5 Steps to Letting Go of Past Pain

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43:18-19

We’ve all been hurt. You've been hurt, I've been hurt, you've hurt others and so have I.  You can’t find an adult — or teen — alive today who hasn’t experienced some kind of emotional pain.

It hurts. We know that. We get that. Because it hurts it's hard to forget the pain.

But what you do with that pain is probably more important than the hurt itself. You might prefer to hold a grudge or try to get even or hope something bad happens to them. 

However, as a believer and Christ-follower you are called to the future not the past. As Isaiah reminds you, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!

So, in short, how do you let go of past hurts and move on? 

Blaming others for our hurt is our default setting. Somebody did something wrong, or they wronged us in some way that mattered to us. We want them to apologize. We want them to feel sorry for what they did to us. We want them to acknowledge what they did was wrong. 

But blaming someone else for our hurt can backfire, as Holly Brown notes:

"The problem with blaming others is that it can often leave you powerless. For example, you confront the person (your boss, your spouse, your parent, your child), and they say, “No, I didn’t,” or worse, “So what if I did?”, then you’re left with all this anger and hurt and no resolution."

"All your feelings are legitimate. It’s important to feel them fully, and then move on. Nursing your grievances indefinitely is a bad habit, because (as the title goes) it hurts you more than it hurts them." 

People who hold on to these past hurts often relive the pain over and over in their minds. Sometimes a person can even get “stuck” in this pain, in this hurt, in this blame."

In this post I want to share the second of five steps to letting go of past pain and moving on:

1. Make the decision to let it go.

2. Express your pain — and your responsibility.

There are three parts of this process. First, don't deny the pain. It is real and it must be dealt with. 

Second, you declare the pain and how the hurt made you feel, whether it’s directly to the other person, or through just getting it out of your system (like venting to a friend, or writing in a journal, or writing a letter you never send to the other person). 

Third, define the pain. Get it all out of your system at once. Doing so will also help you understand what — specifically — your hurt is about.

The world is complicated and relationships are complicated and emotions are, too. While you may not have had the same amount of responsibility for the pain you experienced, there may have been a part of the hurt that you are also partially responsible for. What could you have done differently? Will you do it differently next time? Will you be an active participant in your own life, or simply a hopeless victim? Will you let your pain become your identity or will you trust God to help you turn your pain into gain? 

According to Isaiah, the path to your spiritual progress will run through your past pain.