Why bother to reflect on the past at all, shouldn’t we avoid thinking about it completely if it causes us distress?

“No” is the simple answer to avoidance – reflecting on the past is very important. There is a phrase in counselling that says “In order to understand your present you need to look at the past” but then continues “in order to understand your future you need to look at your present” In other words, what we do now with what we understand about what has happened to us and how we feel and behave towards this will determine how we go forward.  This can be a difficult process, and also one that is hard to do alone. Our perceptions of ourselves can be skewed by our own biases, prejudices and false assumptions. We all have that ‘blind spot’ about ourselves in our “Joharis’s window” (Luft and Ingham 1955) . That is not to say we cannot know ourselves, and much of what we know is true, coming from our ‘intuitive knowing’, which is that ability to acquire knowledge about ourselves without the need for conscious reasoning or evidence, and it often guides us well. However, it is important to also balance this intuition with other forms of reasoning to ensure well-rounded decision-making. That is where reflection on the past benefits from a critical reflection – an “Is that really true?” approach, especially when we find ourselves punishing ourselves for our past behaviours, decisions and feelings, as we all do at times. Counselling, journalling, talking to someone who cares about what is genuinely best for us and is able to also be a little detached, can prove very helpful here.  For example, when reflection on our upbringing and our relationships with significant others in our childhood, always an essential aspect of our work on understanding the past” Gerhardt (2014) writes “Psychotherapy offers a cure to poor early attachments, exploring ways we regulate our feelings in response to others and modifying old emotional habits and introducing new ones”. I have found that reflecting on the past with clients can literally change their present and their future.

How to reflect on the past helpfully, with compassion?

Gilbert (2013) writes with great insight about the difficulty with self reflecting, saying  “Some people have difficulty reflecting on their feelings and inner experiences.  Indeed, for some people this is not a pleasant thing to do and they avoid thinking too much about what goes on in their minds”. This can be cause by a being worried about ‘what they might discover’ or are worried about ‘lifting the lid on things’; sometimes people just feel very sad and overwhelmed and so they don’t want to think too much about their feelings – but just change or get rid of them; sometimes there are difficult memories that come up, and sometimes people were never taught ‘how’ to discuss their feelings or think about them.

Often thinking about the past can generate intense feelings of anger towards others. We can sometimes see with hindsight that others did not serve us well, and hold on to hurt, bitterness, or a desire for revenge. This is understandable, but fruitless and self-destructive. What we need to do, which is much more helpful (but difficult), is to accept that other’s behaviour was their responsibility, not ours, and let it go. If we can forgive them, that will really help us more th, but sometimes this is not possible. If we can focus on exploring and taking whatever we have learnt about ourselves, and others, and use it to make our present, and our future better.

Thinking about the past can also be accompanied by anger, confusion, shame (The Problem of Shame 2025) or disbelief towards ourselves, that we had acted or felt the way we did, maybe by not speaking out, or by not realising that we were being unkind. This can be the hardest aspect of letting go. It needs us to be able to reflect self-critically, with kindness and self-compassion, in order to try and understand why we behaved as we did. Therapy is very helpful for this, as is talking to a trusted friend or family member, or journalling. Through understanding what need in us was not being met, that led to us behave as we did, and acknowledging how that led us to behave in ways that now we regret, can help us learn from it so that we can do better, take responsibility and, most importantly of all, show forgiveness to ourselves and let go. This can be very hard. It helps to remember that we did the best we could, at the time, because we didn’t know what else to do, and not because we were or are intrinsically bad people, just human and flawed, like the whole of the human race.

I hope this helps someone. Sending love, Aileen x

Gerhardt, S. (2014). “Why love matters”. Routledge.

Gilbert, P. “The Compassionate Mind” (2013). 3^rd Ed. Constable. London.

The school of life “The Problem of Shame” video (accessed 06/04/25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTXWVKhcXRI&list=PLfi3Epr2i8YqavvrrP1yD_6mdBm5y19Y_&index=5