Ep #45: Letting Go of Your Past

You are listening to the Strong as a Working Mom podcast, Episode # 45. Are you stuck in your story? Tune in and learn if your past is keeping you from moving forward.

Welcome to the Strong as a Working Mom podcast. If you’re balancing career, family, wellness, and some days sanity, you are in the right place. This is where high-achieving, busy, working moms get the tools they need to eat, move, and think. I’m your host, physician, personal trainer, and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. Let’s do this.

Hey, how are you? What’s new, what’s good? So, what’s good here, we are going to get into something challenging today. We are just going to hit it face on. We’re going to talk about letting go of your story. And what I mean by that, is letting go of the negative story of your past that is holding you back. So, I’m generalizing here, but many of us have a story.

If you had an awesome past with zero junk and nothing that is keeping you stuck, that is amazing. But many of you have shared that you have things from your past that are still interfering with your life today. And it’s keeping you from evolving and growing and becoming your next best version. Or, maybe you’re having trouble achieving your goals and growing. And if that’s the case for you, I hope this episode can help you to see that your connection with your past may just have a role in this.

I want to help you make sense of this. I want to help you see how you might be holding on to your past. Maybe you’re looking back at it so intently that you’re not seeing what is in front of you. You’re not seeing the opportunity to create a new result for you, instead of reliving the same results of your past over and over again.

Before we move any further, let me make it clear from the outset, if you’re having trouble dealing with your past to the point that it is interfering with your daily activities and it is causing you serious distress, you may benefit from therapy. For those of you who have gone through trauma or abuse and you’re having difficulty moving beyond it, please speak with a licensed therapist or trauma-informed specialists who can help you with this.

I do not want to misrepresent myself. I don’t claim to be a therapist. I do have a number of clients who work with both me and a therapist. and there are benefits to be found from both therapy and coaching.

One of the most important differences between therapy and coaching is that coaching maintains a forward focus. And all that means, is that as your coach, I try very hard not to let you relive your past over and over. Because generally that does not help you. In fact, it outright hurts you.

So, this is not to say we don’t talk about your past, of course we do. But if you are having trouble moving beyond it, I may recommend you work with a therapist to process your past while you work with a coach to work on how you want to show up for yourself in the present and future. All right?

With all of that said, here’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about how to know if you’re stuck in your story. Then, we’re going to talk about why it’s so difficult to let go of that story, and there are a number of reasons for this. I want to see if you can identify with any that might apply to you. And then, we’re going to talk about how to start moving past this. Okay? So, let’s go.

Alright, first, I want to help you recognize when you might be stuck in your past. I have said it before, I will repeat it again here, you cannot change anything unless you are aware of it. And many of you may not even be aware that you’re hanging on to your story, so I want to try to help you make sense of this and identify signs that you might be stuck.

The first and most obvious would be that you have unprocessed negative emotion related to your past. This often shows up as things like anger, anxiety, fear, and distrust. And when these emotions come up, it is usually not subtle. When they come up, these emotions are often big and deep and profound.

It may feel like whatever negative experience you have from your past just happens all over again. And that same emotion is exploding in the same intensity. So, as an example, I have a client who grew up in a home where there was a lot of arguing. Her parents ultimately divorced, but not before having a number of big fights that resulted in one or the other parent leaving the home. Sometimes one parent would be gone for days at a time and she wasn’t sure if or when they were coming back. This pattern happened repeatedly.

From that experience, she learned to associate any argument with abandon. For her, disagreement meant ‘someone leaves’. So, when she had her own family and her own partner, she had a really difficult time with any sort of argument or disagreement. Because she just assumed it meant she was going to end up alone, that her partner was going to leave.

That brought out some very deep, very large and painful emotions that neither she nor her husband were prepared for. She described it as paralyzing fear. She was getting through her days but she was very overtaken with fear that the next argument could result in her being alone.

As we worked with this, she realized that she needed to find a way to have disagreements with her partner that did not result in her having such deep, overwhelming fear. And that meant she had to own what she was doing in her marriage.

