June 12, 2025 • 51 mins
Why does personal growth sometimes feel like a quiet loss? Ever look back at an old photo and feel a strange mix of nostalgia and sadness for the person you once were? You're evolving, becoming stronger, wiser, but there's still a strange ache for the person you used to be. In today's episode, we explore the psychology behind this often-unspoken phenomenon of grieving our past selves.
Things we discuss:
- What it means to grieve a former 'you’
- The role of disenfranchised grief
- The ‘nostalgia trap’
- Our evolving sense of self and the fluidity of identity
- Why we romanticise the past
- How we can integrate past versions of ourselves and embracing growth
If you've ever felt that subtle pang for a past version of yourself, this episode is for you!
Listen to Mantra: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Ckds0BoJDDpODInN9cWcc?si=b6ad5d555c1940e0
Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the Psychology of our twenties. Before we begin, I wanted
to give a shout out to my other podcast, Mantra.
(00:43):
Some of you may not know that I actually, yeah,
I have two podcasts. I have two shows. Martra is
basically how I describe it, like the spiritual, philosophical sister
of the Psychology of Your Twenties. Every Monday I talk
about a new mantra, something to guide you for the
weak ahead. Some of the recent ones that I have
(01:05):
loved and I think people will resonate with include things
like I allow myself to be happy with what I have,
I make the best decision with what I know now,
I know that love won't pass me, and so many more. Honestly,
it is such a passion project for me right now.
It allows me to talk about things from a less
scientific point of view but still go really deep. It's
(01:28):
also incredibly meditative, and each week I include journal prompts
and a weekly challenge and mental exercise to really aid
you in a mindset shift. So I would really love
if you guys checked it out. If you love the
psychology of your twenties, obviously you will love Martra. Just
(01:48):
listen to one episode, try it out, tell me what
you think, because I'm also looking for feedback. I'm looking
for mantras that you want me to cover. I'm looking
for any suggestions for dialect is or yeah, topics that
you want me to look at on that podcast, So
check it out today. On the podcast, we are tackling
(02:10):
a big question. Why do we grieve past versions of ourselves?
Why do we grieve the past in general? Let's be honest.
I feel like our twenties are mainly the decade in
which we are comparing ourselves to others. Are we doing enough?
Are we as happy as they are? Are we as
(02:31):
successful as beautiful? We can apply that to every facet
of our lives. But what if the other person is
actually someone that you once were? What if it is yourself,
a past version of you. And even further, what if
we look back and actually miss this person but don't
know how to recover them. In other words, what if
(02:54):
our life now isn't as good? What do we do then?
A little bit dramatic grieving a version of yourself like
they're somehow you know, dead. Maybe it can feel a
little bit silly, but I think if you really sit
with that feeling, if you reflect on who you were
(03:14):
five years ago or even two years ago, you actually
might find that quiet ache, a sense of loss. This
person isn't coming back. There is nothing you can do
to bring them back. Because you know, that's the weird
thing about growing and evolving. It always means shedding something,
leaving something behind, And sometimes that shedding, that leaving it
(03:37):
feels like a genuine loss. It feels like a farewell
to a very significant chapter. And the person you were,
the environment you were in, the people you were around,
what you spent your days doing, you're saying goodbye to that.
We talk a lot about grief in the context of
losing a loved one, and rightly so, but what about
grief for our own past identities and our past aspers
(04:01):
just the past way of being, So, my lovely listeners,
that is what we are going to explore today. We
are going to discuss why we feel this way, what
it has to do with identity formation and life transitions.
We'll look at why sometimes feeling a sense of loss
for past versions of ourselves can mean that we get
(04:22):
stuck in the past, even though our current circumstances may
be objectively better. And we're also going to talk about
that danger, that danger of romanticizing things that have already happened,
and romanticizing certain memories and certain versions of us that
may actually not be as good in reality. I also
want to talk about the role of social media, how
(04:44):
our narrative self is shaped by how we collect and
store memories physically, online, in journals, in photos. But most importantly,
I just want to leave you with some practical advice
on how to not form into the nostalgia trap when
it comes to who you were before, how to really
(05:06):
validate this form of grief and really accept that growing
and evolving will involve loss, but that loss is essential
to becoming someone better and to improving your life. I
fully believe sometimes parts of us have to die in
order to make room for other parts of us to grow,
(05:28):
and we suffer so much when we think only about
what we have lost, not realizing that we would suffer
so much more if we had stayed the same. So
how do we mourn but also thank those parts of
us we kind of needed to kill off in order
to bloom into something more beautiful. Well, hopefully you will
learn that in this episode. So, without further ado, let's
(05:51):
get into why we grieve past versions of ourselves. So
before we really begin, let's just start with the basic
understanding of what it actually means to feel this kind
of grief. What does it look like, what does it
feel like when it happens. To really grasp this, we
need to understand that what we're experiencing, obviously, is not
(06:15):
exactly the same as grieving that is associated with a
real physical death. Think about it. You know, a past
version of you hasn't physically died, right, but that particular identity,
those specific circumstances, they're just no longer accessible to you
in the present. They're gone, but not so much forgotten.
There's still present in memory. They're still present in old
(06:38):
photos or journals. And that makes the grieving process incredibly
complex because it feels like I'm still alive, I could
still be that person, but you also know that you can't.
And you know there's no clear funeral. We don't publicly acknowledge,
we don't hold funerals. There's no universally understood RITCHOL to
(07:00):
help us process moving from one chapter of our life
into another, and so there's no closure. You know, going
from being a university student to being a full time employee,
there's a loss there that we don't acknowledge. Going from
being someone who was single to being someone in a relationship,
even though that's a positive thing, there's still a loss.
Moving away from a town that was really important to you,
(07:23):
or a city or a place, even if it's for
somewhere better, there is still a loss. And this brings
us to a really crucial concept. It's called disenfranchised grief. Now,
this was a term first introduced by someone called Professor
Kenneth Docker. He is basically the world's leading expert on
(07:44):
grief and loss, and he essentially understood that there is
a kind of grief for things that aren't openly acknowledged
or accepted that makes the grief feel less valid when
we mourn things that aren't socially sanctioned, or that people
(08:04):
don't see as important to mourn. Sometimes we have this
dual feeling of loss and sadness, and then also kind
of shame and silliness, like, oh my gosh, I'm this
is so dramatic. That was so long ago, no one
actually died, I should just move on. We also tend
(08:24):
to lack external validation for how we're feeling. When we
do open up about it, people can be quite dismissive, like,
what do you mean you're grieving a past version of you?
There's real things to be grieving, and so that makes
you feel even more isolated, confused, like something's wrong with you,
Like you've got a really serious problem that you don't
(08:46):
want to talk about. But you also feel very strongly about.
Something that is misunderstood about grieving past versions of ourselves
is that we don't necessarily want to go back to
that time. Instead, what's really happening is this internal emotional
process that mirrors a passing. It mirrors this closing of
(09:10):
endure of what you could have been, of different life
paths you could have taken, of certain emotions and feelings
and experiences that were really valuable at that time that
you realize you can't relive. So ultimately, what we're mourning
is a discrepancy between who we were then and who
we are now, and how we see those two different
(09:33):
versions of us as being different. What did they have
that we don't have that we therefore miss And then
the second punch that comes to us is acknowledging like,
oh my god, I could never get that back. Does
that mean that I'll never be happy in the future.
Obviously there's a huge emotion that comes into this, and
(09:56):
it's nostalgia. Nostalgia with a melancholic tinge. You look at
old photos, you listen to music from five years ago. Yes,
it's a warm, nice, fuzzy feeling. But then comes the sadness.
Then comes the yearning, and that yearning, that longing is
incredibly painful because an element of longing and yearning is powerlessness,
(10:20):
is not being able to do anything about it. I
think that nostalgia is such a complicated emotion. I honestly
would go on the record as saying it is the
most complex emotion that we experience as humans, because it
is equally powerful and beautiful as it is despairing and uncomfortable,
(10:40):
Like what other emotion is like that. Other than maybe
like love and heartbreak, Nostalgia does have a role to play, right.
It's an incredibly mentally protective thing to have access to
moments in the past that made us feel happy and
to have that kind of pool of joy and goodness
(11:01):
to draw from in hard times. But when we leart
nostalgia have too much of a say, it can actually
create kind of a peter Pan syndrome where we fight
against growing up, we push back against growth and evolution
because we feel so terrified of having to say goodbye.
We feel so terrified of the idea of things being over.
(11:23):
A twenty twenty study actually found that nostalgia in that
way can make us feel lonelier and more disconnected, because
it gives this sense of being pulled between two different
worlds who we were in the past, this version of
us we want to cling to, and the possibility in
the potential of someone in the future that we might
equally enjoy being but who hasn't been discovered yet. But
(11:47):
I do also think that nostalgia, if we really think
about it, it's just proof that you are living a
life that you are proud of. You would not yearn
for those memories. You would not yearn and long for
those past versions of you if you didn't feel, you know,
proud of them, if you didn't like who you were
then if you hadn't done things that really made you
(12:09):
happy and excited you. I think living with constant chronic
nostalgia often means appreciating what it represents. That you have
lived a happy life and that there are things you
loved about the past, but you cannot let it convince
you that just because there is good in the past,
there cannot be anything better in the future. When that occurs,
(12:32):
that is when our grief for the past dictates our
actions in the present in a really detrimental way, often
by forcing us to keep making the same choices and
staying the same. So this grief brings about nostalgia, it
also brings about confusion and mental disorientation. You might find
(12:53):
yourself thinking who was I then? Who am I now?
