Estimated Reading Time: 10 MinutesHow to Heal Yourself & Let Go of the Past in 5 Powerful Ways

Maybe you’ve tried to move on. But deep down, you know it’s still running the show from your subconscious.

This post is your wake-up call. Five brutally honest, no-fluff ways to let go of the past—and finally stop dragging it into your future.

Blame It on Primal Instincts

Here’s the inconvenient truth: your brain isn’t built to make you happy. It’s built to keep you alive. And the way it does that?

By obsessively cataloguing every threat, every insult, every moment of pain like it’s a war journal.

This isn’t just some pop-psych theory either. Neuroscientists have confirmed that your brain is far more likely to remember negative experiences than positive ones.

It’s called negative bias—and it’s why letting go of the past feels like wrestling a ghost that refuses to leave. Stanford psychology professor Laura Carstensen explains it best:

“It’s more important for people, for survival, to notice the lion in the bush than it is to notice the beautiful flower that’s growing on the other side of the way.”

In other words, your brain was wired to keep you safe, not sane. That prehistoric survival mode?

Still running in the background like a buggy app. It fixates on emotional lions—betrayals, heartbreak, trauma—because once upon a time, noticing danger kept us alive.

The problem? You’re not in the jungle anymore. You’re in traffic, in meetings, in memories. And your brain still reacts like it’s fight-or-flight time.

So, before you beat yourself up for not being able to “just move on,” remember this: your brain isn’t broken. It’s just outdated software. Learning to let go of the past means upgrading that survival script.

How You Got Stuck in the Past

Most people don’t even realize they’re stuck. You’re not crying over the past every day. You’re functioning, working, and smiling for Instagram.

But under the surface, something’s off—and your emotional operating system is still glitching. One major red flag? You feel numb.

You’re not angry, you’re not sad—you just… feel nothing. As a kid, if expressing your pain wasn’t safe, you probably learned to shut it down.

Emotional numbing was a survival hack. But now? It’s a prison. Because when you numb the bad stuff, you numb the good stuff too.

Love, joy, and creativity—they all get muted. You’re surviving, not living.

Then there’s the second sign: you keep running the same emotional script on repeat. New people, same pain. Different job, same self-doubt.

You’re reacting to the present with the pain from the past—and half the time, you don’t even realize it.

Research published in Child Development, the flagship journal of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), found that the type of emotional support you received in your first three years of life can shape the next 30.

That’s how deep the roots go.

Your childhood wired you with beliefs about love, safety, and self-worth. If those early messages said, “You’re not enough” or “People will leave,” that’s the blueprint you follow—whether it serves you or not.

But here’s the good news: you’re not locked in. Nor are you stuck with the script or the compass you were handed.

You can rewire. You can release. You can finally let go of the past—without pretending it never happened.

Here are 5 powerful ways to do exactly that.

1. Own Your Mess: Stop Playing the Victim Olympics

Let’s get one thing straight: you’re not responsible for what happened to you. But you are 100% responsible for what you do with it.

Yeah, that breakup in 2013 sucked. Your parents were emotionally unavailable. You didn’t get the job. And yes, that was unfair.

But if you’re still using those events as your reason for being emotionally unavailable, passive-aggressive, or perpetually cynical—congrats, you’ve signed up for the Victim Olympics.

Take Mark, one of my clients. He came to therapy still tangled up in a breakup from high school like it happened yesterday.

Over a decade later, he’s treating every woman like a walking red flag and wondering why nothing works out. He wasn’t healing. He was hoarding emotional baggage like it was some kind of twisted vintage collection.

When you wear your suffering like a badge of honor, you prevent yourself from letting go of the past.

Every time you replay the same emotional story, your brain gives you a little hit of dopamine—the same chemical involved in addiction. It feels good to blame someone. It feels familiar to stay hurt.

Here’s the deal: you can’t heal what you won’t take responsibility for. But the moment you say, “This is mine to deal with,” the game changes.