She had to recognize that she was taking what happened in the past between her own parents, and making that her present and her own relationship with her husband. She had to recognize that she decided in advance, based on her past, that if she and her partner disagreed, he would leave and she would be alone. But that wasn’t the case.

And then, she had to learn that people have disagreements. People have arguments, and it doesn’t automatically mean that the relationship is doomed or that someone will leave or that she would be alone.

She was willing to put in the work and make those connections to acknowledge that her unresolved fear from her past experiences was trickling into her present. But that fear, it was real, it was strong, and it took very little in the form of any disagreement with her husband for that to surface. It was a very strong, very overwhelming emotion.

All right, next. Another sign that you might be living in the past is that you over-identify with it. You put a spotlight on it, and you often make everything in your current life come back to that part of your past. So, the way I most commonly see this play out is that you use your past to explain who you are now.

I will use myself as an example. In an earlier part of my life, it wouldn’t be long after I met you that I would essentially spill my dirt and broadcast that I came from a difficult home. It’s almost like a word on a T-shirt, or as a name badge, that was like, “Hey, my name is Carrie. I came from a messed-up family.” It was almost as if it was part of my introduction.

I allowed my upbringing to define me. It was all I was, and it was excessive. I’m sure it made me a real treat at parties, now that I think about it. And it wasn’t until I did the work and got clear on this, that I could see what I was doing. I wanted to make sure that anyone who knew me, or anyone who was going to be my friend, knew that I was broken.

Because that’s how I saw myself. I could not see myself as anything but a screwed-up kid from a crazy family that couldn’t get their act together. If I couldn’t handle something, whether it was school, work, or relationship, basically anything, it was because I came from this broken home. Admittedly, not the best way to make friends.

But now I can see it for what it is, and I realized I don’t need that tired story anymore. I’m just fine without that spotlight on it. And honestly, it feels so much lighter to live that way instead of constantly retelling that story.

Alright, so another sign you might be stuck in your past is if you’re still holding on to blame. And this could be in either direction. You could be blaming yourself for something that happened to you. Or you could be blaming someone else.

I had a client who was divorced. This was years ago, and he went through this divorce. But he still, this many years later, he still blames his ex-wife for his inability to have a fulfilling relationship now. He has had a number of relationships, but none of them have worked out. And he blames his ex-wife for all of them. And it makes things worse. He is constantly exhausted, both mentally and physically.

And it makes sense. When you spend so much of your time and energy holding a grudge against someone, it steals your energy. It steals your emotional authority. It takes you out of the present. It takes you away from being able to enjoy new relationships, because you’re too busy being angry at whoever you think wronged you. And this blame is most definitely intertwined with a victim mentality. It’s saying, “Of course I can’t have a new relationship, she ruined me.”

So, in the case of this client, he wasn’t taking ownership of his current situation. He wasn’t taking responsibility for his current relationships. And instead, he was blaming his ex-wife. But his current failed relationships are not his ex-wife’s responsibility. This one can be tricky, really tricky, all right?

Another sign you might be stuck in your past is if you find yourself constantly reliving and replaying memories in your brain. This gets you nowhere, and basically results in you re-experiencing that original pain over and over again, even if the experience is long over.

I have a client who met a man and she was interested in him. She made an effort to talk to him, and however it transpired, she walked away from the conversation convinced that he was not interested. And since that time, she has played and replayed and replayed that conversation in her head. And created all kinds of stories about how she is too awkward and comes across as too intimidating. And she just is not capable of talking to men; on and on and on.

In reality, we have absolutely no idea what this person was thinking about her. But through her rehashing of the story in her brain multiple times, she has created all kinds of stories about herself and about this man and about this interaction. So, this ruminating and replaying and rehashing can be totally exhausting. It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to relive a painful situation. And imagine doing that over and over again, even if that situation has long passed.

And what’s worse, is that when you’re so busy rehashing that conversation or that argument over and over, you miss out on new conversations. You miss out on opportunities to try again, with new friends or new partners. You straight up miss out.

