YOUR SHITTY PAST? YEAH, SHUT UP ABOUT IT

I know you didn’t ask, but here is my advice on your shitty past: Shut the hell up about it.

No, really. Not only is it boring for everyone around you, but it is actively diminishing your present self. It’s taking you DOWN, man.

Oh, sure, talk it out when it’s fresh, or when you finally remember, or when you feel like you finally can. Deep pain comes from trauma - that’s scientific fact - which is why you absolutely need to spend time figuring it out.

So talk. Talk and talk and talk. To therapists, to friends, to your mother, your brother, strangers on the train, store clerks, anyone who will listen, really. Analyze yourself and the other parties to death. Get sympathy and advice and input from everyone.  Drink too much. Eat too many cupcakes. Get it all out.

But after all that? Seriously: Shut. Up.

I get it. The deep satisfaction of having our pain heard and validated is powerful; it’s an addictive balm to our wounded Self.  We keep grasping at that soothing high – and we keep on talking.

The “high” is real, by the way.  Talking about ourselves delivers a hit of dopamine so powerful it keeps us literally gasping for more. A recent neuroscience study from Harvard University found that people were actually willing to PAY for the opportunity to talk about themselves.  Holy-wow, right?

Like all addictions though, the upside is short and the consequences long. The umpteenth telling of your mistreatment delivers immediate, short lived satisfaction on the one hand but reinforces weakness, absolves responsibility, and keeps you treading stagnant water on the other.

We talk about where we live. Hear yourself. That narcissistic boyfriend, abusive boss, cruel parent, selfish friend …? Them.  After you’ve gotten it out a few times, seriously: Stop talking about them. It’s as if you enjoy their company and the way they make you feel like a diminished version of yourself.

In continually going back to the scene of the proverbial crime, we resuscitate everything about the experience. We give the past mouth-to-mouth, literally, with our words, and in that moment the experience is as emotionally alive and real as when it originally happened. And like so much garbage washed up at the shore of your life, all the accompanying feelings of shame, weakness, powerlessness…they’re all back!

Ugh. It’s exhausting, really. Old garbage clutters the beauty of the present.

Endlessly replaying the details of our crummy past is like an emotional stutter; we’re stuck in our own emotional goo.

The irony is that we talk and talk about our experiences because we think it will free us from them. Instead, all that talk puts us on autopilot, predisposing us to reach the same conclusions more often – not less. As anyone who’s ever met a flash-card knows, concepts and ideas only become more ingrained through repetition.  

”Neuroscience for Dummies”: When we have a thought, one synapse in our brain shoots a chemical across a big, old empty space to connect with another synapse, building a kind of chemical bridge for similar ideas to move as easily as possible from one synapse to another. Every time you repeat a thought - like that your life would be infinitely better except for the hundred small abuses that comprised your lousy childhood, the details of which you’re about to endlessly share with me yet again, thank God - the pair of synapses associated with that thought grow closer together. The bridge shrinks to decrease the distance thoughts have to travel. Of all possible outcomes, the conclusion your mind draws will be the one that has the shortest distance to travel.

Beliefs are physical. A thought held long enough and repeated often enough becomes a belief. The belief becomes biology.

- Marilyn Van Derbur

In practice, this means our brain is constantly rewiring its own circuitry – physically changing itself – to make it as easy as possible for ideas to trigger. We are literally sculpting our brains with our thoughts!!

In our “real” lives, the more often we’ve been to a place, the easier it is to get there – so much so we can do it on autopilot, not even consciously registering how we moved from one place to another. Our minds are similar. The more we think (and say) a thing, the shorter the distance between the firing synapses in our brain and the sooner we can arrive at an already foregone conclusion.

Like attracts like. This is true for people, and it’s true for ideas as well. If neuroscience says that having a thought once makes it easier for us to have that thought again, what happens when we multiply a disempowering thought, for example, over a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand times?  You’ve predisposed yourself: negative thoughts rewire your brain for negativity.

Still feeling ashamed or victimized in your life because of - whatever? Keep talking about it. You’ll get more of that.

If that doesn’t make you want to change your mind, I don’t know what will. It’s profound in its simplicity, isn’t it? Take responsibility for your thoughts and you take responsibility for your life. Change your mind and the world miraculously changes with – and for - you.

Neuroscience offers us excellent news in this!! Because your brain is essentially play-doh, you can re-build it, and the thoughts will come: positive thoughts rewire your brain for positivity.

I am not suggesting a denial of reality or of your trauma here, nor am I advocating a practice of relentless (and ridiculous) positive-thinking self-talk. What I am suggesting is that we all learn to accept and live with the way things were - and are - even as we wish they were different.  And then we need to stop talking about it, already.

That’s big, right there.

      Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different.      

-Oprah Winfrey

By accepting the reality of our past, owning our negative thoughts and actively choosing different thoughts and different conclusions, we can remake ourselves. Literally! At a cellular level! The more we can reframe our past in a positive light, the shorter the distance becomes between good, empowering thoughts associated with it.

Churchill famously said “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” There’s a reason he did not say “When you’re going through hell, treat it like a dear friend and pop by to catch up as often as possible.” Your past trauma was hell - but for the love of all that is Holy, KEEP GOING. Decamp, already!

Go ahead: Live the Frozen Disney dream and let what was, GO. When you hear yourself talking about your abusive ex/absentee father/alcoholic mother/ in that same old way for the seven-hundreth time, just stop. Mid-sentence! Take a breath and start again with a new and different thought, new and different words. Build a new bridge for your synapses to cross.

Would they be cheered by their recovery, or marked for life by their trauma?

- Dan Wells, RUINS

It’s true our brains are pliable.  It’s also true we all want to live lives as happy and as “in our power,” as we can. So it goes that we owe it to ourselves to ensure our thoughts about our past – and our present - are the best possible. Stop giving your life away to the past. History is not destiny, and all that: Own your reality and your trauma and then reframe it. Trade in that old, boring, negative perspective for one more philosophical, more about growth and personal evolution.  Live in this moment, and stop talking about that one. Have life stories that inspire curiosity, possibility, creativity and… joy.

 I promise people will listen all day long.