How do I explain these different versions of myself to people?
You feel very disconnected from old experiences. You realize that
you've grown, but you also fundamentally understand that some people
only know you as the version of you then, and
so that can bring up the big er, the big
(13:15):
er regret, regret over how you behaved in the past,
regret that that version of you lives on, Regret that
you didn't act differently. You know, how often have you wondered,
how would my life have turned out if I had
just made a small different choice, if I just knew
(13:37):
what I knew now, if I just appreciated that time
or that opportunity more. Maybe what we're experiencing when we
grieve or we miss versions of ourselves is the ability
we had then to make different choices, which we can't
make now. But what you've got to realize is that
you made the best decision with what you knew then.
(13:58):
It's something that we actually talked about on a recent
episode of Mantra the other day. How could you have known?
You're judging your past self based on information you have
now that you didn't have access to. So it's an
unfair judgment. It's in asymmetry that is entirely unfair for
former versions of you. They can't beat that evidence, like
(14:22):
you know what I mean, Like you're judging them based
on what you know now, thinking that they must have
known it. They're not realizing how naive you probably were,
But also, how do you know that the choice your
mourning wouldn't have led to a worse outcome that you
have been saved from. There's this really beautiful quote that
actually I wanted to pull out of that episode of
(14:44):
Mantra I was talking about that I really really loved
from My Angelou, where she says, do the best you
can until you know better. Then when you know better,
do better. And I think that's a really beautiful way
of making peace with the fact that they did make mistakes,
but you still love them. Anyway. This past version of
(15:05):
you didn't have all the information, but you have grace
towards them, and you know that it's all stepping stone
into being a better version of you in the future.
Keep your eyes pointed on the future. I think our investment,
our fascination, our obsession with the past also occurs because
of something that I've mentioned before, the Pollyanner effect. So
(15:29):
this refers to our cognitive tendency to essentially remember positive
experiences more than negative ones. And so when we look
back at who you were before, who you were in
high school, who you were in college, who you were
with that person, often it is so much easier to
recall and see the good experiences and the fun times
(15:51):
and the things that we liked rather than what we
disliked or struggled with at the time. I need to
talk about this experience I had recently. So recently, I
was on tour around Australia for my book Person and Progress,
and part of that tour brought me back to Canberra.
Canberra is like the capital city of Australia if you
don't know that, and it's where I went to university.
(16:14):
It's where I started this podcast actually, and I in
the leadup to going back, I was so nostalgic and
I was really quite sad that I was never going
to be eighteen again. I was never going to be
twenty one again. In this little university town with all
those people having like the time of my life. I
(16:35):
had so much freedom, I had so much fun, and
I was really getting in my head about it. And
I went back, and when I was back there, I
actually went back to my old college dorm and I
snuck into the building, which I don't think I was
allowed to do. My intentions were pure, and I knocked
on the door to my old college room, and this
(16:57):
wonderful girl answered and I was like, this is so strange,
but I used to live here. You can tell me
to go away, but I carved my name into the
back of the back of the door, the closet door,
and I just want to see it. I just want
to see if it's still there. And you know, she
let me in and she was so nice, like she
was so lovely, and I opened the door and there
(17:21):
it was. And I expected to just be like so
overwhelmed with grief and sadness at the passing of time,
and I actually just felt so unbelievably happy and grateful
that I wasn't still there, that I wasn't still in
that timeline. I was like instantly reminded in that moment
(17:43):
of all the things that I had hated about that
time in my life. Obviously it was fun, but I
forgot about how broke I was. I forgot about how
unsure I was. I forgot about how little I slept,
how much I was drinking, how terrible I felt all
the time. I forgot about how lonely I was at times,
(18:05):
how much fomo I had. I forgot about the terrible
meals that I would eat. I forgot about how cold
it was our autobiographical memory is not a perfect video recording.
It's actually reconstructive. So every time we recall a memory,
we're not pulling it from a file. We're actually rebuilding it.
(18:27):
And that process can be influenced by our current mood,
by our beliefs, even by external cues. So that means
that every time you pull out a memory, it becomes
easier for you to erase the bad parts from your
retelling of it to yourself. It becomes very easy to
romanticize a period because the specifics have faded, and our
(18:50):
current feelings will often color our perception of the past.
So if you're not doing well right now, feel sad,
if you're lonely, if you're really just struggle in your life,
you go, when you pull out a memory from the past,
your brain, given its current state, is going to make
that memory look beautiful and wonderful, and it's going to
(19:10):
convince you that that was the best time of your life,
when actually, when you were in it, it probably wasn't. Essentially,
what that means is that you're not just grieving a
past self, you're grieving the narrative and the story you
are telling yourself about the past, and that can be
really dangerous when you are, like I said, going through
(19:34):
a tough time. It can really manifest in a difficulty
accepting your current self, struggling to fully integrate the new
you with the old you. And I think it really
keeps you from living in the present. Okay, we're going
to take a short break, but when we return, I
want to talk about why this is so much more
(19:55):
common in our twenties, and also how to deal with it,
how to manage, how to start romanticizing the past, how
to live in the now. So stay with us. Grieving
previous versions of ourselves is a process that is necessary,
it's normal. It's also incredibly sped up and intensified during
(20:19):
the decade that we're in. There are so many profound
shifts and changing moments that happen when we're in our
twenties and even our early thirties. It's such a period
of big change and changes that happen one after another
that it means that our identity feels particularly unstable where
we are at right now. So there are more revisions
(20:41):
and versions of ourselves to grieve than I think in
any other time of our life. This is particularly because
of physical environmental transitions that we're going through, and how
many chapters close and then open quite quickly in succession.
I'm going to give you some examples of why this
(21:02):
happens a lot in our twenties. Firstly, you will see
a lot of people leaving formal education and starting careers.
So you lose the student identity, the structure, the clear
academic goals, the specific peer group, the sense of being
on a path, and you're really thrust into an adult
world of work where the rules are different. You turn
(21:24):
from being a student to a professional. It feels like
there are certain things you can't do anymore, certain environments
you can't access, you can't go and study in the
library with your mates, Like it's all different to you,
and so it's trying to reconcile who you were before,
who you are now and say goodbye to them. We
also find that in our twenties, obviously a lot of
(21:45):
us move away from home. So this involves the loss
of family proximity, childhood routines, a sense of belonging, and
also a specific place or community that wants to find you.
As you're building a new home and new routine and
new sense of belonging. It's beautiful, it's magnificent. There's so
much growth there. There's also an appreciation of like, Okay,
(22:06):
I'm never going to be five again, I'm never going
to be twelve. It's never going to be a beautiful
summer day when I'm fifteen and I have no responsibilities.
There's also changes in relationships, so typical experience in your twenties.
Hopefully you guys know this is drifting away from old
friends who no longer share your path. You're also navigating
(22:29):
new romantic partners, starting significant relationships, ending significant relationships. We
know that relationships and connection form a great part of
our identity. So if you've always had a best friend
and now you no longer do, it feels like a
part of you is missing. If you enter a new relationship,
if you leave a relationship, it's actually quite a stressful
(22:51):
thing to integrate that new label single partnered, girlfriend, boyfriend
into who you are. All of this come down to
identity shifts. I also think we need to talk about
significant personal growth and trauma that happens during this defining period.
This could include overcoming major life challenges, experiencing profound shifts
(23:15):
in who you are, For example, if you are someone
who has recovered from a severe mental illness, a severe
eating disorder, and you're no longer feeling like you're defined
by that illness, you've shared that identity. That's going to
feel incredibly liberating. You're going to feel very proud of yourself.
It also carries the weight of acknowledging what you've lost
(23:37):
in the process, perhaps a familiar albeit unhealthy coping mechanism,
perhaps a distorted sense of control, but also time. You've
lost time, and part of that grief is really realizing
you know, you're only going to be seventeen once, You're
only going to be twenty twenty one, whatever age it is,
(24:00):
and you can feel like, because of what you were
going through that that period was wasted. I know, it
probably doesn't help coming from me, someone who doesn't know
your story, doesn't know who you are. It wasn't wasted.
You were working towards, you were battling against something very
very difficult. That is not a waste ever, And you've
(24:21):
got to realize you're judging your previous self based on
who you are now, and the person who you are
now only came into existence because of the sacrifices and
the difficulties experienced by your previous self who had to
work through that. You have so much to be thankful
for for them and how strong they were, how much
(24:43):
they put into this journey, how much they put into
this growth. And it kind of feels weird that you're
like killing them off. But they had to die, right,
They had to go for you to be where you
are now. Whenever I feel sad about missing who I
was before, I always think about these plants that my
grandma has, So in her backyard, she has these plants.
(25:05):
I think they're called hydrangers. Hydrangers, I think that's it.