Alright, one of the most challenging characteristics of being stuck in your past is that you often reject new opportunities, new ideas, or new concepts that might contrast with your past. This one comes up all the time, especially for my weight loss clients. And the way this plays out, is we’ll be talking through her plan. She will outline how she wants to eat. And then, together, we’ll brainstorm and think through a plan for her, and how her eating could look on a practical level.

And then she’ll say one of a few different things, “It’s never worked before. That’s not going to work for me. I’ve tried it. I always start out fine, and then I fall off the wagon,” or something to that effect. And whether it’s related to your diet, exercise, a difficult relationship, or something else, you might hear yourself responding by rejecting the opportunity to try something new. Because you’ve decided that based on your past experiences, it’s not worth it. You’ve decided prematurely that it’s not going to work, before you even start it.

This one can be really difficult, and really hold you back from growing and evolving. When you reject new opportunities, what you’re doing is choosing your past over the future, even if that past is hurting you.

Alright, and the last thing I want to point out is another way to see if you’re stuck in your past, it will come through in your words. So, I say this all the time and I truly believe it. As your coach, the only window I have into your brain is your words. Your words, that you share with me, are the best representation of your thoughts and your beliefs, both about yourself and the world around you.

So, I listen very carefully to your words, because I think there are clues in your sentences that allow me to understand what you believe to be true. And over time, there are a number of phrases that have come up repeatedly in my calls with clients that have suggested you might still be focused on your past. And maybe you might find yourself saying these things too.

Things like, “That’s how I am. That won’t work for me. I’ve tried that. I’m not someone who can…” fill in the blank. “I have always been this way. I am not good at running,” writing, parenting, whatever. Those are all examples of using your past to define you now. And while you may see these phrases, and believe in your core that they are true, I would simply ask you to notice they’re all your thoughts.

They are not stone-cold facts. They’re your interpretation of your future, based on your past experiences. But when you believe these sentences, and when you allow your past to creep into your present and future, what you’re essentially doing is stopping yourself before you even get started.

So, don’t define yourself by what you haven’t achieved yet. That is most definitely selling yourself short, and blocking yourself from the opportunity to grow and change. And the best way you can get a handle on this is by paying super close attention to the words that you choose. What comes out of your mouth comes into your life, and you get to choose that. Okay?

To review, we just went over a number of different signs that you might be stuck in your past. Things like, having a strong emotion that represents an unprocessed period from your past. Over-identifying or putting a spotlight on your past; I think of it as wearing it on a T-shirt. Holding on to blame or holding a grudge. Ruminating or replaying events from your past. Saying no to new opportunities that might contradict your past. And then finally, very simply, your words and how you choose to talk about yourself.

Okay, so now let’s talk about why we do this. As I have worked through this myself in my own life and gotten coached on holding on to my past, and then becoming a coach, and now helping other people through this, I wondered why. I wanted to know why is it that if holding on to our past is so painful and can be so destructive, why in the world do we do it? Why do we do something that hurts ourselves? It did not make any sense to me at all at first, but now I get it.

We hang on to our past because we get something from it, we get something. So, think about it. Most people do not hold on to thoughts or beliefs if they don’t get something out of it, right? And holding on to your past, your past beliefs, your old story, that’s no different. You get something out of the deal, even if it’s ultimately hurting you.

And if this sounds confusing to you, like it did to me, I got you. Alright, so let me explain. First, when you hold onto your past, you get certainty. We get stuck in our past because we like to be right. We like to know things; we like to know truth. And the past, while it’s over, it’s a fact. It’s fact.

Losing weight and then regaining it all back, if that happened to you in the past, that’s a fact. Your parents shouting when you were a kid, that is a fact. We use those past experiences because they are truth. And because they are certain to predict an uncertain future. Because that’s all we know. We know the past as it exists in our minds, but we don’t know the future.

Unless you have a superpower I am unaware of, your future is not determined, it is uncertain. And as humans, we just don’t like that. We like to know what’s coming next. So, we use our past experience, find patterns, and then assume that because of a previous outcome in a similar situation, that will be the future outcome too.

