You Can’t Forget What You Can’t Forgive.
Our pain will have more power over us the more we let it affect us.
We all go through life dealing with a lot of pain. Human emotions and relationships are delicate and intricate, and different situations affect people differently.
Someone may have physically or mentally harmed you, or perhaps you’ve been through some stressful event — a natural tragedy, a flood, or an armed robbery.
Maybe you’ve just gotten out of a difficult situation, and even though you know you’ll eventually get better, you’re already in excruciating pain.
The situation might be that you’ve been scarred, and you’ve carried the scar along with you for a long time.
Almost all of us relate to these feelings in some way. Even those who excel at accepting personal responsibilities have at least one personal experience of being wounded. Though some of us have dealt with more instances of pain, the mental distress caused by them is impossible to measure or compare.
People at work, in the coffee shop, and also in your family are totally oblivious that a triggered memory could occur at any time, leaving you feeling as if the earth has run out of air to breathe.
When you’re in pain, certain people can advise you to “let it go,” as if that is a viable option. They will say, “It’s all in your mind,” and believe that this will take the pain away. None of this, though, will assist you in healing and finding peace on a daily basis.
Staying here, accusing them, and deciding your life solely on the basis of what they did would only make it worse. If you don’t fix yourself, it will continue to project into others. Our pain will have more power over us the more we let it affect us. Sadly, those who least deserve to be affected will be the ones who suffer the most as a result of our unresolved suffering.
The person or people who hurt you have caused enough suffering for you and those around us. There has been enough harm done. They’ve had their fill. You don’t have to give up what was valuable to you and dismiss all of your experiences as painful. You get to choose how you want to proceed.
Completely sterilising your life from the physical presence of reminders will not remove the pain. You can’t edit reality to try and force healing. You can’t convince yourself into being okay with what happened. However, you can decide that the one who hurt you doesn’t get further control over your memories.
Coping mechanisms such as being excessively optimistic or spiritual, or numbing out with drugs, can help us get by in the short term.
However, they do not help us cope in the long run; instead, they keep us trapped at the point of our unhealed pain. We must come to a halt at some stage. We can’t live in a parallel universe and expect things to improve right in front of our eyes. Only what we are able to accept as true can be healed.
It might seem that denying our suffering is easier than dealing with and healing what is really present. C.S. Lewis said that everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they themselves have to forgive someone. It’s also really unhealthy. Unhealed pain has no room in your heart, which is far too beautiful. Your soul is far too worthy of liberation to be imprisoned here. Forgiveness should not add to the suffering of an undefeatable burden.
So many people get lost, remain mad, and suffocate their lives with hopeless pursuits. But what about possibilities that are full of hope? That is where the process of believing in the possibility of healing starts.
The two markings of time when we’re dealing with hurt. BC, or Before Crisis. AD, or After Devastation. there can be a third one: RH or Resurrected Hope.
You have to be optimistic and actively seek out hope. And as soon as you begin to notice it, the noticing multiplies.
Have you ever decided you like a certain type of car and, even if you hadn’t seen it before, you go out of your way to look for it the next time you’re driving?
And when you go looking for it, it seems to be everywhere! You see two in your neighborhood, another at the next stoplight, and then even more when you arrive at your destination’s parking lot.
How is it that you never considered this particular car before, but now it seems to be everywhere?
Those cars did not appear on that precise day. They’ve definitely been buzzing around you for a while, but you’re probably not noticing them because you’re not looking for them.
That’s the multiplier effect of deciding to look for something: you’ll start seeing it more and more as a result of your decision.
In the case of hope, the more proof you see, the more confident you will be that it exists. A fresh outlook emerges until you’re certain it’s there. Even better, this new insight transforms into a new reality.
So, how do we get started? Seeing hope, after all, isn’t quite the same as seeing a nice car. Returning to the location where something was lost is the best place to start searching for it.
