When the Past Comes Back to Haunt You

When the Past Comes Back to Haunt You

The only thing in our human lives that isn’t passed down by genes and heredity is our Attachment Style (Avoidant, Anxious, or Confused) exacted from the time of birth to the present by: Each time our mother kissed us, our father left the house, our sister played games with our minds. Our own physical mind was taking careful notes, constructing the framework for our entire future.

So, we wonder why the past comes up at certain times to bite us in the ass. You have no cause to wonder anymore. Your human brain is made of many neuro-pathways that cause mental triggers from small behavioral changes to Post Traumatic Stress whenever certain situations cause one of the pathways to fire at an inappropriate time.

So, the question becomes: How do I deal with a mental impulse that I can’t stop from happening?

As always, I’m going to recount my own situation and help you as I continue to aid myself daily in.

One example for me to keep the cobwebs of my past eradicated from my mind would be to work on the following: My need to be loved—not just by someone—by everyone. I have this innate desire for everyone to approve of my behavior constantly.

When someone who cares about me, tells me I have done something that is the smallest problem and desires for me to change, my gut instinct is to self-flagellate with unkind words to myself. The worst habit, though, is to relive my past and situations that I seem to have failed where relationships are concerned. The past haunts me, sometimes on a daily basis. Is there hope?

For example, I have to drive past an old friend’s house almost every day, and I can’t help but to almost weep because I don’t understand why she abandoned our friendship. A few days ago I was told that she was best buddies now with a guy who literally snubs me in public. I have never had this kind of behavior happen to me before with anyone, especially someone to whom I have no idea what I did to cause anger. I barely knew this individual. Now he’s an old dear friend’s best friend. Yeah!

Okay, that’s the situation. Here is the truth for myself and, hopefully, for you too:

Friends and partners come into our lives to teach us lessons. Sometimes when the lesson is over, Spirit moves that person out of our lives to make room for another lesson and maybe even another, better friend or partner. That has certainly been the case in my life.

When an old thought comes up like the one I mentioned, I try to watch my behavior and see if I can stop the pattern with compassionate self-talk. I say to myself things like, “You are trying to live the most authentic life you know. You can’t have everyone love you. Another person’s feelings are not your responsibility, Bo.”

If that doesn’t work, I try asking someone I know and love to pray with me about it, to get my thoughts into the healing light of Spirit, where they belong. When you keep your depression secret, friends and allies have trouble helping you, because you hide your needs from the most important people in your life—your allies in Spirit. If you open up and share your attachment problems, you are more likely to have the kind of support you need to get over the old thought patterns.

My self-talk includes making an assessment of my present life. I tell myself to look around at my current friends and the huge amount of love that surrounds me daily. I feel so blessed, when I take the time to actually get present and look at what God has attracted to my life in the form of friendships, prosperity, and work I love.

I have so much love in my life, I hardly have time for the friends I have, which makes the current matter even more of a conundrum. Why would I be thinking about old friends who don’t want to be in my life, when I have friends who are seriously better than the old ones, carrying around less baggage, enjoying—with me—being in my life. The best thing about the newer friends is, too, that they don’t see you through the lens of your past. They don’t force you to carry around old, heavy baggage daily.

I had one good friend in the past who would consistently remind me of my shortcomings every time something good would happen in my life. For example, I would be in the middle of a birthday party with a hundred friends celebrating my life, and she would say something that would inevitably push me back down to my old size, which, I guess, was her subconscious desire. She didn’t want me to get too big for my britches, because it may have meant that I wouldn’t have room for her in my larger, more lavish life of love and friendships.

Well, eventually, my life did get too large for her. She snuck out the back door one day by telling a partner that she no longer wanted to be my friend. I think her exact words were, “You and Bo suck!” She never said a word to me after that. She just left my life.

My partner and I loved each other and honored one another enough to work through that person exiting our lives with grace and love. We prayed for her and asked God to show us if we needed to take steps to repair that fence. We both were led to let go.

Another one of my problems in life is to help other people when I should let them fall or fail, if that’s what they have caused in their lives. No one has learned that lesson more than I have, especially in intimate relationships. We can’t be anyone’s all in all. In fact, the more we enable people to be irresponsible and mistreat us, the more we end up with uncaring, codependent partners. Of course, that is not my intention, so I have to let people take care of their own problems. I can be a helper, but not take on the complete responsibility of anyone’s problems.

This should be our mantra for the future: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYONE ELSE’S PROBLEMS BUT MY OWN. I CHOOSE TO BE AN INDEPENDENT PERSON WHO IS ALWAYS WILLING TO LOVE AND BE COMPASSIONATE, BUT NEVER CHOOSES TO AID IN CODEPENDENCY!

If we live by that concept, we can resist the urges to go back into our past and relive and relive and relive the same situations over and over again, both in our minds and in our current lives. Let’s stop the perpetual flow of the past leaching into our lives by reminding ourselves and each other of our current belief and resist the urge to fall back into detrimental relationship behavior.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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