How to Stop Fleeing Back to the past When Things Get Tough.

You know you’re in a bad mental state when you start missing your crappy marriage, or your old depressing job. Don’t let yourself stay there.

Time itself is complicated. All we have is the present, but when accepting the present is hard, we end up spending most of our days either living in the past, or daydreaming about the future.

The past can be particularly attractive when the present is challenging and the future, uncertain. For as much as your past hurt you, you already know what happened. There’s no mystery there, apart from what could have been, and what could have been can always be reimagined.

When things get challenging in the present, longing for a lost past becomes particularly tempting.

Perhaps you’re divorced, and have been single for a while. Online dating is a shit show, and meeting someone in real life seems impossible. Your marriage might not have survived, things might have been particularly hurtful towards the end, but you had your good moments. And you miss that.

Perhaps you’ve quit your lousy job because you couldn’t take it any longer, or because you felt like the time was right to start your own business, but things haven’t been going as you had hoped. It’s been hard to find a new job, and your emergency savings are running low. It turns out that starting a business isn’t a piece of cake, and what you thought would take six months is now going into a year. Your lousy job starts to feel great again. You even miss your annoying, semi-incompetent boss.

When you start missing the past like that, all of those what ifs come back to haunt you with a vengeance.

What if you had put more effort into your marriage? What if you had tried marriage counseling, or couples’ therapy, or yoga, or a strictly raw diet, or something? Anything? You might still be married.

What if you had approached your lousy job in a different way? It would probably not have been so lousy if you went to the office every day with a better attitude. What if you had tried harder for that promotion you were passed on? You’d still have a job to go to every day, and your savings wouldn’t be depleted.

Why didn’t your marriage work again? You don’t remember. All you remember are the good parts, and you want them back.

Why did you leave your job again? You’re not sure. All you know is that your boss doesn’t seem half as intolerable as having to eating ramen out of a styrofoam cup every night to make your unemployment benefits last till the end of the month.

There are many reasons to get stuck in the past, romanticizing it in your head instead of dealing with the present, but that’s not a helpful mindset.

Our memories often trick us, and the past isn’t exactly as we remember it, for good or bad. Situations and phases in life are also not black and white. No relationship is all roses, just like no job is all fun, and so on for everything else in life. Being stuck in the past — especially a past you’re not 100% certain was all good — prevents you from moving forward and pursuing your goals.

If you find yourself stuck in the past, especially looking back at a situation you left with rose-colored glasses, you need to snap out of it. Here’s how:

Identify the real problem

Chances are whatever you miss so desperately isn’t even worth it. What you’re doing is avoiding a problem or a challenge in the present by romanticizing the good old days.

You wouldn’t miss your past so much if your present was running smoothly, and the sooner you recognize that what you’re doing isn’t genuinely missing the past, but avoiding a challenge in the present, the sooner you’ll come back to reality.

Identify the real problem: you don’t miss your former spouse, you miss being in a relationship, or you miss having sex, or you’re just feeling lonely. You don’t miss your former job, you’re tired of looking for a new one, or you need a breakthrough on your business, or you’re just stressed out and need a break.

As soon as you understand that your real problem is something in your present, pinpoint exactly what it is so you can start looking for a solution.

Remind yourself why you left

Even a bad situation might start to look desirable again once you’ve distance yourself from it long enough for the details to become fuzzy. Your crappy marriage starts to seem less crappy, your lousy job less lousy, and so on.

But you owe it to yourself to remember why you left. Make a list and go back to it from time to time, to make sure you don’t forget.

Remind yourself of all the times you cried yourself to sleep, or felt so lonely it hurt, or were cheated on. Remind yourself of how long you used to sit in your car in the company parking lot, just staring ahead at the void, dreading the moment you’d have to walk in for yet another miserable shift.

Reminding yourself you had good reason to leave will help you realize that whatever new challenges arise, chances are you’ve already overcome worst.

Accept reality

You miss the past because it’s familiar. The past is a puzzle you’ve already soleved. You know what challenges you had back then, and perhaps you’ve gained a new perspective on how to face them, which makes them seem easier than whatever new obstacle you’re facing in the present.

And let’s face it, reality can suck. But it’s also all you’ve got.

Give yourself 5 minutes to be upset. Just 5 minutes to let out every curse word in the book, to feel sorry for yourself, to wish things were better. After your 5 minutes are up, look at reality in the face and get to work.

Accept that your reality is all you have, and that it’s no use wasting time wishing things were different. Take what you have and work with it. If you do that, then there’s nowhere you can go but up.

Make a change

Your impulse to flee from the present into the past might be a sign that you need to make a change.

If you want to be in a relationship, put yourself in a position to meet more people. If you need a new job, consider taking a course, brushing up on your resumé, or even looking for opportunities in a different city than where you live.

Whatever your problem is, whatever the obstacle you’re facing, trust me: there are options. If you don’t see them yet, if you feel stuck, perhaps you need a change of perspective. Consider taking a day off to go somewhere peaceful and reflect. Open up to your friends — perhaps one of them has a good idea, but you’ll never know unless you ask.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help — you can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, and you shouldn’t even be trying to.

Give yourself a reason to look ahead

Whenever you feel tempted to look back to the past, come up with a reason to look forward to the future.

Perhaps schedule a weekend at a spa, or a reunion with your friends at the end of the month. Maybe sign up for a cool seminar out of town, or finally schedule that overseas vacation you’ve been postponing for so long.

The past doesn’t look so tempting anymore when you give yourself something good to look forward to in the future.

Getting stuck in the past can drag you down, but if you remind yourself that you have time in the present to work towards a better future, chances are you won’t be stuck for very long.