Putting it all behind us
Often I hear a client say:” I thought I put that behind me”!  Or the cliché –‘the past is the past’.
The reality is that until we really process the feelings, issue or conflict- it will stay with us, and come to have a “life of its own”, until we do.

Carl Jung created the term for this, calling it the “shadow”. In simple terms, our shadow is defined as the place in our unconscious or subconscious where we suppress, or bury the experiences in life that we do not have the where with all to cope with . Most of us have had times when we suppressed our feelings, when we did not know how to resolve a problem, when we were overwhelmed by life circumstances.

When a couple is in conflict – often both of the partners are dealing with personal issues that predated their relationship – when these issues are surface, they can overload the relationship- with demands that their partner change or “fix the problem” Relationships are often the most profound “mirror”, held up for us to see what it is in each of us that needs healing or to be worked through.

We all have our personal patterns for dealing with our issues or problems- most often this means we ‘numb”, so we don’t have to feel the emotions. One way we do that is to compartmentalize. Another way is to use our personal “go to “methods: overwork, lots of exercise, to constantly be busy, watch lots of TV, spend hours on Facebook or the internet etc. We typically don’t call these addictions, but we could. Defined addictions such as alcohol, drugs of all kinds, pornography, gambling, etc, are often used to avoid emotional pain or what feels like overwhelm.

The problem is that if we don’t deal with these unresolved feelings or issues, they don’t just go away. To paraphrase Carl Jung, what ever it is that we don’t deal with, will surface in various ways – and we don’t realize that our unconscious (unresolved emotions) caused the outcome, and we blame it on someone else or attribute it to being our fate. Whatever is surfacing in the moment- is the residual past held in our physical/emotional/psychological system.

When a relationship ends, there is always a tendency to blame the partner for the ending.
This is true, no matter who “leaves” the relationship. As long as we remain in the place of victim, using blame, resentment, judgment, vengeance, or try to shame or guilt our former partner, we give away our power.
The sooner we can get to the realization that both parties contributed to the relationship not being sustainable, the sooner we can move on with healing, and gain the perspectives needed to ahead in a healthy way.

The process of moving on requires us to look at the past, what have we tried vainly to ignore, to see how we attempted through attitudes, beliefs, and images (the ‘lens” through which we look at life -saying men are……, women are….., God is …., life is……) in order to cope with life or to try to create our psychological survival strategy. We all have behaviors that are not effective in building relationships, which keep us in anxiety or fear, and result in conflicts.
Dealing with the past requires us to feel what it is we have thus far, tried avoid feeling
The energy that it takes to suppress, or compress or depress our emotions is enormous, and results in “hard pain”- which prolongs and intensifies our suffering.
We all have a need to heal. In order to heal we need to transform that which we wanted to bury, or put behind us. As Ken Wilber offered, we can only grow if we include all of us and then we can transcend those parts of ourselves that no longer serve us.  If you are ready to experience that healing process–consider taking our seminar.