Moving On from Painful Memories

🎧 Heal Your Past Series #3. 9 Ways to manage painful memories, and 6 therapeutic journaling prompts

Hi, If you’re new here, I’m Kate, a UK psychotherapist sharing insights from therapy and beyond to nourish your soul, accept yourself and find deeper meaning. Subscribe for weekly posts, and upgrade for therapeutic worksheets and tools from the therapy room including my Heal Your Past series (including this post). Thanks for being here!

Moving On from Painful Memories

Bad memories from past events can play in our minds as if those events are happening now, with feelings to match. Memories are simply snapshots of the past, that are re-experienced. Your mind and body can respond as if the event is happening now. 

Most memories are useful, of course, though not always. Memories can reappear repeatedly when they aren’t processed, bringing back pain and keeping us locked in the past. It can be a sign of trauma, making memories harder to process. To process memories that come from ‘unfinished business’, things that have not reached resolution or ending, we can finish it, and tame those memories so we can move on.

It might be through justice, dialogue or other resolution, or if these aren’t possible, expressing how we feel to a loved one, or in creative ways like journaling, creative writing, art, dance and movement, imagery, or counselling. 

Memories help us make decisions for now and our future and make life better. But if they are taking over or interfering with your life now, or holding you back with their persistence or intensity, they may need to be managed. 

If we have little or no memory that’s fine too - we don’t need to go looking for those memories. If our brain has shut them down it is probably because remembering them isn’t necessary for our lives. Some things are best forgotten.

If we can be honest too, on what we contributed to our lives in the past, including mistakes, then we can help ourselves even better when we ‘own’ it.

Strange Small Memories 

Sometimes we keep remembering things that seem to have no particular meaning, yet they continue to pop into our head. If you have a memory like this, it is likely that it is showing you something you aren’t aware of. Check the emotional quality of the memory, or the dynamic of you with the people and things involved in it. There may be a clue why your unconscious mind wants you to process it. You can use journaling to help you explore. 

"To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit." - Jack Kornfield

Managing Painful Memories 

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This is part of the Heal Your Past series of post for paid subscribers. I invite you to upgrade if you haven’t already, if you’d like 9 ways to manage difficult memories with 6 therapeutic journaling prompts. If not you might like these simple tools.