And whenever I'm at her house, she always has me
cut the old flowers off these plants. Like she has
me like basically like butcher them and cut all these
limbs off. And one time I asked her, I was like,
why do you need me to do this, Like, aren't
you destroying the plant? And she said, you know, it's
(25:26):
because those parts need to be removed for new flowers
to come in. If we didn't do that, the plant
would die under the weight of basically these old, dead
parts of itself. And I feel like that is such
a beautiful metaphor for my own personal development. It's why
I feel more at peace now with aging, with closing chapters,
(25:47):
with moving on with my life from old relationships, places, things,
old versions of me. I don't want to die being
who I was at twenty three for the next sixty years.
I don't want to constantly try to relive stages of
my life that are no longer representative of who I am.
(26:08):
I think that that loss and that pain shows that
you are on the right path. Perhaps the final reason
that I can really think of that this scares us
a lot is that the past versions of us feel
very comfortable. There's something that is known, and there is
a lot in the future that is unknown. There's a
(26:29):
lot of mystery there, and so perhaps what is really
intertwined in with this is a fear of the unknown,
a fear of our future self. If the self is
constantly changing, how stable is our identity really? Who are we?
Who are we really actually at our core? What parts
of us stay the same? How do I know that
(26:49):
I'm even the same person. So it's not just grief,
it's very existential questions. It's questions of this self. It
means that you're probably a very deep thinker. If you
are sitting there and trying to figure out who you
are then, who you are now? What does that mean
for me? Who am I going to be in the future.
(27:10):
It's a bit of a mind puzzle, actually. But you know,
if this grief goes unacknowledged or unaddressed, it can have
less than desirable outcomes. It can contribute to prolonged sadness,
even depression, especially if the feeling of loss is so
intense that you isolate yourself, or if it triggers an
identity crisis. You can have difficulty forming new connections because
(27:35):
you're constantly trying to revert to past relational patterns or
struggling to adapt to new social environments. And I think
critically idealizing the past can lead to chronic dissatisfaction with
the present because you're constantly comparing your life to a
romanticized version of what once was. One factor that has
undeniably complicated this process for you and I in the
(27:59):
modern age is social media. It's just actually most digital technology.
Think about it. Every single version of who you are
now is probably immortalized online. Old Facebook posts, blurry Instagram photos,
snapchat photos from literally decades ago. Sometimes they serve as
(28:22):
digital foot prints, constant reminders of who we once were,
and this digital archive can make it incredibly difficult to
let go because it creates a perpetual comparison point. It's
like having an old photo album that updates itself daily,
showing you who you once were, even when you're trying
to move forward. It's like when you go through a
(28:43):
breakup and people say to delete all the photos of
you with your ex, because otherwise you'll look back at
the photo of you on a nice holiday or having
a great time and think that it was all beautiful.
That's pretty difficult when it's you and you're trying to
break up with an old version of yourself. The highlight
reel effect as well on social media definitely amplifies this. Listen,
(29:07):
all the stuff that you probably posted online was probably
the best photos that you had, probably the photos where
you looked the hottest, probably the times when you felt
the happiest. That's why they made it online. And yet
right now you're comparing a very messy, unfiltered version of
your life with the version of you that was curated
(29:27):
by past you. It's so funny when we compare to
people online. Everyone always says, you know, social media isn't real.
You've got to remember that for you as well. I
often think about this when I look at photos of
myself when I was smaller, like physically smaller, when I
waned less, and I'm like, God, she was so fit,
(29:49):
Like she was so fit and healthy, and like, I
don't look like that anymore now. And then recently I
found an old phone and I was going through it
and I was like, oh, look, I remember that photo.
And I went back and I found the photo, and
then I found like the twenty other virgins of that photo,
when I was like, wait a second, Like, I angles, everything,
(30:09):
poses are everything. I know that now, how come I'm
not applying that to past me who knew the same thing.
Let's also touch briefly on attachment theory. Now, obviously we
often discuss this in the context of relationship with others,
but here's the nuance. We form attachments not just to people,
(30:30):
but to aspects of ourselves and our roles and our identities,
even our routines. So losing these internal attachments can also
evoke a similar form of grief to losing a person.
The reason that you were so attached to a previous
identity that you had is probably because you really liked
(30:50):
that person and you felt safe and comfortable as that person.
And so having to kind of rip two people apart,
rip old you and knew you were part is going
to feel like disentangling a whole lot of complex loyalties
and attachments and insecurities and securities between who you were
(31:13):
then and who you are now. So how do we
navigate closing an old chapter? How do we grieve without
getting stuck in the past. I think, firstly, it's so
important to acknowledge this grief. And I was gonna say
validate it, but I know that some people hate that word,
But you know what, acknowledge and validate the grief. This
(31:36):
is the absolute first step. These feelings are not silly
or irrational. If you feel a pang of sadness or
longing for a past version of yourself, acknowledge it, Say
to yourself, this is a real feeling. I'm obviously very sad,
I'm obviously feeling things that are complex, and I can
(31:58):
just sit with that for a little while. I don't
have to put it in a box. I don't have
to resolve that feeling right away. What if you actually
just let yourself for three minutes, three minutes right now,
just feel really sad about who you were. Then I
find that when I'm really stuck, I do really need
(32:19):
to just put what's in my brain into something physical.
For me, that's journaling. And I know it's such a cliche,
a cliche thing, but a problem on a page is
a problem halved. One of the journal prompts that I
find incredibly powerful is to write about what I loved
about them, what I missed about them, and whether I
(32:42):
feel like it's because I'm missing something now. Am I
just reflecting on that time from a place of happiness
or is there genuinely something that I want to change
in my life that this nostalgia is trying to remind
me of. Remember, this is a form of enfranchise grief.
So if other people don't understand it, if other people
(33:05):
make you feel weird about it, if other people say
I know I've never experienced that doesn't really matter. It's
an emotion that exists within you, means it's valid enough. Think.
Also part of this is practicing self compassion. Think about
how you'd treat a friend who was going through a
really tough transition. Think about what you would say to
(33:26):
a sibling or someone you really loved who came to
you and said, I just can't let go of who
I was before. What advice would you have for them?
What do you need to hear? The thing I always
remind myself of that makes me feel better is that
if I didn't grow, I wouldn't get to experience the world.
If the alternative that I would want is to go
(33:47):
back to the past and relive certain points of my life,
I would be avoiding so much beauty in the future,
growing older, experiencing new things. That is the huge experience.
That is what I am here for. I'm here to observe,
I am here to feel. I am here to learn,
and part of that is learning who I'm going to
(34:10):
be at thirty two. Who am I going to be
at forty five? Who am I going to be as
a mother? Who am I going to be as a grandmother?
Who am I going to be as a wife, as
as an artist, as someone older and wiser. That is
part of the human experience. It's a gift, it's a
blessing to be able to get there. Instead of viewing
(34:31):
your past self as well as something that is completely
abandoned or forgotten. You also have to remember that this
is a foundational layer upon which your current self is
being built. The old you is still part of your story.
You've just expanded on it, You've just refined them. Think
of it like a really beautiful building that has undergone
(34:53):
renovations and additions over time. The beautiful original structure is
still there. It's contributing to its current form and character.
You're just adding to it. Yes, I know we've been
using the word death a lot. Maybe the better word
is evolution. What kind of small behaviors can you still
(35:14):
recognize that you do today and what kind of things
did you learn in the past that are still with
you today? That shows that your past self is still
very much alive and well, they're just not center stage.
I think this really allows us to see identity development
not as a threat to your stability, but as a
very exciting opportunity for continuous learning, for mastery, for becoming.
(35:37):
If you were who you were at twenty four for
the rest of your life, that would make you a
finished product, that would make you very still, very stagnant,
very bored. That's not a way you want to live
the pain of growing is actually quite a beautiful thing.
And whilst it's okay to acknowledge the past, try to
(35:59):
gently read direct your energy to who you are now,
ask yourself, and sink deep into your current passions and goals.
Something that I really really think is important for everyone
to have is a project of some kind. Often when
we are experiencing intense emotions about the past, very existential
(36:21):
emotions about identity, we really need something that's going to
get us out of our mind and into our bodies
or into a very active mental state, into a flow state.
This like really saved me last year when I was
going through a very difficult time having very existential thoughts,
I just realized that I spent a lot of my day,
(36:42):
I gave myself a lot of time to think, and
at that point, like I didn't need to do any
more thinking. There was nothing that thinking about my thoughts
was going to get me. Like I had done enough.
What I really needed to do was start acting on
something else, acting on a different for an impulse, a
different interest, a different point of fascination. So I got
(37:06):
a project, and that's how like my running journey really began.
Now I'm running like four or five times a week,
and I love it. And I never thought I was
going to be a runner, but I realized that I
needed something else to think about in that time instead
of giving my brain the opportunity to just ruminate. Part
of me thinks that the reason I was so hung
up on past versions of myself and thinking about the
(37:28):
passing of time and change and all that was because
I was just bored. Like I genuinely think I was
just bored. And my brain was like, all right, let's
pull something out of the Let's pull something out of
the cabinet that will take you a lot of time
to think about and come to an answer on, because
there is no answer, right, let's choose this. And what
I really needed to do was like, stay to my mind, okay,
(37:51):
but how about we do this instead? And what this
was was something real and tangible and in my environment,
like I needed to do something with my hand and
with my body. So get a project, get a self
improvement project, get a travel goal, like have a finance goal,
a savings goal. Go back to UNI, like have something
(38:11):
that you need to work on that you can care
about and think about, specifically, something that is future orientated
That can get you out of ruminating on the past
into projecting good things, good energy, or your resources, your
time into the future. This also might sound a little
bit woo woo for some of you, but consider doing
(38:33):
some sort of symbolic ritual letting go or for celebrating evolution.