So, if you’ve had trouble with yo-yo dieting, and many of my clients have had this experience. Where they find something that works for a little while, like Weight Watchers or Noom or Whole 30 or name your diet, and then they stop and regain the weight. And if they do this repeatedly, they develop this pattern of losing and regaining. It becomes easy to use that past pattern of losing and regaining to determine their future attempts at weight loss.

That comes across when you tell me, “I’ve never been able to keep the weight off before.” That is using your past to determine your future. And it makes sense, based on your previous experience. You are making a conclusion that any future attempt at weight loss will be futile. But I would counter that by asking, does thinking that way really help you? And I would argue, no, it doesn’t.

Instead, it keeps you miserably comfortable at your current weight. And it can keep you from putting in a full effort at changing your relationship both with yourself and with food; it’s a trap.

Okay, so along those lines, in addition to certainty, when you hold on to your past you also get comfort. When you let go of the past, you step into the unknown. You’re letting go of certainty, and you’re letting go of something comfortable. Even if it’s making you miserable, in exchange for the unknown, you’re letting go of miserably comfortable. Admittedly, that can be really hard to do. It’s hard to let go of comfort, even if that comfort is making you miserable.

When I first wrestled with this concept, it totally made my head hurt. Then, I had to look inward and see what I was doing to myself. I stayed miserably comfortable in that space of being a girl from a sad, dysfunctional home. I didn’t like being that person, but it was comfortable. So, I stayed there. And I didn’t try very hard to shed that identity. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true.

Think of a friend you knew who always dated a guy that treated her poorly. Or the friend who constantly sabotages herself at work by taking on too much and getting stretched too thin. There is a reason these patterns repeat themselves, even if they hurt us. They repeat because they’re comfortable. It’s what we know.

And for me, that didn’t change until I finally got really, really tired of being miserable, at my own doing. When I realized that the discomfort of my status quo was more yucky to me than the discomfort of the unknown, I let it go. And I stepped into new unfamiliar territory. I stopped with that old story in exchange for creating a new one.

I’m so glad I did because I don’t feel broken anymore. I am not a messed-up, sad, broken kid anymore. But too often you choose long-term, miserable discomfort over the prospect of temporary, new discomfort, because it’s what you know.

So, think of it this way, you can choose to stay miserably comfortable, because it’s certain if you stay married to your past you know what you get. Even if you don’t like it, you get the same story. Or you decide to let that go and walk into the unknown, which is temporarily uncomfortable. But that could be followed by a new and different and potentially awesome experience that is so much better, fascinating.

Another reason that we hang on to our past is that it means holding on to our identity. So, you know I love to talk about identity. And here it’s just another space where identity matters a lot. When you hold onto your past, you’re holding on to your identity.

Meaning, as an example, you have the false benefit of being that person who always yo-yo diets. So, if and when you start a new diet, and in fact you lose and regain all that weight back, you have something to explain it. And so, this is when phrases like, “I’m just a yo-yo dieter. This is just how I am. I’ve never been able to stick with the diet,” those phrases creep up.

When you hold onto your past, you get to hold on to that identity. And it gives you an answer for when things don’t work out. It gives you an explanation. “Of course, I can’t lose the weight, I’m a yo-yo dieter.” By holding on to your past and then proving it over and over again in your present, you’ve reinforced that past identity.

But here’s the thing, you are not your past. You can let the past influence you, but it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to be who you are. But you have to be willing to let go of it and to stop over identifying with it, in exchange for a new identity that serves you so much better.

Alright, so another reason we hold on to our past is that our memories and our emotions are linked. We get strong emotion by holding on to our past. We remember days and events or periods of our lives that are tied to high emotion, and it can be hard to forget those.

I’ll use this as an example. I remember the day when I was in middle school, when I ran out of my home while my parents were arguing and it turned violent. I remember the sound of my mom lunging at my dad and my fear that I was going to be next. And I took off running; no shoes, no socks. I just ran until I got to where my sister was.

I do not remember the week before that. I don’t remember the day before that. And I don’t remember those other days, because those days weren’t as highly emotional as that one night was.

