How to let go of the past

Today I am discussing how to let go of your pain and past.

In this episode I discuss how:

Thoughts that keep you stuck
Why you are staying stuck
Questions to ask yourself to move forward

Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/past

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone, I hope you are well, and if not, I got you, at least you are here. Welcome to today's episode. I'm still figuring out the title, but it'll be about how to let go off the past and move forward something along those lines. And that's what we're talking about today. And I think it's perfect because right now I feel like shit. I've just been doing a whole heap of wedding planning. My wedding isn't until 2024, and so many emotions have been popping up. I I've just realized I have been making this very stressful for myself, just with the thoughts that I'm applying to it. And I'm holding on to a lot of weird things on top of that. My period is due. I think my thyroid has decided to flare up, which affects everything else as well, and I just feel like a puddle of milk is the best way to describe it. I feel like warm puddle of milk. Just, I don't know, but I'm loving myself through it. And it was really hot this morning because your cortisol levels are the highest in the morning, so it felt really, really intense. And I've just been feeling it a lot in my chest, but I've just been letting it move through me and it always seems to peak about midday, which you know, is nice peak, isn't it? Like goes down a bit. And I've just been, you know, doing thought downloads and really loving myself through this.

[00:01:27] And yeah, no, I don't enjoy it. But it's a whole much better experience than when I am pushing myself, like pushing through it or running away from it. It's just very nice that I'm I'm just really when when I talk about having your own back, it's really about parenting yourself. And that's what I'm doing. I'm literally parenting myself. I'm telling myself that it's OK. We're allowed to feel this way. Nothing has gone wrong. We are safe. We're allowed to feel these feelings even if they suck. And after I record this ride a few posts, I'm going to play my video game. My partner got me for Valentine's Day. Horizon Forbidden West. Really good game. I'm really excited to already be playing it a little bit and just probably. Yeah, just yeah. Just just be a warm puddle of milk today. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about, but I wanted to let you in on that. I and I'm going in very role on this episode, so I haven't been putting in a massive script. But now today I was like, No, it's just going to do it. We're going to do it and see what happens. I have a general idea, but here we go, and it's a good one because I hope you're able to see the traits that I'm going to pick up on and the little pick me up. So I kind of stop you from letting go of the past.

[00:02:53] Now what? I've seen a lot in myself and in my clients when we go through something very, either traumatic or very pressing or something that we think has been really impactful on our lives and we want to let go of it. A lot of clients come to me like, I want to let go of this pain, but they're just not ready to let go of it yet. They just really struggle. We'll talk about it. I've done this myself will reiterate the past. We will relive it. But letting go of it is just such a struggle. I really don't want to let go of it, and I don't doubt if you're listening. You have something that has happened in your life that you would like to let go of, but it just doesn't. It's still sticky. It still feels that and I want to let you in on kind of the key things as to, you know, how to really move forward from all of this. The number one thing that I see everyone do, including myself, is they think that to move on and let it go, they have to accept what happened to them. What I mean by that is I almost have to accept that it was OK. They have to, like, view it in a different positive light. And how this whole episode came about is that I'm currently doing positive intelligence training and it's amazing training. I'm starting to incorporate it with my clients at the moment, and some of the things I look at is how to see past events that you originally have seen as negative.

[00:04:29] How do you see the gifts in them? And I can do that with minor things, such as things at work, right? Some challenges, right? Something that I'm really maybe pissed off about. Like, I don't know, maybe I'm having challenges running some code. I can view that as OK. Well, this is a way for me to grow and learn, but I could not do it for the life of me on any extremely traumatic things that have happened to me in my childhood or teenage years. I just didn't want to. And here's the thing. There is a misconception in the. Society that you have to be OK with it, like you have to accept it, you almost have to be happy about it, like it's OK that this very traumatic thing that has affected me happened and I view it in a new light and I'm telling you right now you do not have to do that. What I actually think that that halts some of us. I can I can stop the journey of growth because really, if you put that into a model, that discrepancy that you have right now that oh, for me to move on, I need to accept it, but I don't want to accept it. That's keeping you stuck. You need to accept that it happened and the pain associated with it.

[00:05:44] I'm telling you right now because I've done this myself. You do not have to be OK with what happened to move on. You can still see it as something that is deep and hurtful and traumatic. And except like, it's accepting the pain, that's what I see the struggle with. But for some reason, that's where the disconnect happens, because it's like, Well, I want to move on, but if I move on, you know, then I'm going to have to be happy about it, and I don't want to be happy about it. And I'm like, You don't have to be happy about it, but you do need to accept that it happened and it was painful and all the emotions around it because he's the thing that disjoint. If you put that into a model, that whole mental drama you're having keeps you distracted from processing the real pain. Think about it if you're sitting there like, Oh, but I want to, you know, I don't want to accept this like, oh, you know, angry about that. That actually is a distraction from the real fact, which is accepting that it was really fucking painful and it was really hurtful. And there's a lot of emotions that I haven't processed yet about it. It's actually a really smart defense mechanism. It gets your brain to distract from the back. Sorry back. The fact that here's a thing that's very, very painful that I think is dangerous.