Whilst they're not formal grief rituals, you can create your
own personal ways to acknowledge the transition and to say, yes,
I'm going to grieve here, I'm going to formally close
a chapter and kind of make peace with it. This
(38:54):
could be like writing a letter to your past self,
thanking them for the lessons learned, saying goodbye to what
no longer serves you, or conversely creating something like a
future self vision board. You could also, I don't know
this sounds really strange, but find memorabilia and photos from
a past version of you, past version of you who
(39:16):
was in a relationship or who was a certain person
at a certain time, and put them in a box,
send them out to sea, bury them somewhere. Do something
like that that symbolically kind of cuts a tie, mainly
with parts of yourself that might not be helpful to
bring into the future, but also parts of yourself that
you're finding you are too actively grieving to move on,
(39:40):
and you need to just be like, Okay, cool, we
aren't going back there. There's nothing that we can do
to go back there. So let's formally say goodbye. I
think there's also a celebration in that. Buy some champagne,
get some cupcakes. Really, this is for the moments when
you are super stuck, say goodbye, have a few for
(40:00):
the past version of you, and then celebrate what you
are now. Celebrate this new chapter of life.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I read this quote that says every day you wake
up is another little life, is another birth, and I
just think that's so beautiful. I'm like, yeah, each day
is its own little life, it's its own little lifespan.
And that really helped me in, you know, feeling better
(40:27):
about being in the present rather than feeling torn to
the past, stuck in the past and constantly ruminating over
the future, constantly thinking about it. Okay, we are going
to take one more short break, but when we return,
we have our listener questions for the day, so stay
with us. Okay, we have some amazing listener questions for
(40:54):
this episode. When I went to Instagram and said, what
do you guys want to know? What dilemmas are you
facing into grieving past versions of you? A lot of
you are like, I really need to hear this. I
really need to hear this episode and hear hear my thoughts.
So thank you for sharing. Let's start with this first question.
How do I actually know when it's time to leave
(41:16):
a past version of me and step into a new one?
What are the psychological signs? Oh? I loved this question.
I was like, I could make a list that goes
on for days, but I'm gonna just leave you with
three things that I think are really telling. Firstly, you
feel an inner sense of restlessness. You feel like your
(41:37):
life currently makes you feel very highly strong, makes you
feel quite anxious, makes you feel like like your mind
is racing uncomfortable. You feel this sense of like I
want to be doing things. I want things to change,
I want things to move. You don't know what it
is yet, but you know something needs to change, so
(42:00):
you're really craving different things. I think Also, you might
find yourself thinking there has to be more, There has
to be more to life. What if I meant for
something else? What if this isn't who I want to
be for the next ten years? Could I imagine myself
here for the next five ten years? And the answer
(42:22):
keeps coming back is no. So there's this low hum
of discontent, this low hum of restlessness. Secondly, the old
version of you feels kind of like self abandonment. You
notice that you're constantly saying yes to things you don't
(42:43):
actually want to do. You're constantly finding yourself bored in
situations that previously made yourself made you very happy. You
can't talk to the people you were friends with during
that time. You feel like you're hiding parts of yourself.
It just feels like a betrayal. I was like, these
people aren't really matching up. And finally, I think that
(43:06):
you can tell it's time to close an old chapter
if it feels like it's taking more of you to
keep the door open than it would to shut. So
what I mean by that is that it's taking more
effort for you to keep returning to this old life,
returning to this past version of you, than it would
(43:27):
to accept the future. I remember when I first moved
to Sydney from Canberra, I would go back to Canberra
all the time to see my friends all the time
to just be in my old neighborhood, and I was like, wait,
it's taking me so much effort to try and maintain
this former life. Maybe this is a sign that like
(43:50):
I need to move on, Like I'm not meant to
be here anymore. That's a really important sign. I think
the second question is around forgiveness. How can I actually
forgive my past self the mistake that I made when
I didn't know any better. I grieve the fact that
she could have made better choices. Oh gosh, don't we all?
(44:11):
There is something that every single one of us regrets
doing or not doing. I promise you that hold it
in your mind right now. There's something you regret, there's
something that you cringe at. So I want you to
know what's a universal experience. First of all, people are
just better at hiding it. People also aren't going to
(44:32):
come out and say and talk about their regrets. It's
this weird thing that we don't do. I think the
fact that you can acknowledge that you made a mistake
or that you didn't make a good choice is all
the evidence that you need that you have grown the
version of you back then who made that mistake. Who
did the wrong thing would not be able to acknowledge
(44:55):
that she did the wrong thing, and she wouldn't be
able to handle, you know, the humil that would take.
So you've obviously taken a lot of responsibility. I also
want to remind you you had no idea about then
of how everything would have turned out. You really didn't
know you made a mistake, because that's the only way
(45:16):
to grow. Literally, the only way to learn is to
do the wrong thing or to have someone else teach
you who has done the wrong thing. So you really
need to have some grace, have some kindness towards your
past self. I also want you to stop and focus
on your life right now and think about four things
(45:36):
that you are incredibly grateful for that have happened in
the past six months. Four things that probably wouldn't have
happened if you weren't on this timeline and if you
weren't on this path. Think about it. You have a
lot to thank this person, for this past version of you,
for for making a mistake. Because even if you didn't
(45:58):
like what she did, even if you are frustrated by
her stupidity or her naivety of whatever it is it
still meant that you came across and you ended up
experiencing these beautiful things, so you do have a little
bit to be thankful for. Let's talk about this third question. Now,
I have a dilemma. How do I live with my
(46:19):
family who still see me as a past version of myself?
That's tricky. I feel like everyone expects continuity from us.
It's like that experience when like your grandma keeps buying
you the same presence based on something that she found
out that you liked, like back when you were three.
Like I had this period in my life where everyone
(46:39):
would buy me rabbit stuff and I was like, I
don't even like rabbits anymore, Like because I had a
rabbit when I was like seven, and until I was
like sixteen, every single Christmas I would get like rabbit slippers,
rabbit you know, post it nodes, like rabbit clothing, and
it was very sweet. But it's kind of similar to that,
but on a more level. You kind of want to
(47:01):
hold people and scream at them and be like I'm
not that person, Like can't you see I've changed? Like
no me for me. Now, the tricky thing is you
just have to let them be wrong about you. You
just have to let them be mistaken. The more authentic
you are, Actually, the less you try and convince them,
(47:21):
the more I think it comes across to them, the
more it signals to them that you are different because
you're living it and you're showing them, and you are
vibrant in who you are now and your identity that
you feel comfortable in. So spend less time trying to
convince them, because I feel like sometimes when we feel
like we have to convince ourselves, and more time just
(47:41):
living in the president, living organically and authentically as the
version of you that you really want to be. Our
final question for the day. I gave up recently on
a career that I thought would make me happy because
I was going broke, But I still wish almost every
day that I had done it. What is your advice?
(48:03):
My advice to you is that it is not too late.
It is never too late. You have all the time
in the world to go back and try again. Maybe
the time just wasn't right. Do you know how many actors, authors, musicians,
sports stars, small business owners, anybody you can think of,
have stories about them quitting almost every single one of them,
(48:26):
or have stories about setbacks. Every single one of them does.
Maybe this is just part of the story, This is
part of your origin story, the beginning of a really amazing,
cool chapter that you're about to write of getting back
on the horse. Also, there is this huge tension between
(48:48):
passion and practicality, right, and I talk about this in
my book. Actually this idea that people often think that
if you've given up on your dreams, you are somehow
like undisciplined, you don't actually want it. And what we
have to realize is that practically money is important. You
need money to live, You need certain things to be
(49:10):
well and to survive and to thrive as a human being.
Because you put your dream on pause for money, that
doesn't mean that you are any less entitled to that dream.
It doesn't mean that you deserve it any less. You
just did what you needed to do. So my advice
is to find small ways to keep practicing the dream
(49:32):
career or the dream thing that you want to do
on a smaller scale, and just to keep at it
and know that you have heaps of time. Okay, as
we wrap up today's episode and want to leave you
with this final thing, the grief you might feel for
your past self isn't a sign that something is wrong
with you or that you are stuck, and it is
(49:53):
certainly not a sign that all the good in your
life has already happened and is in the past. It's
actually a very profound indicator that you are growing. I
fully believe discomfort is the first sign of evolution. You
are adapting, you are learning, You are becoming this new
person that you're going to be so proud of. Embrace
(50:14):
this process, Embrace the pain, Embrace how messy it is,
and remember that every version of you that fades does
make space for a stronger, wiser, more real version of you.
That's really what you're creating. You're creating space for them,
even if they're not quite there yet. Thank you again
(50:34):
for listening to this episode. If you've made it this far,
I want you to leave an emoji in the comments
that best represents evolution and growth for you. Make sure
that you are following along wherever you are listening, and
send this episode to a friend, a colleague, a family member,
anybody who you think would really really resonate with it.