It can be very, very challenging to let go and not be stuck. And those memories have very high, very strong emotion. Our brains use much more energy to process negative emotion than they do positive emotion. It requires a lot more thinking and a lot more processing to get through a negative emotion than it does to process a positive one.

That leaves an imprint on your brain, and it’s hard to erase that. We link emotion and information, and when that emotion is super strong, it can be hard to let go. And that memory, that information, it stays with you.

Last, to put it very simply, sometimes we hold on to the past because that is the only remnant or memory of a person or circumstance that we have. When we hold on to those memories, even though they’re painful, you’re maintaining a connection. You’re maintaining a relationship, even if it’s a hurtful one.

My own coach once reminded me that even though I swear over and over again that I don’t have a relationship with my mom, in fact, I do. She pointed out that I have a very intense relationship with her, even though she is not at all in my life. And she helped me to realize that I was maintaining this very unhealthy relationship with her by hanging on to all these awful memories growing up around her.

My coach helped me to see that if I could raise my own level of awareness, and change the way I think about her and my past experiences with her, it would also mean letting go of a very tumultuous relationship that I was allowing to run my life. It would mean losing that connection, and I cannot tell you how powerful it was to make this association.

It meant recognizing and owning that these are nothing more than memories. And I needed to loosen my grip on those memories because they don’t serve me. So, to simplify, you could choose to stop repeating the past in your brain, and that may mean a change in how you view an important relationship. It may mean that you change the connection you have to a certain person, event, or life circumstance. And often that change is for the better. All right?

So, to summarize, there are a number of reasons we hold on to our past. And well, we just went over a bunch. The key take-home here is that we get something from it. By holding on to your past, you get certainty and comfort, even if that comfort is making you miserable. You get to maintain your identity, you get strong emotion and memory, and you get a maintained connection to something or someone.

Alright, so now that we’ve talked through this, let’s talk about how you can start to let go of your past. I’ll be the first to admit, this is way more than a single, short podcast episode. Okay? There are entire books on this very topic. And it is huge, it is complex. But at the end of it, the key to letting go of your past is in your thoughts. You knew I was going there. Of course, I am.

I want to offer something to you. And while it may sound very obvious for some of you, it might not be, so I want to pick this apart a little. You cannot experience pain from your past. Okay? Really think about that for a minute. The past is over; it’s done, it’s not here now. What happened to you in your past is done.

So, the pain you’re experiencing today, that pain is from the pain you’re creating now with your thoughts. Let me explain this, and I’ll use my own example. When I have painful thoughts now, about that awful night in middle school when I ran out of my house, that’s a new thought about something that happened a long, honking time ago. I’m creating new pain from my past, from something that is long gone.

And at first, I was not keen on this. I did not like this idea, at all. I had this thing that happened to me, so of course it should be painful now. But it doesn’t have to be. What your mom or your partner or your in-laws or your sister did to you in the past, can only affect you now if you allow it.

If you feel sad or you feel wronged or if you can’t let go of something from the past, recognize that it’s because of how you’re thinking about it now, today. It’s not because of what happened to you in the past, but instead it’s how you’re currently thinking about what happened to you in the past. Do you see that difference? It’s so important to understand. And honestly, it’s a great thing to understand, and here’s why.

When you are ready and willing to accept that you are causing yourself pain by how you’re thinking about your past, it’s then that you can work to change it. You do not have control over people, you have no control over what people did to you, you have no control over your past; remember, it’s done. The past now just exists as a story in your brain, nothing more. And that story is your memorized version of your past.

But you can let it go. Because where you do have control, is your thoughts. You can take your emotional authority back from whatever circumstance or whatever person had it previously. The person who hurt you 10 years ago, does not have emotional control over you anymore, unless you allow it.

Do not let that person hurt you over and over again, in your brain. That person may be out of your life entirely, but if you allow yourself to hold on to those painful memories, that person can be repeatedly hurting you with the thoughts you’re creating about them.

I want you to recognize that you have the power and the capacity to take it back. You get to view your life and the things that happened to you, in whatever way you choose. You can take what you want from your past and leave the rest of it. And that’s really great news, because you get to choose how to think about it. What are you focusing on, when you think about your past? Remember, what you focus on, you create more of.

