions
When it comes to difficult experiences from our past, people often approach them in two different ways.
One is that they stay overly focused on the painful events and feelings of the past and cannot see how to move on.
Or, I see people pushing down their feelings and thoughts about the past, refusing to acknowledge the things that have happened.
Either option prevents you from healing from your past experiences and moving forward in your life.
Healing emotional wounds
When working on healing your emotional wounds, the first step is awareness. You must acknowledge that there are things that you have gone through that were hard.
You don’t have to dig up the past, but trying to understand where some of the emotions and pain you deal with now may have begun is helpful.
The following are some techniques and questions that you can ask yourself to help you heal some of the emotional wounds of your past.
Working through these six conversations or questions with a life coach or therapist can be helpful if you need support.
1. When was the first time you felt this way?
Sometimes you can clearly recall the first time you felt a certain negative emotion. Often you’ll find that at that time, you were unable or unwilling to process the emotions of that event.
When you go back to your past and allow yourself to acknowledge and truly process your emotions, you can begin to heal and move on from those old feelings.
2. Recognize and acknowledge your biased view of the past
There are facts and events that actually happened in your past. But, how you’ve been telling the story of your past is biased and may not include the entire truth.
Taking the time to piece together the facts of the situation and your perspective at the time allows you to think about other ways this event could have been perceived or experienced.
Be willing to go back with understanding and try to see the full story from a logical, unbiased perspective so you can understand your experience in a different way.
3. Focus on compassion
Imagine being able to talk to your younger self with love. What would you say? How could you show your past self compassion?
Your logical brain might pop up and say, “No, you did it all wrong,” but try to stay in a place of compassion. You had a valid reason for going through that experience the way you did.
You can also have compassion for the other people involved in the situation. Usually, people were just doing the best that they could at the time, so acknowledging that from a place of compassion can help you release the pain.
4. Forgiveness
This step takes time, but it is where you have the most significant transformation.
Oprah Winfrey says, “Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past will be any different.” The past is done, but we are keeping ourselves stuck by constantly reliving it and thinking it should have been different.
Forgiveness is the acceptance of what happened and being able to let go and love yourself through it.
Can you forgive yourself? Can you forgive the other people involved? Can you forgive the situation? When you can, you begin to be able to move forward.
5. Learn from the past
This is where you get to rewrite the story of your past so that it serves you going forward. What did you learn from the experience? What was the purpose of it? How are you a better person because of it?
Open yourself up to see that your past doesn’t have to be a problem. Bad things happen. But bad things create beautiful things.
Our past and pain aren’t meant to tear us down. You don’t have to dismiss all the hard things that have happened, but you can choose to learn from them instead of letting them keep you stuck.
6. Practice gratitude and abundance
Looking back on a relationship that ended, a job you didn’t get, or an opportunity you didn’t take can bring up all the difficult emotions you experienced at that time. And often, our brains stop us there.
But instead, you can choose to shift your brain toward gratitude and abundance and change your entire experience.
When you look back at a story from your past that may have created a deep wound, ask yourself, “Where is the love in this story?” When you look for the love in your story, you will find it.
As you rewrite the story of your past from a place of love, you can heal any pain and move forward from a place of empowerment.
Moving forward with emotional growth
As you acknowledge and work through the emotions and experiences of the past, you can choose what you will take with you and what you will leave behind. You don’t need to keep retelling the same story. Let go of the past and create a new ending.
Look at the hard things you’ve gone through and commit to releasing those emotions and healing those wounds.
Life is happening for you, not to you! Commit to going inside yourself, healing your emotions, and moving forward.
If you want more help understanding your emotions and how to move through them to heal your past, check out my free private podcast, Beyond Living and Loving Your Life.
This podcast walks you through exactly how to engage with your emotions daily - in three minutes or less.
