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Letting Go of the Past

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  • #396855
    Travel Itin
    Participant

    Hi, seeking guidance from fellow kind souls here.
    The pandemic has wreaked so much emotional havoc on everyone. Ever since the lockdown, I have developed a series of depression particularly relating to nostalgia. I have always looked back at the past photos/blogs and reminisced about the heydays, wondered how friends are doing right now. In actual fact, they are well and fine, and have moved on to different chapters in their lives, some of them have chosen to distance themselves for whatever reasons. I came to realise that I was perhaps missing their old selves, the olden times more so than their identities today. It hurts me to keep recollecting the past, when everyone else seems to have moved on respectively. How can I cope with this emotionally?

    #396858
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Travel Itin:

    How can I cope with this emotionally?” –

    – I’d say, for the purpose of coping with this, you need to better define what this is.

    I have always looked back at the past… and reminisced about the heydays” – if you always reminisced, it means that you reminisced before the pandemic (and then maybe you reminisced more during the pandemic)?

    It hurts me to keep recollecting the past, when everyone else seems to have moved on respectively” – if your past was pleasant enough overall, you would have moved on from it.  But there is enough unpleasantness in your past that keeps you stuck in it. Maybe the “this” which you need to cope with is that unpleasantness.

    It is possible that by being nostalgic about the past, you’ve been avoiding confronting some difficult, unpleasant things about your past, a confrontation that needs to happen so that you can move on…?

    anita

     

    #396867
    Helcat
    Participant

    Hi Travel Itin

    Are there any circumstances that are currently making you unhappy in life?

    My question is if you are looking to the past to avoid the present?

    Was the lockdown particularly difficult for you? If so, in what way?

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Helcat.
    #396873
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Travel (not all that wonder are lost)

    The word “nostalgia” comes from two Greek roots: νόστος, nóstos (“return home”) and ἄλγος, álgos (“longing”).

    Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own phantasy. Nostalgia a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. At the same time Nostalgia is mourning and or longing for same imagine future that cannot be. The Past become the Future without a Present. And they say Time Travel isn’t possible. 🙂

    “Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
    ― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

    Nostaglgia is a kind of wound. The word wound so close to the word wonder; a wound is a wonder. Life opening and then healing itself . “Wounds” an invitation to enter into the raw and real of human life and then to wait for the wonder.

    I love the wound of Nostalgia. Hearing a peace of music that sends me back in time to a memory revisited. To see how time flowed from that point. Sometimes painful lessons learned, but having learned something less painful. The wonder of the healing comes from allowing the feelings to flow.

    The longing isn’t for the past or some future that cannot be but for home which is in the present. Be Present

    When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. – Hermann Hess

    #397039
    Roberta
    Participant

    Dear Travel Itin

    “It hurts me to keep recollecting the past”. Do you do this often? does it start out pleasant but ends up painful?

    Now that you recognize that these thoughts/daydreams are not helpful you can take steps to not feed into that line of thinking ie be aware that looking at photos brings on nostalgia and choose to do something else with your time, go for a walk in nature, or do volunteering.

    It is easier to lighten ones mood when you catch the feelings early.

    Kind regards

    Roberta

     

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