How to free yourself from the past
If You Loved Me Enough, You’d Change…
Have you ever thought or said that?
If you loved me enough, you’d change. I have. Multiple times. And I was devastated when they didn’t. My ego needed to make sense of the pain, so I created stories. My intentions were pure. Their actions were not.
It’s funny how that works. We’re willing to give ourselves every benefit of the doubt, but we’re unwilling to give it to someone else when tempers flare.
If you can’t find an example in your life, try thinking of something in the collective. Two public figures are beefing— or there’s conflict somewhere in the world. One side judges themselves by their intentions, while judging their foes by the worst of their actions. Because that’s what we do. We judge ourselves by the best of our intentions, and everyone else by the worst of their actions, and we wonder why everyone gets offended.
Because of the chaos around the world, I’ve been asking myself to go deeper: How do I stay rooted to what matters while everything around me feels loud, divided, and wholly uncertain, if not terrifying?
When I start to feel that collective heaviness creeping in, I turn to one practice that always brings me back to center—one I learned from Maria Nemeth, Ph.D. —an acclaimed author and life coach.
Now, I know what you might be thinking: Delete! I don’t want to go there. No grief work when I’m already feeling heavy!
But stay with me. This one is different, and it will take 30 minutes of your time tops, and the results last a lifetime.
Forgiveness isn’t about being good or spiritual or pretending the past didn’t hurt. It’s about releasing the inner structures that keep our energy locked in old stories—stories we replay to stay safe, make sense of pain, or prove we were right.
The Exercise
Take a blank sheet of paper and draw a big oval in the middle. At the top, write the name of someone you still feel tangled or in conflict with.
My advice: don’t start with a parent. Start smaller—with a friend, a colleague, or someone who just rubs you the wrong way. You can build up to the bigger ones later.
Inside the oval, write everything that comes to mind. Let your ego rip! Every judgment, irritation, disappointment, or wound you can think of when it comes to this person. Be honest. Be petty. Don’t censor yourself—get it all out. No one will see this except you. If it helps, phrase it “My ego says/thinks/believes X is _________”
Here’s some of what came up for me when I did this exercise about my sister: Now, she’s 14 years older than me, and I’ve had limited contact with her for most of my life—that feels important to say. It’s never been a typical sibling relationship. Still, it’s impacted my life in untold ways.
“She looks down at me and thinks I’m arrogant and stupid.”
“She has limited self-awareness and just blames everyone else. It’s never her fault.”
“She’s highly competitive. I feel like I’m in some sort of high-stakes rivalry, but I don’t know any of the rules.”
“She’s so insecure and hateful towards our family.”
“She carries an unacknowledged lack and scarcity mindset—and then she projects it onto me, so I’m always the one who’s inferior.”
And the feelings that accompanied the exercise: scared, resentful, angry, let down, jealous, inferior, disappointed, guilty, stressed, resigned, disrespected, skeptical, hesitant—and underneath it all, grief.
After sitting with what I’d written, a deeper layer revealed itself.
What I came to see is that she wanted me to carry her shame, and I refused. She dialed into that defiance and punished me for it. However, I was carrying the burden of trying not to awaken that sense of shame in her. And that created resentment in me. I spent years trying to become someone she could like or trust, not realizing that what she feared wasn’t me at all, but what my presence reflected back to her. The grief now is for all the energy I spent trying to earn a relationship that required me to shrink, and metabolizing the resentment. No wonder I felt so heavy.
Because at the end of the day, I wanted a different kind of relationship.
One filled with harmony, space, and self-esteem for both of us. I also wanted compassion, support, and real intimacy from her. When a person is shame-bound, those things aren’t available. I’ve freed myself from shame. She’s remained too armored for me to get close enough to broach the subject with her in a meaningful way. I’m learning to make peace with that. This exercise helped immensely.
And this isn’t unique to me. It’s worth noting that many of my clients carried shame that was never theirs to begin with.
When conflict brewed between adults—parents and their siblings, or within the extended family—the (child) client became the safest target. The relatives’ anger—an emotion that couldn’t be spoken to the client’s parent got redirected toward them instead. They were never the problem; the shame they carried came from the fact that they were collateral damage.
And while it’s true that what happened to them isn’t fair, holding on to those stories keeps the wounds alive. Letting go of the resentment and integrating the lesson became the healing balm for other relationships to blossom. During our RTT sessions, the work became learning to release the story—not to excuse what happened, but to free the client from carrying pain that was never theirs to hold.
What Happens Next
Now look at your page. That collection of words and emotions? Believe it or not, it’s not about the person whose name is written at the top.
That’s the story your ego has built about them.
We call this a characterization.
It’s your mind’s way of making a complex human being easier to understand, predict, and survive. In psychology, we might call these projections or labels. In Maria’s framework, they’re known as ‘structures of knowing.’
They anchor us. They point us toward the past.
They say, ‘I know exactly who she is,’ even when life might be trying to show us something new.
Ironically, being absolutely certain about the correctness of our feelings or opinions is the clearest sign that a structure of knowing has taken hold of us.
