Dropping Emotional Baggage

Many people carry emotional wounds from past experiences. This may be due to a once-off event, or ongoing trauma. I also have experiences that I used to carry around with me and wherever I went, these happenings were somewhere in the background of my mind, an integral part of me. The experiences affected who I now am - etched into history, never to be forgotten - but the hold they had over me has lost its power. Only recently did I say to myself, yes, those events happened to me, but they are past and they don't define me.

Think of it this way perhaps: As a child you attended school and learnt much and now, as an adult, you look back on your school years and remember past teachers and friends, but you know it's all past. Assuming you had a good school life, you probably don't pay much mind to how each teacher affected your ongoing development and you are able to separate your childhood from where you are now. This in effect is leaving the past behind. Some people though lived through trauma, be this in a childhood family home, or in a classroom, or elsewhere, and the trauma marks their identity with an indelible, subconscious cloud of secrecy and shame. Traumatic events that happened to a person need to be separated out and they mustn't form part of the person's identity.

Leaving emotional wounds behind is a process that may take a long time and I leaned on God who helped me to do this - I don't know how I would have otherwise. People and the world may hurt us, even people we thought we could trust with our lives, and the only one we can trust implicitly is God.