Healing Love Addiction: Letting Go Of The Past

By Jim Hall. M.S., Love Addiction Recovery Expert

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“It is not where we were that counts,
but where we are going”

When we first find recovery, some of us feel shame and despair at calling ourselves “addicts”. In the beginning, we may be filled with both fear and hope as we struggle to heal and find new meaning in our lives.

The past may seem inescapable and overpowering. It may be hard to think of ourselves in any way other than the way we always have.

While memories of the past can serve as reminders of what’s waiting for us if we revert back to our love addicted patterns, they also keep us stuck in a nightmare of shame and fear.

Though it may be difficult to let go those memories, each day in recovery can bring us that much farther from our active addiction. Each day, we can comprehend that our humanness allows us to learn from our past mistakes.

Each day, we can learn that all of us are fallible, making us perfectly imperfect human beings. Each day, we can find more to look forward to and less to punish ourselves for.

In recovery, all doors are wide open to us. We realize we have choices. We become conscious that being adults, falling into dysfunctional and painful relationships was a choice we made— we become liberated from being a victim of circumstances, which fuels a new experience of healthy-empowerment in our lives.

Our new life is rich and full of promise. While we cannot forget the past or correct old mistakes we made, we don’t have to live in it. We can move on. We can pack our bags and move out of the past into a present filled with hope and optimism.