Sometimes you look in the mirror and the person you’re really angry at isn’t today’s you it’s the older versions of you walking in the background of that reflection.
“Why did I become like this?” you think.
“Why do I react like this, why do I get triggered so easily, why do I break so fast?”
And your mind starts a quick find the criminal scan: Your childhood, your family, old relationships, betrayals, being cheated on, money struggles, nights you cried alone…
Without even realizing, you’re doing this: You’re trying to love your current self while secretly hating your own past.
But there’s a hard and freeing truth you need to hear: If you want to love who you are today, you can’t declare war on the version of you that got you here.
1. Who you are now is built by the survival mode you once lived in
In psychology, there’s something called survival mode.
Your mind, your emotions, and your body completely focus on one thing: survival, remaining whole.
* If nobody actually listened to you when you were a child, today you could almost misunderstand every conversation you have.
* If you were always criticized, today you might reject every compliment and think, Don’t exaggerate.
* If you were left repeatedly, today even when someone treats you well, a part of you is already getting the exit ready for them.
They’re not flaws. They are the only strategies your mind had at that time.
That version of you the one you now look down on was actually saying:
“If no one else takes care of me, I’ll take care of myself like this.”
Their shields were awkward, halfway, some instances even self-sabotaging…
But during that period, they were the most you could do.
What supported your survival yesterday, maybe is now choking you.
It doesn’t mean it was wrong at that time.
It only means it’s time for a new one.
It doesn’t occur to you that you are updating your phone’s software when you are always carrying old versions in your mind. And, surprisingly, you still blame yourself for the errors.
2. Philosophy side: If you discard your past, what do you have when you say me?
Philosophers have been pondering this question for a very long time:
Who am I?
Am I just what I am right now?
Or am I the sum of all my past?
If you detest your past, you are essentially tearing apart the link that holds your I together.
Nietzsche has a term for this: amor fati loving your fate.
It doesn’t imply, “Everything was great, pain, come on!”
It indicates:
“I see the things that happened to me as events that could not have turned out differently. Who I am today, is not only a result of me fighting against those experiences, it’s actually also because of them.”
This is not a matter of glorifying your trauma.
No need to pretend by saying “I’m glad it hurt.”
But the truth is you have to recognize this:
Thinking that your past is something totally foreign to you, you are letting your present self just drift somewhere between the clouds.
Consider a book.
The story in the first three chapters has been torn out of the book, chapter 4 is still there…
However, it seems very off, unconnected, superficial.
When you hate your early chapters, at the same time, you don’t recognize the depth of the chapter you’re living in.
3. From the perspective of psychology: Endlessly asking “why were you like that?” causes retraumatization
Moreover, there is the side of the nervous system.
The body doesn’t recognize past and now as separate things as the mind does.
Thus, if you constantly revisit your memory and punish yourself by saying:
“Why did I let that happen?”
“How could I stay that long?”
“How was I that naive?”
You are essentially communicating the following to your nervous system:
“We are still in danger.
The time of occurrence is still here.”
What comes after this?
*Chronic anxiety
*Sleep problems
*Constant hyper-vigilance
*Difficulty trusting people
*The constant expectation of “something bad is going to happen”
One of the very first steps towards trauma healing is that you should be able to talk to your past self like this:
“Based on what you knew at that time, the strength you had at that time,
you could not have done it better.”
If you do not give yourself even that sentence, then loving yourself at the present time must be really difficult.
Because deep down, the stigma is still there:
”I am the kind of person who always makes the wrong choices.”
And it is extremely difficult to create a life you dream of, with your secret self-hate being the foundation of your personality.
4. There is a point between “I wish it never happened” and “I’m glad it happened” where the reality is simply “It happened.”
Most people tend to consider their past only in the following extremes:
“I wish it had never happened.”
“I’m thankful, it made me a better person.”
Sometimes, both can feel as if they are too much to bear.
Here is a third line that you can resort to:
“It happened.”
No exaggeration.
No blaming.
Just… Acceptance.
“Yes, I was hurt.”
“Yes, I felt lonely.”
“Yes, I made mistakes.”
And then:
“And I’m still alive. I’m growing. I’m evolving.”
This phrase soothes the incessant inner trial.
Because going over and over and assigning new sentences to your past every day is what takes away your power from the life you want to live now.
If you cease from dramatizing everything with if only and thank God it happened, and you get to:
“It happened, and today I have a different choice,” you begin to create room within.
That is when love for the self that is present quietly takes root.
5. You cannot fabricate a new self when you are still mistreating your old one
Without being aware of it, you may be engaging in this little game with yourself:
One of your hands says:
“I want to love myself. I want to have healthier relationships. I want to live a more balanced life.”
The other hand, which represents your mind’s privacy, keeps uttering the same thing over and over:
“I was so dumb.”
“How on earth could I be that blind?”
“I totally caused that situation myself.”
“It was all my fault.”
So what is the result?
You are engaged in a building project, and daily you descend to the foundation where you begin to assault it with your foot.
Put yourself in the place of a building.
Perhaps there really were some mistakes when the foundation was laid.
However, now you are on the 10th floor, and shouting at the concrete beneath doesn’t bring about a fix by magic.
It merely is adding more tension to the frame.
You have to admit at some point:
“That’s the foundation I was able to build with the resources I had at that time. Today I get to decide what goes on top of it.”
The moment you cease the assault on your old self, your current self will have the opportunity to inhale.
You are no longer using your past as a weapon against yourself, rather, you are holding it as knowledge.
6. A tiny practice: a 3 sentence peace treaty with your past self
This is a short but impactful exercise.
Put your phone notes app to work or take a piece of paper.
Picture a past you sending an SOS to current you maybe at 10, 18, 25… You will sense which age is coming up.
Write back from today’s you only three sentences:
1. “Back then, with what you knew, you did your best.”
2. “Today I know more, and I can make better choices for both of us.”
3. “I am not going to insult or shame you anymore. I am taking you with me.”
That’s the whole thing.
Don’t lessen the value of it.
The mind does not consider written words as just words.
This is like a letter of internal amnesty that is hung up on the wall of your inner courtroom.
You are not wiping the past out.
You are changing your tone when speaking with the one who experienced it.
7. Loving who you are now is not about polishing your past it’s about changing its meaning
No one is saying that to you,
“There were no flaws, just be thankful.”
Honestly, some things were downright terrible.
Some people that came in your life and did only bad things.
There were some nights that seemed to go on forever.
Not accepting that is not spirituality, it’s betraying yourself.
Still, you can decide to take this option:
*You can think that your past has broken you,
* Or you can think that it made you wake up.
The difference is massive.
The first one makes you inactive:
“I am broken. This is just my nature now.”
The second one returns to you the power:
“Surely, this is what has happened. And it is I who decides what to do with it.”
To love the person you are now, you need to quit hating the journey that lead to you.
Because every bit of awareness, sensitivity, intuition, your ability to set boundaries, your compassion, your profundity all of that was coming through the very experiences you are trying so hard to deny.
You can still say to yourself:
“Whatever they did, they did. But I am the one who gets to decide what happens next.”
That’s when your past becomes not your jail but the place full of knowledge. And hence, you finally get the opportunity to come face to face with, comprehend, and actually love the person you are right now.