You’re no longer at the mercy of what happened. It’s about saying:

“Yes, this happened. And no, it doesn’t get to define me anymore.”

So, if you want to truly let go of the past, own the mess. All of it. Not to guilt-trip yourself—but to reclaim your power.

Because there’s nothing more powerful than someone who’s done playing the victim and decided to rewrite the ending.

2. Say Goodbye (Properly): Closure Isn’t a Text Message

We all have that one ghost lingering in our mental attic—an ex, a failed dream, or a betrayal we rewatch like a bad Netflix drama.

Most people try to get closure the wrong way: through awkward texts, long-winded DMs, or late-night stalking disguised as “research.” But real closure doesn’t come from them. It comes from you.

One of my clients once wrote a 10-page email to her ex. She never sent it. Didn’t need to. Because it wasn’t for him—it was for her.

The act of writing was the closure. Getting the chaos out of her head and onto paper was the emotional unclogging her nervous system needed.

True closure is internal. It’s the moment you stop outsourcing your healing and finally stop waiting for someone else to make it make sense.

It’s when you let go of the past—on purpose, for your own inner peace. Because here’s what most people don’t realize: closure is a ritual, not a conversation.

It is a symbolic way to release that anchor and let go of the past. This is where positive psychology steps in—the science of human flourishing, founded by Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania.

Instead of analyzing what’s broken, it asks, what makes life worth living? Not just, what went wrong?

Sometimes, the best way to let go of the past is to stop digging through the rubble and start building something better on top of it.

Write the letter. Burn it. Cry it out. But make it clear: this no longer owns me.

Let go of the past like you’re done dragging it around like a suitcase full of dirty laundry. Because until you say goodbye properly, it’ll keep showing up uninvited.

3. (Re)write Your Story: You’re In Charge Now

Here’s a brutal truth: if your life were a movie right now, you might just be stuck playing the supporting role in someone else’s drama. The underdog who almost wins. The background character in a storyline they didn’t even choose.

But that’s not fate. That’s just a script written by your past pain—and the moment you decide to let go of the past, you reclaim the pen.

Take Jay, one of my clients. He grew up feeling invisible, rejected, and unworthy. That narrative haunted him well into adulthood, shaping everything from failed relationships to jobs he never felt good enough for.

But once we started working together, he stopped reliving the old story and began rewriting it. When he chose to let go of the past and give it a new meaning, that’s where healing really happened.

Jay took that invisible kid story and flipped it. He began mentoring teens who were growing up in chaos. Suddenly, he found his purpose and no longer felt like a victim of his own timeline.

This change stems from a powerful tool known as narrative therapy, which is predicated on the notion that the tales you tell yourself define who you are.

According to Michael White and David Epston, the founders of narrative therapy, we all live by internalized narratives—many formed during childhood trauma or repeated emotional pain.

Most of us are stuck in past narratives, rehearsing our trauma like it’s the only script we were handed. But that script isn’t carved in stone.

You can revise it. You can let go of the past by choosing to reinterpret it with strength instead of shame.

4. Get Unstuck by Getting Some (Emotional) Distance

Let’s talk about emotional déjà vu. 

You keep attracting the same kind of people. Fighting the same fights. Screwing up in ways that feel eerily familiar. You think it’s a coincidence?

It’s not. You’re stuck in a loop—replaying the greatest hits of your emotional history. And you can’t let go of the past if your present is being hijacked by yesterday’s ghosts.

This isn’t just frustrating. It’s exhausting.

Deep down, you know it’s not just the present you’re reacting to—it’s the old pain from the past still pulling the strings. That’s why getting some distance is key.

And not just by going to a silent retreat in Bali or ghosting your ex (though those can help too). We’re talking psychological distance—creating space between you and the emotions that have been running the show.

In my hypnotherapy sessions, I often use a powerful Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)* technique called Dissociation. It allows you to mentally step outside a painful memory and observe it as if you’re an outsider looking in.