(50:56):
Make sure that you are following me on Instagram at
that psychology podcast so you can contribute to our listener
questions plus so much more, and make sure you listen
to Maltra. I'll leave a link in the description below,
But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle
to your past, present and future self, and we will
talk very very soon
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the Psychology of our twenties. Before we begin, I wanted
to give a shout out to my other podcast, Mantra.
(00:43):
Some of you may not know that I actually, yeah,
I have two podcasts. I have two shows. Martra is
basically how I describe it, like the spiritual, philosophical sister
of the Psychology of Your Twenties. Every Monday I talk
about a new mantra, something to guide you for the
weak ahead. Some of the recent ones that I have
(01:05):
loved and I think people will resonate with include things
like I allow myself to be happy with what I have,
I make the best decision with what I know now,
I know that love won't pass me, and so many more. Honestly,
it is such a passion project for me right now.
It allows me to talk about things from a less
scientific point of view but still go really deep. It's
(01:28):
also incredibly meditative, and each week I include journal prompts
and a weekly challenge and mental exercise to really aid
you in a mindset shift. So I would really love
if you guys checked it out. If you love the
psychology of your twenties, obviously you will love Martra. Just
(01:48):
listen to one episode, try it out, tell me what
you think, because I'm also looking for feedback. I'm looking
for mantras that you want me to cover. I'm looking
for any suggestions for dialect is or yeah, topics that
you want me to look at on that podcast, So
check it out today. On the podcast, we are tackling
(02:10):
a big question. Why do we grieve past versions of ourselves?
Why do we grieve the past in general? Let's be honest.
I feel like our twenties are mainly the decade in
which we are comparing ourselves to others. Are we doing enough?
Are we as happy as they are? Are we as
(02:31):
successful as beautiful? We can apply that to every facet
of our lives. But what if the other person is
actually someone that you once were? What if it is yourself,
a past version of you. And even further, what if
we look back and actually miss this person but don't
know how to recover them. In other words, what if
(02:54):
our life now isn't as good? What do we do then?
A little bit dramatic grieving a version of yourself like
they're somehow you know, dead. Maybe it can feel a
little bit silly, but I think if you really sit
with that feeling, if you reflect on who you were
(03:14):
five years ago or even two years ago, you actually
might find that quiet ache, a sense of loss. This
person isn't coming back. There is nothing you can do
to bring them back. Because you know, that's the weird
thing about growing and evolving. It always means shedding something,
leaving something behind, And sometimes that shedding, that leaving it
(03:37):
feels like a genuine loss. It feels like a farewell
to a very significant chapter. And the person you were,
the environment you were in, the people you were around,
what you spent your days doing, you're saying goodbye to that.
We talk a lot about grief in the context of
losing a loved one, and rightly so, but what about
grief for our own past identities and our past aspers
(04:01):
just the past way of being, So, my lovely listeners,
that is what we are going to explore today. We
are going to discuss why we feel this way, what
it has to do with identity formation and life transitions.
We'll look at why sometimes feeling a sense of loss
for past versions of ourselves can mean that we get
(04:22):
stuck in the past, even though our current circumstances may
be objectively better. And we're also going to talk about
that danger, that danger of romanticizing things that have already happened,
and romanticizing certain memories and certain versions of us that
may actually not be as good in reality. I also
want to talk about the role of social media, how
(04:44):
our narrative self is shaped by how we collect and
store memories physically, online, in journals, in photos. But most importantly,
I just want to leave you with some practical advice
on how to not form into the nostalgia trap when
it comes to who you were before, how to really
(05:06):
validate this form of grief and really accept that growing
and evolving will involve loss, but that loss is essential
to becoming someone better and to improving your life. I
fully believe sometimes parts of us have to die in
order to make room for other parts of us to grow,
(05:28):
and we suffer so much when we think only about
what we have lost, not realizing that we would suffer
so much more if we had stayed the same. So
how do we mourn but also thank those parts of
us we kind of needed to kill off in order
to bloom into something more beautiful. Well, hopefully you will
learn that in this episode. So, without further ado, let's
(05:51):
get into why we grieve past versions of ourselves. So
before we really begin, let's just start with the basic
understanding of what it actually means to feel this kind
of grief. What does it look like, what does it
feel like when it happens. To really grasp this, we
need to understand that what we're experiencing, obviously, is not
(06:15):
exactly the same as grieving that is associated with a
real physical death. Think about it. You know, a past
version of you hasn't physically died, right, but that particular identity,
those specific circumstances, they're just no longer accessible to you
in the present. They're gone, but not so much forgotten.
There's still present in memory. They're still present in old
(06:38):
photos or journals. And that makes the grieving process incredibly
complex because it feels like I'm still alive, I could
still be that person, but you also know that you can't.
And you know there's no clear funeral. We don't publicly acknowledge,
we don't hold funerals. There's no universally understood RITCHOL to
(07:00):
help us process moving from one chapter of our life
into another, and so there's no closure. You know, going
from being a university student to being a full time employee,
there's a loss there that we don't acknowledge. Going from
being someone who was single to being someone in a relationship,
even though that's a positive thing, there's still a loss.
Moving away from a town that was really important to you,
(07:23):
or a city or a place, even if it's for
somewhere better, there is still a loss. And this brings
us to a really crucial concept. It's called disenfranchised grief. Now,
this was a term first introduced by someone called Professor
Kenneth Docker. He is basically the world's leading expert on
(07:44):
grief and loss, and he essentially understood that there is
a kind of grief for things that aren't openly acknowledged
or accepted that makes the grief feel less valid when
we mourn things that aren't socially sanctioned, or that people
(08:04):
don't see as important to mourn. Sometimes we have this
dual feeling of loss and sadness, and then also kind
of shame and silliness, like, oh my gosh, I'm this
is so dramatic. That was so long ago, no one
actually died, I should just move on. We also tend
(08:24):
to lack external validation for how we're feeling. When we
do open up about it, people can be quite dismissive, like,
what do you mean you're grieving a past version of you?
There's real things to be grieving, and so that makes
you feel even more isolated, confused, like something's wrong with you,
Like you've got a really serious problem that you don't
(08:46):
want to talk about. But you also feel very strongly about.
Something that is misunderstood about grieving past versions of ourselves
is that we don't necessarily want to go back to
that time. Instead, what's really happening is this internal emotional
process that mirrors a passing. It mirrors this closing of
(09:10):
endure of what you could have been, of different life
paths you could have taken, of certain emotions and feelings
and experiences that were really valuable at that time that
you realize you can't relive. So ultimately, what we're mourning
is a discrepancy between who we were then and who
we are now, and how we see those two different
(09:33):
versions of us as being different. What did they have
that we don't have that we therefore miss And then
the second punch that comes to us is acknowledging like,
oh my god, I could never get that back. Does
that mean that I'll never be happy in the future.
Obviously there's a huge emotion that comes into this, and
(09:56):
it's nostalgia. Nostalgia with a melancholic tinge. You look at
old photos, you listen to music from five years ago. Yes,
it's a warm, nice, fuzzy feeling. But then comes the sadness.
Then comes the yearning, and that yearning, that longing is
incredibly painful because an element of longing and yearning is powerlessness,
(10:20):
is not being able to do anything about it. I
think that nostalgia is such a complicated emotion. I honestly
would go on the record as saying it is the
most complex emotion that we experience as humans, because it
is equally powerful and beautiful as it is despairing and uncomfortable,
(10:40):
Like what other emotion is like that. Other than maybe
like love and heartbreak, Nostalgia does have a role to play, right.
It's an incredibly mentally protective thing to have access to
moments in the past that made us feel happy and
to have that kind of pool of joy and goodness
(11:01):
to draw from in hard times. But when we leart
nostalgia have too much of a say, it can actually
create kind of a peter Pan syndrome where we fight
against growing up, we push back against growth and evolution
because we feel so terrified of having to say goodbye.
We feel so terrified of the idea of things being over.
(11:23):
A twenty twenty study actually found that nostalgia in that
way can make us feel lonelier and more disconnected, because
it gives this sense of being pulled between two different
worlds who we were in the past, this version of
us we want to cling to, and the possibility in
the potential of someone in the future that we might
equally enjoy being but who hasn't been discovered yet. But
(11:47):
I do also think that nostalgia, if we really think
about it, it's just proof that you are living a
life that you are proud of. You would not yearn
for those memories. You would not yearn and long for
those past versions of you if you didn't feel, you know,
proud of them, if you didn't like who you were
then if you hadn't done things that really made you
(12:09):
happy and excited you. I think living with constant chronic
nostalgia often means appreciating what it represents. That you have
lived a happy life and that there are things you
loved about the past, but you cannot let it convince
you that just because there is good in the past,
there cannot be anything better in the future. When that occurs,
(12:32):
that is when our grief for the past dictates our
actions in the present in a really detrimental way, often
by forcing us to keep making the same choices and
staying the same. So this grief brings about nostalgia, it
also brings about confusion and mental disorientation. You might find
(12:53):
yourself thinking who was I then? Who am I now?
How do I explain these different versions of myself to people?