These structures can quietly shape everything from our motivation to our moral clarity: According to Maria, the following influences our structure of knowing:
Our hesitations and fears often hold us back from chasing our dreams.
We might find ourselves using our sense of knowing as an excuse for not following through on promises, and sometimes, we blame others.
This need to hold onto old grievances can also prevent us from seeing our own morality clearly.
When daily life feels dull or unfulfilling, it’s usually because we’re trapped in limiting beliefs linked to characterizations.
If the future seems just like the past, it might be a sign that our perceptions of others have taken over how we see the world.
Forgiveness begins when we loosen our grip on the fixed images we hold—and begin to re-evaluate our structures of knowing.
The Three Questions
Am I willing to forgive this person totally?
Am I willing to let go of everything I’ve written here—even the parts I didn’t have room to name, or the quiet stories I keep as proof that I’m right?
Am I willing to forgive this person absolutely?
Am I willing to stop repeating my favorite stories about them—the ones that keep them frozen in time and me locked inside the same emotional loop?
Am I willing to forgive this person unconditionally?
Even if they act the same way tomorrow, am I willing to stop using their behavior as evidence that my story about them is the only truth?
After asking myself these questions, I noticed something deeper — the body always tells the truth first.
I noticed my tongue start to twist slightly, and a band of tightness form right under my jaw. This is usually a sign of what’s remained unspoken on my end—my fears of saying what’s in my heart. The front of my body felt heavy like a wet blanket. It’s pure contraction—fear, stress, anxiety—and when I’m in that state, no solution feels available.
That’s why we stay stuck even when we’ve gained powerful insights.
These somatic expressions also show me how much energy it takes to keep this characterization of my sister alive. Our judgments can get in the way of our dreams, and we almost never acknowledge this because of the heaviness it invites into our nervous system.
What I do know is it’s an exhausting pattern, and it comes at a real cost. This pattern also shows us where we lose months or years by staying in the same space emotionally.
Here’s what I’ve learned: I don’t know who my sister is beneath the characterizations. But I do know who I’ve become when I think of her. I’m still processing that grief. And that’s enough information to work with to move me into a state of expansion where I can co-create my desired reality.
This Is The Real Work
I can forgive the version of her that’s lived in my mind— without giving the present version of her access to my life.
This isn’t about forgetting what someone did to you. If someone has harmed or abused you, this practice is not about excusing it or inviting them back in. It’s about not carrying the inner baggage anymore.
This person never needs to know that you’ve forgiven them. This is an act for your own peace of mind.
If You Want To Go Deeper, Here’s How
When you let go of what others “did to you” or how they affected you, you can begin to focus on your own belief systems and see what’s yours to clean up.
You'll begin noticing patterns in the stories you tell about yourself. These might include beliefs like feeling incapable, feeling powerless, or even fearing failure as if it could be the end of everything.
For a long time, you most likely blamed someone else—remember the drama triangle from last month? When we’re in the victim role, we see people in only two ways: those who save us and those who make life harder. Brene Brown calls it being under the line of fear, and we don’t act with integrity when we’re under this line.
Now you’re beginning to realize these stories are part of your monkey mind, also known as the subconscious or ego. Take a gentle, curious approach to this next exercise—think of yourself as a kind, non-judgmental detective exploring these thoughts and stories, and try to find a hidden benefit and the real cost of keeping them alive.
Who’s the kind of person who would believe this story? What kind of life would they be willing to live if they gave up the story? Remember, vague answers will only get you minimal results.
Be genuinely interested in uncovering what beliefs are surfacing from the subconscious. Judgment will quickly shut this process down. Curiosity will expand it and make you truly unstoppable.
What is your subconscious trying to bring to the surface so you can let it go?
To clear this out, start writing down those statements and the 'I am' belief systems. (“I am lazy.” “I am stupid when it comes to finances,” “I am responsible for everything”, etc…) Again, don’t hold back. Let the ego have full rein.
Perhaps you'll notice that this feels a bit like an old friend you're holding onto because it’s familiar. It’s simply a belief system that once supported you, shaped by your past perspective on life. Truly honor how it once helped you, and gently prepare to release it, allowing those heartfelt parts to reintegrate into your soul and help you feel complete.
If you go one step further, you’ll find that the expanded version of you doesn’t hold these limiting beliefs you still cling to. They’ve already alchemized them and are operating from a higher consciousness. Now ask: If this limiting belief isn’t true, what is?
When you embody and practice that new belief daily, you feel its energy, which shifts you into a new reality—THE ONE YOU WANT to be living. Some call this QUANTUM LEAPING.
I'm telling you, taking this approach to life makes you freaking unstoppable because you will never be a victim to these thoughts and the emotions ever again.
In my own experience, this very process has helped me communicate more clearly, see my goals and values more vividly, and reconnect with my true heart—bringing my mind and heart back into harmony. Life just feels easier, and I feel safe being me.
This investment in myself has been priceless. Trust me when I say these two exercises will change you in all the best possible ways. After reading, you will always remember this.
And maybe that’s the real work of forgiveness: not erasing what happened, but finally being free to live beyond it.
