Don’t Forget Your Personal History
One cannot help but notice that there seems to be a real sense at the moment that people want to forget the past. Indeed, there seems to be a desire to not only try to forget the past, but also to apply the values of today on yesterday.
I have often told both clients and students that it is impossible to judge history with the standards of today. However, without history, we would not be where we are today. It is essential that we acknowledge the past, but we do not have to live in it.
The same is true for clients. So often, they will come to my office in the hope that they can forget events and people which were a part of their personal history which now cause a certain degree of distress and pain. This of course is not possible to do.
It is essential to realise that history is not made up of only victories, but rather it is made up of events, good and bad, positive and negative and even times when what started one way ends the other. So it is not about forgetting your personal history, it is about learning from it in order to become the person you most want to be today.