You feel very disconnected from old experiences. You realize that
you've grown, but you also fundamentally understand that some people
only know you as the version of you then, and
so that can bring up the big er, the big
(13:15):
er regret, regret over how you behaved in the past,
regret that that version of you lives on, Regret that
you didn't act differently. You know, how often have you wondered,
how would my life have turned out if I had
just made a small different choice, if I just knew
(13:37):
what I knew now, if I just appreciated that time
or that opportunity more. Maybe what we're experiencing when we
grieve or we miss versions of ourselves is the ability
we had then to make different choices, which we can't
make now. But what you've got to realize is that
you made the best decision with what you knew then.
(13:58):
It's something that we actually talked about on a recent
episode of Mantra the other day. How could you have known?
You're judging your past self based on information you have
now that you didn't have access to. So it's an
unfair judgment. It's in asymmetry that is entirely unfair for
former versions of you. They can't beat that evidence, like
(14:22):
you know what I mean, Like you're judging them based
on what you know now, thinking that they must have
known it. They're not realizing how naive you probably were,
But also, how do you know that the choice your
mourning wouldn't have led to a worse outcome that you
have been saved from. There's this really beautiful quote that
actually I wanted to pull out of that episode of
(14:44):
Mantra I was talking about that I really really loved
from My Angelou, where she says, do the best you
can until you know better. Then when you know better,
do better. And I think that's a really beautiful way
of making peace with the fact that they did make mistakes,
but you still love them. Anyway. This past version of
(15:05):
you didn't have all the information, but you have grace
towards them, and you know that it's all stepping stone
into being a better version of you in the future.
Keep your eyes pointed on the future. I think our investment,
our fascination, our obsession with the past also occurs because
of something that I've mentioned before, the Pollyanner effect. So
(15:29):
this refers to our cognitive tendency to essentially remember positive
experiences more than negative ones. And so when we look
back at who you were before, who you were in
high school, who you were in college, who you were
with that person, often it is so much easier to
recall and see the good experiences and the fun times
(15:51):
and the things that we liked rather than what we
disliked or struggled with at the time. I need to
talk about this experience I had recently. So recently, I
was on tour around Australia for my book Person and Progress,
and part of that tour brought me back to Canberra.
Canberra is like the capital city of Australia if you
don't know that, and it's where I went to university.
(16:14):
It's where I started this podcast actually, and I in
the leadup to going back, I was so nostalgic and
I was really quite sad that I was never going
to be eighteen again. I was never going to be
twenty one again. In this little university town with all
those people having like the time of my life. I
(16:35):
had so much freedom, I had so much fun, and
I was really getting in my head about it. And
I went back, and when I was back there, I
actually went back to my old college dorm and I
snuck into the building, which I don't think I was
allowed to do. My intentions were pure, and I knocked
on the door to my old college room, and this
(16:57):
wonderful girl answered and I was like, this is so strange,
but I used to live here. You can tell me
to go away, but I carved my name into the
back of the back of the door, the closet door,
and I just want to see it. I just want
to see if it's still there. And you know, she
let me in and she was so nice, like she
was so lovely, and I opened the door and there
(17:21):
it was. And I expected to just be like so
overwhelmed with grief and sadness at the passing of time,
and I actually just felt so unbelievably happy and grateful
that I wasn't still there, that I wasn't still in
that timeline. I was like instantly reminded in that moment
(17:43):
of all the things that I had hated about that
time in my life. Obviously it was fun, but I
forgot about how broke I was. I forgot about how
unsure I was. I forgot about how little I slept,
how much I was drinking, how terrible I felt all
the time. I forgot about how lonely I was at times,
(18:05):
how much fomo I had. I forgot about the terrible
meals that I would eat. I forgot about how cold
it was our autobiographical memory is not a perfect video recording.
It's actually reconstructive. So every time we recall a memory,
we're not pulling it from a file. We're actually rebuilding it.
(18:27):
And that process can be influenced by our current mood,
by our beliefs, even by external cues. So that means
that every time you pull out a memory, it becomes
easier for you to erase the bad parts from your
retelling of it to yourself. It becomes very easy to
romanticize a period because the specifics have faded, and our
(18:50):
current feelings will often color our perception of the past.
So if you're not doing well right now, feel sad,
if you're lonely, if you're really just struggle in your life,
you go, when you pull out a memory from the past,
your brain, given its current state, is going to make
that memory look beautiful and wonderful, and it's going to
(19:10):
convince you that that was the best time of your life,
when actually, when you were in it, it probably wasn't. Essentially,
what that means is that you're not just grieving a
past self, you're grieving the narrative and the story you
are telling yourself about the past, and that can be
really dangerous when you are, like I said, going through
(19:34):
a tough time. It can really manifest in a difficulty
accepting your current self, struggling to fully integrate the new
you with the old you. And I think it really
keeps you from living in the present. Okay, we're going
to take a short break, but when we return, I
want to talk about why this is so much more
(19:55):
common in our twenties, and also how to deal with it,
how to manage, how to start romanticizing the past, how
to live in the now. So stay with us. Grieving
previous versions of ourselves is a process that is necessary,
it's normal. It's also incredibly sped up and intensified during
(20:19):
the decade that we're in. There are so many profound
shifts and changing moments that happen when we're in our
twenties and even our early thirties. It's such a period
of big change and changes that happen one after another
that it means that our identity feels particularly unstable where
we are at right now. So there are more revisions
(20:41):
and versions of ourselves to grieve than I think in
any other time of our life. This is particularly because
of physical environmental transitions that we're going through, and how
many chapters close and then open quite quickly in succession.
I'm going to give you some examples of why this
(21:02):
happens a lot in our twenties. Firstly, you will see
a lot of people leaving formal education and starting careers.
So you lose the student identity, the structure, the clear
academic goals, the specific peer group, the sense of being
on a path, and you're really thrust into an adult
world of work where the rules are different. You turn
(21:24):
from being a student to a professional. It feels like
there are certain things you can't do anymore, certain environments
you can't access, you can't go and study in the
library with your mates, Like it's all different to you,
and so it's trying to reconcile who you were before,
who you are now and say goodbye to them. We
also find that in our twenties, obviously a lot of
(21:45):
us move away from home. So this involves the loss
of family proximity, childhood routines, a sense of belonging, and
also a specific place or community that wants to find you.
As you're building a new home and new routine and
new sense of belonging. It's beautiful, it's magnificent. There's so
much growth there. There's also an appreciation of like, Okay,
(22:06):
I'm never going to be five again, I'm never going
to be twelve. It's never going to be a beautiful
summer day when I'm fifteen and I have no responsibilities.
There's also changes in relationships, so typical experience in your twenties.
Hopefully you guys know this is drifting away from old
friends who no longer share your path. You're also navigating
(22:29):
new romantic partners, starting significant relationships, ending significant relationships. We
know that relationships and connection form a great part of
our identity. So if you've always had a best friend
and now you no longer do, it feels like a
part of you is missing. If you enter a new relationship,
if you leave a relationship, it's actually quite a stressful
(22:51):
thing to integrate that new label single partnered, girlfriend, boyfriend
into who you are. All of this come down to
identity shifts. I also think we need to talk about
significant personal growth and trauma that happens during this defining period.
This could include overcoming major life challenges, experiencing profound shifts
(23:15):
in who you are, For example, if you are someone
who has recovered from a severe mental illness, a severe
eating disorder, and you're no longer feeling like you're defined
by that illness, you've shared that identity. That's going to
feel incredibly liberating. You're going to feel very proud of yourself.
It also carries the weight of acknowledging what you've lost
(23:37):
in the process, perhaps a familiar albeit unhealthy coping mechanism,
perhaps a distorted sense of control, but also time. You've
lost time, and part of that grief is really realizing
you know, you're only going to be seventeen once, You're
only going to be twenty twenty one, whatever age it is,
(24:00):
and you can feel like, because of what you were
going through that that period was wasted. I know, it
probably doesn't help coming from me, someone who doesn't know
your story, doesn't know who you are. It wasn't wasted.
You were working towards, you were battling against something very
very difficult. That is not a waste ever, And you've
(24:21):
got to realize you're judging your previous self based on
who you are now, and the person who you are
now only came into existence because of the sacrifices and
the difficulties experienced by your previous self who had to
work through that. You have so much to be thankful
for for them and how strong they were, how much
(24:43):
they put into this journey, how much they put into
this growth. And it kind of feels weird that you're
like killing them off. But they had to die, right,
They had to go for you to be where you
are now. Whenever I feel sad about missing who I
was before, I always think about these plants that my
grandma has, So in her backyard, she has these plants.
(25:05):
I think they're called hydrangers. Hydrangers, I think that's it.
And whenever I'm at her house, she always has me
cut the old flowers off these plants. Like she has
me like basically like butcher them and cut all these
limbs off. And one time I asked her, I was like,
why do you need me to do this, Like, aren't
you destroying the plant? And she said, you know, it's
(25:26):
because those parts need to be removed for new flowers
to come in. If we didn't do that, the plant
would die under the weight of basically these old, dead
parts of itself. And I feel like that is such
a beautiful metaphor for my own personal development. It's why
I feel more at peace now with aging, with closing chapters,
(25:47):
with moving on with my life from old relationships, places, things,
old versions of me. I don't want to die being
who I was at twenty three for the next sixty years.