[00:07:10] I don't want you to touch it. So I'd rather you focus on the fact that you struggle. You know, you think that you have to be OK with it. Let's get you to focus on that when you are more than welcome. I tell my clients all this like and it's such a relief as well. When I found this out for myself, it was so like I was able to move on and feel better. It's the weirdest thing when I accepted that what happened to me in my past was shit painful. And when I think about it, I still have that like almost this heaviness and dread in my throat and chest. That was when I was able to start letting it go. It's it's accepting the pain associated with it. You do not have to be happy about it if you do not want to. You do not have to change your perspective at all about it. And yeah, you do have to kind of look at it, though. That's the thing. You have to observe it. You have to sit with some of the feelings and emotions, and I know that can be really, really challenging. But that is the first step. So that is the first thing that I see first. Yeah. You don't have to be happy about it is the one thing to let go of the past. You can observe and look at that pain. The second thing is as we dissociation and it's a smart thing, our brains are per like wired to do this.

[00:08:35] We think if we accept what happened to us, even if we accept the pain and we let it be there, that it means it will happen again to us. Because here's the thing our brains are wired to keep us on guard. It does not want you to stop worrying about an event that is very traumatic because it might happen again. It wants you to be on your guard. So that's it literally does not want you to let go of it because if you, you know, process it or try see it as a good thing, say you do like some people have done this right. They can see it as a good thing, not the act itself, but like the gifts, you know, the gifts associated with it. And when I say gifts like an example that this training gives is like someone loses someone in a car accident and then they create a foundation or something like that, like they turn it into, you know, some sort of positive. And I've seen some clients and people do that. Your brain may not want you to do that, though, because if you are accepting of it, you can also be open to it happening again. This is an underlying thought that will also keep you stuck. It is this belief that by holding onto this story of the past and the trauma that I had, that it will protect me and it will not happen again.

[00:09:56] The issue with this is, again, it keeps you stuck, but it just don't. Denies all the wisdom in yourself, all that self trust is gone to trust that you have even learnt or processed or just gone through it, or just just grown as a person to be able to give yourself the permission to let it go so that you can just start to move on and live in the way that you want, really. So that's another thing that keeps us stuck as well. Ok, so I hear you, you're like, All right, I know what's keeping me stuck, but how the hell do I move on? You need to address this. What I mean by that is you need to look at it. A lot of people don't want to look at these things. And of course, you do it in a safe environment. Everyone has had different experiences of different levels. For me, what I had to do was do a thought download of like on this event, on these events that have happened, everything that was happening and coming up for me. I asked myself some questions. What was I afraid of if I let this story go? What would come up for me? Why am I choosing to still let this affect me now? Now, this thought might be triggering from some people, and I understand why, because it's like, Well, you're not choosing it, but in a way you are replaying it in your mind.

[00:11:26] Whether you like it or not, it is a question to get you to unearth. Like, why do you potentially if you're still holding on to this, like why are you holding onto it? What are your fears? And it's some of the stuff that we just talked about now like, I'm afraid it's going to happen again. Like, I don't want to be happy about this. Am I willing to accept and allow myself to say, Hey, this was a really painful, traumatic experience in my life and it affected me this way? The amount of people who like you think you do, but you don't. You want to avoid all this pain and stuff like that just never happened versus it happened. Accepting that it happened, it was painful and these events occurred after it. Getting yourself to that place is challenging, but it's that's letting out the emotional diarrhea. Literally. The next one is am I at the point where I do realize that I am choosing to relive this with my thoughts and it is OK if you are not. That is totally fine. This is a great question to ask yourself on whether you need to be sitting with your emotions and processing them versus, OK, I'm at a point where I accept that this happened. It's really, really painful. I fucking hate it, and I want to view and think about this differently.

[00:12:53] It is fantastic because the last thing I want to do is start doing the thought work and you really you're not at that place yet. Like, you still need to process some of those emotions. And that's OK. You're allowed to be like because if you ask yourself that and it's like, What the hell? I'm not choosing this, that's probably a great determiner that you're not ready for this. Hear me out on this. If you've listened to my stuff before, you'll know that everything you know, there's a circumstance and there's thoughts and there's feelings. So when we're thinking about the past, we would basically just reliving it. Once you are at that point, the best question is how do I want to think about this moving forward? Not happy positive affirmations. It's like it's totally fine or stuff like that, like you were at a point where you realize that you were rethinking this. But you know that by thinking about this in this way is negatively impacting your current life. So how do you want to view it moving forward? For me, it was basic. It was for me, it was just acceptance. It was like, I accept that this was really fucking painful and all these events happen from it that make me feel so much better because of that. That was that income. I'm not saying the words right here, but the dissonance between myself and accepting, you know, making it all happy, whatever was so strong.

[00:14:17] And this is very personal and internal. You ask yourself this question, what are you going to come up with? How do you really want to view it moving forward in a way that feels safe and creates that safety for you could be that you're willing to trust yourself again. Like, there is like, ask yourself what it marinate and see what you come up with, and this is the deep work that I do with my clients. When you're in that spot where you were stuck and you can't move forward, it is exploring all the nuances around that so that you can get yourself unstuck and be able to move forward and. I love teaching you those tools, because then I see you continue to evolve and apply, it's like a Pokémon. My clients are Pokémon's, right? I'm like the the nurse. I forgot the nurse's name. If you listen, if you watch Pokemon, but basically it's like a little Pokémon. And I'm like teaching you all the skills and you're just evolving into a B+. I can't even say that, Oh my god, I've completely forgotten the names. Basically, you are evolving and you're able to apply this in your own life and you go through the evolution and it is so beautiful to see I'm like a proud Pokémon trainer. I don't know why I'm using that metaphor, but I just damn just came up with me when I was talking about evolving. Anyway, I will see you guys next week.