There are times when I remember past events and linger over them. Some are pleasant; many are not. I might remember something and speculate how things might have been different if I had acted otherwise, but I try to avoid reminding myself that if I hadn’t bought a bad car on a low deposit in 1985 I might have been able to pay cash for my house twenty years later.
If something bad or embarrassing happened a long time ago, part or even all of the memory might be suppressed if it is too awful to recall clearly in safety. This may be for the best, but it is human nature to want to know what it is that some part of the mind won’t let the conscious mind remember. This can be immensely frustrating, feeling strongly without knowing what you are feeling strongly about.
Expressing emotion about what has been can be therapeutic or traumatic. It varies from person to person, and in my experience it is often difficult to predict which it will be. I had a friend who was chronically unhappy for some years, and I put a lot of time and effort into trying to make her feel better. This consisted mainly of listening to her woes at frequent intervals, which I did willingly because I loved her and enjoyed her company. I believed initially that it would be cathartic and beneficial to her, but it became evident that it was neither. For some years she rusted my shoulder with her tears, but her melancholy did not flow away with them. The memories kept intruding on us like Banquo’s ghost, and it was only later, after we had parted ways, that she began to look ahead instead of wallowing in past misery. Now, according to a mutual friend, she’s confident, cheerful and almost happy. I’d rather not think how much I held her back by being too sympathetic and letting her drink the poisonous wine of these memories until she made them her mental default setting.
Fifteen years later, there is another another woman close to me who has had an unhappy past life, having suffered significant abuse, mainly emotional and psychological. Her idealistic philanthropy had seen her giving too much to too many, from most of whom she received neither thanks nor acknowledgment I’m still a sympathetic listener, but I’m much more assertive now, and when I give her advice when she needs it, and I correct her when I think she is in error. I wouldn’t describe her as happy, but she is a great deal less unhappy than she was about a year ago when we first got close. She’s stopped smoking, and set goals for herself.
On the basis of my experience, I favour the expression of emotion about past events, but only as far as the results are positive. If the expression of emotion leads to endless revisiting of unpleasantness, it becomes self-indulgent and addictive, and it is time to try something else.
When too much emotion is tied up in past events, there is a risk of neglecting the present. No amount of revisiting, reappraising, or speculating about how things might have been different will change the past. It will still have happened and the only thing we have the power to change is our perception of it.