I don't want to constantly try to relive stages of
my life that are no longer representative of who I am.
(26:08):
I think that that loss and that pain shows that
you are on the right path. Perhaps the final reason
that I can really think of that this scares us
a lot is that the past versions of us feel
very comfortable. There's something that is known, and there is
a lot in the future that is unknown. There's a
(26:29):
lot of mystery there, and so perhaps what is really
intertwined in with this is a fear of the unknown,
a fear of our future self. If the self is
constantly changing, how stable is our identity really? Who are we?
Who are we really actually at our core? What parts
of us stay the same? How do I know that
(26:49):
I'm even the same person. So it's not just grief,
it's very existential questions. It's questions of this self. It
means that you're probably a very deep thinker. If you
are sitting there and trying to figure out who you
are then, who you are now? What does that mean
for me? Who am I going to be in the future.
(27:10):
It's a bit of a mind puzzle, actually. But you know,
if this grief goes unacknowledged or unaddressed, it can have
less than desirable outcomes. It can contribute to prolonged sadness,
even depression, especially if the feeling of loss is so
intense that you isolate yourself, or if it triggers an
identity crisis. You can have difficulty forming new connections because
(27:35):
you're constantly trying to revert to past relational patterns or
struggling to adapt to new social environments. And I think
critically idealizing the past can lead to chronic dissatisfaction with
the present because you're constantly comparing your life to a
romanticized version of what once was. One factor that has
undeniably complicated this process for you and I in the
(27:59):
modern age is social media. It's just actually most digital technology.
Think about it. Every single version of who you are
now is probably immortalized online. Old Facebook posts, blurry Instagram photos,
snapchat photos from literally decades ago. Sometimes they serve as
(28:22):
digital foot prints, constant reminders of who we once were,
and this digital archive can make it incredibly difficult to
let go because it creates a perpetual comparison point. It's
like having an old photo album that updates itself daily,
showing you who you once were, even when you're trying
to move forward. It's like when you go through a
(28:43):
breakup and people say to delete all the photos of
you with your ex, because otherwise you'll look back at
the photo of you on a nice holiday or having
a great time and think that it was all beautiful.
That's pretty difficult when it's you and you're trying to
break up with an old version of yourself. The highlight
reel effect as well on social media definitely amplifies this. Listen,
(29:07):
all the stuff that you probably posted online was probably
the best photos that you had, probably the photos where
you looked the hottest, probably the times when you felt
the happiest. That's why they made it online. And yet
right now you're comparing a very messy, unfiltered version of
your life with the version of you that was curated
(29:27):
by past you. It's so funny when we compare to
people online. Everyone always says, you know, social media isn't real.
You've got to remember that for you as well. I
often think about this when I look at photos of
myself when I was smaller, like physically smaller, when I
waned less, and I'm like, God, she was so fit,
(29:49):
Like she was so fit and healthy, and like, I
don't look like that anymore now. And then recently I
found an old phone and I was going through it
and I was like, oh, look, I remember that photo.
And I went back and I found the photo, and
then I found like the twenty other virgins of that photo,
when I was like, wait a second, Like, I angles, everything,
(30:09):
poses are everything. I know that now, how come I'm
not applying that to past me who knew the same thing.
Let's also touch briefly on attachment theory. Now, obviously we
often discuss this in the context of relationship with others,
but here's the nuance. We form attachments not just to people,
(30:30):
but to aspects of ourselves and our roles and our identities,
even our routines. So losing these internal attachments can also
evoke a similar form of grief to losing a person.
The reason that you were so attached to a previous
identity that you had is probably because you really liked
(30:50):
that person and you felt safe and comfortable as that person.
And so having to kind of rip two people apart,
rip old you and knew you were part is going
to feel like disentangling a whole lot of complex loyalties
and attachments and insecurities and securities between who you were
(31:13):
then and who you are now. So how do we
navigate closing an old chapter? How do we grieve without
getting stuck in the past. I think, firstly, it's so
important to acknowledge this grief. And I was gonna say
validate it, but I know that some people hate that word,
But you know what, acknowledge and validate the grief. This
(31:36):
is the absolute first step. These feelings are not silly
or irrational. If you feel a pang of sadness or
longing for a past version of yourself, acknowledge it, Say
to yourself, this is a real feeling. I'm obviously very sad,
I'm obviously feeling things that are complex, and I can
(31:58):
just sit with that for a little while. I don't
have to put it in a box. I don't have
to resolve that feeling right away. What if you actually
just let yourself for three minutes, three minutes right now,
just feel really sad about who you were. Then I
find that when I'm really stuck, I do really need
(32:19):
to just put what's in my brain into something physical.
For me, that's journaling. And I know it's such a cliche,
a cliche thing, but a problem on a page is
a problem halved. One of the journal prompts that I
find incredibly powerful is to write about what I loved
about them, what I missed about them, and whether I
(32:42):
feel like it's because I'm missing something now. Am I
just reflecting on that time from a place of happiness
or is there genuinely something that I want to change
in my life that this nostalgia is trying to remind
me of. Remember, this is a form of enfranchise grief.
So if other people don't understand it, if other people
(33:05):
make you feel weird about it, if other people say
I know I've never experienced that doesn't really matter. It's
an emotion that exists within you, means it's valid enough. Think.
Also part of this is practicing self compassion. Think about
how you'd treat a friend who was going through a
really tough transition. Think about what you would say to
(33:26):
a sibling or someone you really loved who came to
you and said, I just can't let go of who
I was before. What advice would you have for them?
What do you need to hear? The thing I always
remind myself of that makes me feel better is that
if I didn't grow, I wouldn't get to experience the world.
If the alternative that I would want is to go
(33:47):
back to the past and relive certain points of my life,
I would be avoiding so much beauty in the future,
growing older, experiencing new things. That is the huge experience.
That is what I am here for. I'm here to observe,
I am here to feel. I am here to learn,
and part of that is learning who I'm going to
(34:10):
be at thirty two. Who am I going to be
at forty five? Who am I going to be as
a mother? Who am I going to be as a grandmother?
Who am I going to be as a wife, as
as an artist, as someone older and wiser. That is
part of the human experience. It's a gift, it's a
blessing to be able to get there. Instead of viewing
(34:31):
your past self as well as something that is completely
abandoned or forgotten. You also have to remember that this
is a foundational layer upon which your current self is
being built. The old you is still part of your story.
You've just expanded on it, You've just refined them. Think
of it like a really beautiful building that has undergone
(34:53):
renovations and additions over time. The beautiful original structure is
still there. It's contributing to its current form and character.
You're just adding to it. Yes, I know we've been
using the word death a lot. Maybe the better word
is evolution. What kind of small behaviors can you still
(35:14):
recognize that you do today and what kind of things
did you learn in the past that are still with
you today? That shows that your past self is still
very much alive and well, they're just not center stage.
I think this really allows us to see identity development
not as a threat to your stability, but as a
very exciting opportunity for continuous learning, for mastery, for becoming.
(35:37):
If you were who you were at twenty four for
the rest of your life, that would make you a
finished product, that would make you very still, very stagnant,
very bored. That's not a way you want to live
the pain of growing is actually quite a beautiful thing.
And whilst it's okay to acknowledge the past, try to
(35:59):
gently read direct your energy to who you are now,
ask yourself, and sink deep into your current passions and goals.
Something that I really really think is important for everyone
to have is a project of some kind. Often when
we are experiencing intense emotions about the past, very existential
(36:21):
emotions about identity, we really need something that's going to
get us out of our mind and into our bodies
or into a very active mental state, into a flow state.
This like really saved me last year when I was
going through a very difficult time having very existential thoughts,
I just realized that I spent a lot of my day,
(36:42):
I gave myself a lot of time to think, and
at that point, like I didn't need to do any
more thinking. There was nothing that thinking about my thoughts
was going to get me. Like I had done enough.
What I really needed to do was start acting on
something else, acting on a different for an impulse, a
different interest, a different point of fascination. So I got
(37:06):
a project, and that's how like my running journey really began.
Now I'm running like four or five times a week,
and I love it. And I never thought I was
going to be a runner, but I realized that I
needed something else to think about in that time instead
of giving my brain the opportunity to just ruminate. Part
of me thinks that the reason I was so hung
up on past versions of myself and thinking about the
(37:28):
passing of time and change and all that was because
I was just bored. Like I genuinely think I was
just bored. And my brain was like, all right, let's
pull something out of the Let's pull something out of
the cabinet that will take you a lot of time
to think about and come to an answer on, because
there is no answer, right, let's choose this. And what
I really needed to do was like, stay to my mind, okay,
(37:51):
but how about we do this instead? And what this
was was something real and tangible and in my environment,
like I needed to do something with my hand and
with my body. So get a project, get a self
improvement project, get a travel goal, like have a finance goal,
a savings goal. Go back to UNI, like have something
(38:11):
that you need to work on that you can care
about and think about, specifically, something that is future orientated
That can get you out of ruminating on the past
into projecting good things, good energy, or your resources, your
time into the future. This also might sound a little
bit woo woo for some of you, but consider doing
(38:33):
some sort of symbolic ritual letting go or for celebrating evolution.
