Writing things down is one of the most effective ways to help with past painful events. Try journaling about your past and present in order to learn more about how you are impacted by painful memories. Putting such experiences in narrative form can give you some degree of control over how you see these experiences as being important to your life. It can also allow you to tap into to emotions related to such memories that might be difficult to access otherwise.  Sit down one day and simply write about any experiences that come to mind, in as much detail as possible. This can help you incorporate the effects of painful memories for two reasons. First, it can allow you to see connections between situations in your life and your emotions. Second, writing can act as a sort of cathartic experience whereby you can feel a sense of creative freedom that might help you avoid feeling pulled down by prior life events. If you struggle with this, start small by simply writing about what happened to you throughout the day. If you feel any urge to connect what happened to anything that happened to you in your past, allow those connections to be made without forcing your writing to go in one particular direction as opposed to another. In order to help you get over painful memories, try to make new, better memories and form new habits. Painful memories can consume you if you spend too much time alone and ignore your own intrinsic desire for relationships with other people. Surround yourself with people and activities that bring you joy. Humans are innately social creatures, and so any sense of pleasure or joy will very likely involve interpersonal relationships with other people, especially those involving touch or other forms of intimacy. This doesn’t mean you should just hang out with anyone. It will likely take some degree of effort on your part to figure out what really brings you joy. But once you find an activity or group of people that do so, try to restructure your daily life in order to maximize the time you spend in such situations. Getting stuck in a normal routine can give you too much time to think about the past. Try to experiment with your environment and social groups in order to mix up your routine every other day or so. This is especially true if you sense a lack of pleasure in your daily life. If you notice yourself becoming noticeably preoccupied with painful memories from the past, it might be necessary to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and put yourself in environments you’ve never been in before.  If you persistently feel isolated from others and unable to meet people who support you, it might be necessary to experiment by interacting with entirely new people in situations you wouldn’t typically be. This can lead you to meet the right type of people who might be able to support you in the ways that you need. This will also hopefully help you become less preoccupied with the past by giving you more interesting activities and people to focus on in the present. Try taking a class on mixed martial arts or yoga. You could even simply go on a walk in the park. The key here is simply to put yourself in situations in which you would not typically find yourself, or around people you would not typically hang out with. Painful memories can become part of a psychological feedback loop that become part of your everyday routine and habits otherwise.
اكتب يومياتك. ابتكر عادات مرحة ومبهجة. أضف تغييرات إلى نظامك اليومي.