Goals

• Get in touch with your past self and hone in on psychological wounds
• Allow yourself to re-experience negative situations
• Start the healing process by giving yourself what you would have needed back then, and over time learn to become your own best friend

!!Important Disclaimer!!

I'm not a licensed therapist, actually, I don't have any sort of education or credibility when it comes to dealing with trauma. So take all of this with a heavy grain of salt. I'm simply sharing my personal experiences and one lesson/exercise from my own therapy that turned out to be quintessential when coping with my own past. It might be helpful for some of you. The term trauma is used very liberally, and if you're dealing with some proper, heavy trauma, I highly recommend seeking professional help.

Introduction

Make no mistake, we'll deal with some heavy shit today. Usually, my intros consist of corny jokes and cringy, outdated pop culture references that might only be funny to me. This time around, I couldn't think of any that would fit and not feel totally out of place. So let's jump right in with some sincerity. All of us have experienced some form of trauma in our past. And depending on our personal makeup, we are able to shrug it off, are immediately scarred for life (if you're dealing with this type of soul-crushing trauma, my advice won't be for you), or something in between. For the latter, we might dwell on it from time to time and we'd like to forget it ever happened. This type of trauma isn't ripping us apart internally, but there's a general heaviness associated with these memories. This is normal, and you certainly don't need to be ashamed. I'm a 30-year-old grown-up man - beard, muscles, everything - who's still struggling in that department, and to a certain degree, I always will, like almost everyone else, so what?

Bad memories and experiences are inevitable. To a certain degree, they are necessary to becoming a functional adult. But every now and then, they break something deep within us, manifesting in irrational fears, recurring behavioral patterns, negative self-talk, and other effects that limit us later in life. Maybe you've been bullied in Kindergarten, which as a kid confirmed your suspicions that there is something wrong with you, and you believe it to this day. A close friend of yours might have suddenly moved - or even worse - passed away, and since then you can't shake the feeling that all good things will eventually be taken from you, so why even try? Due to unfortunate circumstances, you might have had to take over a lot of responsibilities in your family very early on, which resurfaced as the need to control your partners to an unhealthy degree later in life. Note that things are almost never as clear-cut, and you'll hardly ever find 1:1 connections between a negative memory, and some of your personal issues. Your mind is messy and complex. But the main message remains true: Something bad happened, and it still affects you in a negative way, whatever that might be. So let's do our best to fix it!

Step 1: Identify past trauma

You can go about this in two ways:

• Can you think of any issues or problem areas in your life? Some tendencies and characteristics of yours that are holding you back? Low self-esteem, aversion against authority, fear of abandonment, inability to deal with loneliness, fear of responsibility, FOMO, general anxiety, problems with self-acceptance, recurring negative patterns in friendships and relationships, chasing one high after the other, the list goes on and on. If it's something that's bothering you, it's important and you should address it, no matter how insignificant it might seem to the outside world. Having identified some topics, can you think of potential scenarios where they originated? And just as helpful: related scenarios in which these problems became a driving - or paralyzing - factor. No matter how distant/recent.
• Start with your earliest memories, and revisit your entire life. Go over your whole timeline. Which memories come to mind? Any periods or events that are weighing you down?

This doesn't need to be systematic in any way. Can't fall asleep? Think about those questions. Feeling bored on a lazy Sunday afternoon? Spend some time revisiting your childhood, don't force yourself to uncover any trauma, just be curious.

If you don't want to confront these situations alone, please consult a professional like a psychotherapist. And even if you feel strong enough to do so, therapy remains one of the things I recommend to everyone I meet. There's a lot you can do on your own, but a trained professional will help you to get further, faster.

Step 2: Feel the pain

All aboard the trauma time machine! Doesn't sound like a fun ride? Yeah, it's gonna be downright horrible, you've been warned.

Steps 1-3 aren't done in one sitting. Spread them out over a couple of months, don't rush it. Once you have re-familiarized yourself with some important events from the past, and feel ready to dive deeper, revisit them in more detail, from your own perspective. Go back to that setting. Who was there, what did it look like, smell like, feel like? Most importantly, what was going through your head? Let it affect you, don't be afraid to get emotional. Focus on taking it all in, accept the emotions as they come up, don't judge.

Step 3: Be there for yourself

The final step is - as usual - the most crucial one. This is where we'll do something all sci-fi time-traveling stories have urged us not to do: changing the past! Not in the literal sense, but you'll change your own narrative, which is the next best thing. Also, it avoids all of those messy grandfather paradoxes. However, if you feel the need to kill your grandfather when revisiting your past, this self-help technique probably won't do the trick and you should seek proper, professional help.

Similar to step 2, immerse yourself in a traumatic experience, in the first person. In many of these situations, you will have been vulnerable, perceived yourself as helpless, maybe even overwhelmed and paralyzed. But there is one big difference to when this scenario originally unfolded: You are no longer helpless and overwhelmed, because now there's two of you, and you are going to be your own best friend, supporting and loving yourself unconditionally, giving yourself exactly what you needed in this situation. Did you experience grief over the loss of a loved one that goes beyond all description? Be there for yourself, listen, take the pain seriously, and when the time is ready, help yourself to move on. Another less dramatic example: You are standing in front of the classroom, extremely nervous, about to give a presentation. But even before you begin, some of your "friends" start laughing, and to no surprise, you end up stumbling over every other word, causing the rest of the class to make fun of you for weeks to come. But in this alternate reality, you've got your back. You won't change the fact that you were nervous, or that your presentation was admittedly an incoherent mess. Sometimes things don't go as planned, which is ok. And that's exactly what you'll tell yourself this time around. And all those people that made fun of you? Well, in retrospect, they came up with some high-quality roasts...

This behavior will over time become habitual, and you will begin to apply it in your day-to-day life. Had a crappy meeting? Instead of just revisiting it late at night, full of regrets and shame, you'll pick yourself up, being the supportive mentor you would have needed in that situation. It will become something like second nature to you. The goal is to eventually apply this mindset while something shitty is going down. You know you're capable, you won't be overwhelmed, and can set the correct course of action. Only that from now on, you won't need a time machine to turn the situation around, you'll just do it right then and there.

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