Whilst they're not formal grief rituals, you can create your
own personal ways to acknowledge the transition and to say, yes,
I'm going to grieve here, I'm going to formally close
a chapter and kind of make peace with it. This
(38:54):
could be like writing a letter to your past self,
thanking them for the lessons learned, saying goodbye to what
no longer serves you, or conversely creating something like a
future self vision board. You could also, I don't know
this sounds really strange, but find memorabilia and photos from
a past version of you, past version of you who
(39:16):
was in a relationship or who was a certain person
at a certain time, and put them in a box,
send them out to sea, bury them somewhere. Do something
like that that symbolically kind of cuts a tie, mainly
with parts of yourself that might not be helpful to
bring into the future, but also parts of yourself that
you're finding you are too actively grieving to move on,
(39:40):
and you need to just be like, Okay, cool, we
aren't going back there. There's nothing that we can do
to go back there. So let's formally say goodbye. I
think there's also a celebration in that. Buy some champagne,
get some cupcakes. Really, this is for the moments when
you are super stuck, say goodbye, have a few for
(40:00):
the past version of you, and then celebrate what you
are now. Celebrate this new chapter of life.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I read this quote that says every day you wake
up is another little life, is another birth, and I
just think that's so beautiful. I'm like, yeah, each day
is its own little life, it's its own little lifespan.
And that really helped me in, you know, feeling better
(40:27):
about being in the present rather than feeling torn to
the past, stuck in the past and constantly ruminating over
the future, constantly thinking about it. Okay, we are going
to take one more short break, but when we return,
we have our listener questions for the day, so stay
with us. Okay, we have some amazing listener questions for
(40:54):
this episode. When I went to Instagram and said, what
do you guys want to know? What dilemmas are you
facing into grieving past versions of you? A lot of
you are like, I really need to hear this. I
really need to hear this episode and hear hear my thoughts.
So thank you for sharing. Let's start with this first question.
How do I actually know when it's time to leave
(41:16):
a past version of me and step into a new one?
What are the psychological signs? Oh? I loved this question.
I was like, I could make a list that goes
on for days, but I'm gonna just leave you with
three things that I think are really telling. Firstly, you
feel an inner sense of restlessness. You feel like your
(41:37):
life currently makes you feel very highly strong, makes you
feel quite anxious, makes you feel like like your mind
is racing uncomfortable. You feel this sense of like I
want to be doing things. I want things to change,
I want things to move. You don't know what it
is yet, but you know something needs to change, so
(42:00):
you're really craving different things. I think Also, you might
find yourself thinking there has to be more, There has
to be more to life. What if I meant for
something else? What if this isn't who I want to
be for the next ten years? Could I imagine myself
here for the next five ten years? And the answer
(42:22):
keeps coming back is no. So there's this low hum
of discontent, this low hum of restlessness. Secondly, the old
version of you feels kind of like self abandonment. You
notice that you're constantly saying yes to things you don't
(42:43):
actually want to do. You're constantly finding yourself bored in
situations that previously made yourself made you very happy. You
can't talk to the people you were friends with during
that time. You feel like you're hiding parts of yourself.
It just feels like a betrayal. I was like, these
people aren't really matching up. And finally, I think that
(43:06):
you can tell it's time to close an old chapter
if it feels like it's taking more of you to
keep the door open than it would to shut. So
what I mean by that is that it's taking more
effort for you to keep returning to this old life,
returning to this past version of you, than it would
(43:27):
to accept the future. I remember when I first moved
to Sydney from Canberra, I would go back to Canberra
all the time to see my friends all the time
to just be in my old neighborhood, and I was like, wait,
it's taking me so much effort to try and maintain
this former life. Maybe this is a sign that like
(43:50):
I need to move on, Like I'm not meant to
be here anymore. That's a really important sign. I think
the second question is around forgiveness. How can I actually
forgive my past self the mistake that I made when
I didn't know any better. I grieve the fact that
she could have made better choices. Oh gosh, don't we all?
(44:11):
There is something that every single one of us regrets
doing or not doing. I promise you that hold it
in your mind right now. There's something you regret, there's
something that you cringe at. So I want you to
know what's a universal experience. First of all, people are
just better at hiding it. People also aren't going to
(44:32):
come out and say and talk about their regrets. It's
this weird thing that we don't do. I think the
fact that you can acknowledge that you made a mistake
or that you didn't make a good choice is all
the evidence that you need that you have grown the
version of you back then who made that mistake. Who
did the wrong thing would not be able to acknowledge
(44:55):
that she did the wrong thing, and she wouldn't be
able to handle, you know, the humil that would take.
So you've obviously taken a lot of responsibility. I also
want to remind you you had no idea about then
of how everything would have turned out. You really didn't
know you made a mistake, because that's the only way
(45:16):
to grow. Literally, the only way to learn is to
do the wrong thing or to have someone else teach
you who has done the wrong thing. So you really
need to have some grace, have some kindness towards your
past self. I also want you to stop and focus
on your life right now and think about four things
(45:36):
that you are incredibly grateful for that have happened in
the past six months. Four things that probably wouldn't have
happened if you weren't on this timeline and if you
weren't on this path. Think about it. You have a
lot to thank this person, for this past version of you,
for for making a mistake. Because even if you didn't
(45:58):
like what she did, even if you are frustrated by
her stupidity or her naivety of whatever it is it
still meant that you came across and you ended up
experiencing these beautiful things, so you do have a little
bit to be thankful for. Let's talk about this third question. Now,
I have a dilemma. How do I live with my
(46:19):
family who still see me as a past version of myself?
That's tricky. I feel like everyone expects continuity from us.
It's like that experience when like your grandma keeps buying
you the same presence based on something that she found
out that you liked, like back when you were three.
Like I had this period in my life where everyone
(46:39):
would buy me rabbit stuff and I was like, I
don't even like rabbits anymore, Like because I had a
rabbit when I was like seven, and until I was
like sixteen, every single Christmas I would get like rabbit slippers,
rabbit you know, post it nodes, like rabbit clothing, and
it was very sweet. But it's kind of similar to that,
but on a more level. You kind of want to
(47:01):
hold people and scream at them and be like I'm
not that person, Like can't you see I've changed? Like
no me for me. Now, the tricky thing is you
just have to let them be wrong about you. You
just have to let them be mistaken. The more authentic
you are, Actually, the less you try and convince them,
(47:21):
the more I think it comes across to them, the
more it signals to them that you are different because
you're living it and you're showing them, and you are
vibrant in who you are now and your identity that
you feel comfortable in. So spend less time trying to
convince them, because I feel like sometimes when we feel
like we have to convince ourselves, and more time just
(47:41):
living in the president, living organically and authentically as the
version of you that you really want to be. Our
final question for the day. I gave up recently on
a career that I thought would make me happy because
I was going broke, But I still wish almost every
day that I had done it. What is your advice?
(48:03):
My advice to you is that it is not too late.
It is never too late. You have all the time
in the world to go back and try again. Maybe
the time just wasn't right. Do you know how many actors, authors, musicians,
sports stars, small business owners, anybody you can think of,
have stories about them quitting almost every single one of them,
(48:26):
or have stories about setbacks. Every single one of them does.
Maybe this is just part of the story, This is
part of your origin story, the beginning of a really amazing,
cool chapter that you're about to write of getting back
on the horse. Also, there is this huge tension between
(48:48):
passion and practicality, right, and I talk about this in
my book. Actually this idea that people often think that
if you've given up on your dreams, you are somehow
like undisciplined, you don't actually want it. And what we
have to realize is that practically money is important. You
need money to live, You need certain things to be
(49:10):
well and to survive and to thrive as a human being.
Because you put your dream on pause for money, that
doesn't mean that you are any less entitled to that dream.
It doesn't mean that you deserve it any less. You
just did what you needed to do. So my advice
is to find small ways to keep practicing the dream
(49:32):
career or the dream thing that you want to do
on a smaller scale, and just to keep at it
and know that you have heaps of time. Okay, as
we wrap up today's episode and want to leave you
with this final thing, the grief you might feel for
your past self isn't a sign that something is wrong
with you or that you are stuck, and it is
(49:53):
certainly not a sign that all the good in your
life has already happened and is in the past. It's
actually a very profound indicator that you are growing. I
fully believe discomfort is the first sign of evolution. You
are adapting, you are learning, You are becoming this new
person that you're going to be so proud of. Embrace
(50:14):
this process, Embrace the pain, Embrace how messy it is,
and remember that every version of you that fades does
make space for a stronger, wiser, more real version of you.
That's really what you're creating. You're creating space for them,
even if they're not quite there yet. Thank you again
(50:34):
for listening to this episode. If you've made it this far,
I want you to leave an emoji in the comments
that best represents evolution and growth for you. Make sure
that you are following along wherever you are listening, and
send this episode to a friend, a colleague, a family member,
anybody who you think would really really resonate with it.
(50:56):
Make sure that you are following me on Instagram at
that psychology podcast so you can contribute to our listener
questions plus so much more, and make sure you listen
to Maltra. I'll leave a link in the description below,
But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle
to your past, present and future self, and we will
talk very very soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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