So, are you focusing on the negative and painful things that happened to you, which, in turn, is causing you more pain? Or are you actively practicing looking at the joyful parts of your past, which, in turn, brings you joy? Where are you focusing your energy?

Alright, so let me be clear. This is not to say you should be thinking yourself out and pretending that everything is great and that you have the best childhood ever, or your first partner was awesome, when none of this is true. I am not asking you to fake it or look on the bright side of things and think of cotton candy and rainbows here, okay?

Instead, I’m asking you to get really clear on the story you’re telling yourself. And ask if repeating your past in the way you are currently, is one kind and two helpful? If hanging onto your past is neither kind nor helpful, recognize that you have 100% authority to change it. And you do that by owning your past and making peace with it.

This is not about blaming or pointing fingers or being the victim in your story. Instead, you own that this thing happened to you and you accept it. You do not have to love it. There’s a big difference between accepting and liking something. I’m simply asking you to accept that your past happened to you.

And this is essential, I want you to understand, you are not responsible for what other people do to you. You are not responsible for that. But you are responsible for how you think and feel about it. Really think about that for a minute. You’re not responsible for what other people do to you. But you are responsible for how you think and feel about it. And simply recognizing that that is huge.

Then from there, you choose to give up the things you gain by holding onto your past. You stop bringing it up every chance you get. You stop blaming your current problems on what happened to you 20 years ago. You stop predicting your future based on your past. You say yes to new opportunities and thoughts that might result in a new and different outcome than what you’ve known before. You take a risk.

And I know that’s a tall order, but again, this does not happen overnight. This happens with time and intentionality. But it means giving up your story. It means that you don’t keep rehashing the same story about your upbringing in order to keep that piece of your past alive. You stop identifying as the one who was left by her first husband. You give up that comfort.

You shed miserable discomfort and walk into a new type of discomfort, and that discomfort is uncertainty. You change the words you use when you talk about yourself, and you’re very intentional about the words you choose when you explain something that didn’t go the way you wanted. You give up miserable comfort.

But here’s the thing, on the other side of that new discomfort, there’s peace, there’s opportunity. There’s a new identity waiting, an identity that could be so much better than being the sad girl from a broken home. There’s a new beginning. Remember, your stories shape you, but they do not define you. A bad experience or a bad relationship, that is not who you are.

And when you’re willing to let go of those stories, you’re making room for the present and the future, and all of the cool stories to come. And I hope for you, that you want your future more than you want your past. And you do this by choosing really great thoughts that create that future. It’s practicing your thinking, always. It always comes back to your thoughts. All right?

I know this is big, this is thick, it’s heavy. But I wanted to share this today, because if you’re having a hard time moving forward because you can’t move beyond your past, there is something you can do about it. You have everything you need to make that change; you have your brain, you have your thoughts, you have that power. It takes work, it takes practice, it takes a willingness to see your past differently.

But it is so absolutely worth it, so worth it. And if you’re holding onto your past and you’d like to move forward, let’s talk. When you coach with me, I will not let you keep hurting yourself with the story of your past. Instead, we pick and choose the parts of your past that serve you. And we leave the rest as we turn forward and we create new amazing stories for you in its place. Check out my website.

Send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact and let’s get going. All right? So, thank you again for hanging out with me and I will catch you again next week.

If you like what you’ve been hearing, please review the show. I would love to get your feedback and ideas. Your suggestions have inspired episodes and will help me make the show better for you. And share this podcast with a friend, text a show link, share a screenshot, or post a link to the show on your social media. Be sure to tag me @CarrieHollandMD on either Instagram or Facebook, so I can follow along and engage with you.

This is how we get the word out to other working moms who want to feel strong, inside and out. If you know someone who wants to feel better or eat and move differently but she is too tired or too busy, it is time to change things up. And you know, making that change starts with how you think. And that is what we do here on the Strong as a Working Mom podcast. I’ll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to Strong as a Working Mom. If you want more information on how to eat, move, and think, so you can live in the body you want, with the mind to match, visit me at CarrieHollandMD.com.