What Comes Back to Haunt Us

When you think about it, the things that come back to haunt us are the feelings of experiences we refused to give full rein at the time of the experience.

What comes back to haunt us is pain we protected ourselves against feeling; any feeling we shied away from for fear of the pain that might be associated with it; regret that is unresolved.

This is life - all these things are a part of life and there is a part of us that simply fears experiences that might result in a feeling of hurt, pain, or regret. And yet by not giving the feelings in those experiences full rein we end up with all these ghosts in our closet that come back to visit us. All we need is a moment of weakness to remember feeling hurt, all we need is a moment of sadness to remember regret.

What comes back to haunt us is the process of grief associated with the little deaths that happen when we stop ourselves from living in those moments because of fear. And grief is a process,it has stages: denial/isolation; anger; bargaining; depression and acceptance. The things that come back to haunt us are the things that never got through the whole process, but got buried instead.

It is useful to occasionally take pen to paper and write down some of these hidden and lost feelings of experiences past, and then take them through the full process, all five stages of grief, so they can be released and no longer free to haunt us. It's worth it to get out of the haunted realms of our own lives!

Blessings.
- Darshan



(c) 2010 Darshan F Jessop