1. When we are young or inexperienced we adopt, often without our full knowledge beliefs and plans designed to make us feel safe or valued. What did you do?
2. We do the best we can at the time even if now we think we were ‘bad’ or mistaken, so we try to block things out we did because we feel ashamed or fear that that makes us permanently guilty.
3. If we can learn to understand that we developed the habit of rarely speaking up, hiding anger, or being overly argumentative that might have worked at a young age depending on how we were treated by others but might cause some problems now.
4. We can’t erase the past but we can learn to accept that what we did had a ‘good’ reason at the time. We might have avoided punishment or gained some feelings of safety.
5. Instead of blaming ourselves and believing we will always have to suffer for past deeds we can learn how those ways helped at the time.
6. As adults we can learn to change how we think about ourselves by learning to accept the past more. BY accepting the past we can learn to lower anxiety and depression in the present and future.
Carl S. Wells is a psychologist and life coach in private practic in Huntington Beach, California. He has been in practice for many years and welcomes your comments and questions. See blog www.carlwellstherapist.com.