Interview with Harold Bloomfield, M.D. about making peace with your past

Dr. Bloomfield shares the secrets of his book, Making Peace with Your Past and answers some questions that may change your future.

Why is it so important to make peace with the past?

According to scientific research, it's not just our relationships, success and happiness that's at stake: our very lives may depend upon making peace with the past. It's as important to our health and longevity as stopping smoking.

We all carry a great deal of unfinished emotional business that we hope is neatly tucked away. But recent studies in major scientific journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association confirm what psychiatrists have always known: the past can wreak havoc on every aspect of our quintessential self—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and relational. Unless painful experiences are dealt with in an emotionally literate way, their impact persists. This can lead to depression, for example, which usually entails suppressed emotions such as rage and sorrow. It can result in habitual patterns of behavior that lead to the same mistakes over and over again. Every day, for instance, marriages break up because of unresolved pain from past relationships. It can also result in serious illness.

Your book cites scientific research showing that people with adverse childhood experiences are more prone to serious illness and early death. Can you explain how this is possible, and what the implications are?

A landmark study of more than 20,000 adults, cited in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that childhood adversity is a major risk factor in the development of heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disorders and other life-threatening illnesses. Among other causes, people who had a traumatic childhood are much more likely to smoke, take drugs, overeat and remain sedentary. Naturally, such behavior leads directly to various diseases that can take years off someone's life. The implications are enormous. In one study, 66% of the people surveyed reported that they had suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse during childhood. In another, 69% had experienced a traumatic event in the past.

Is someone with a traumatic childhood doomed?

On the contrary, those studies show how vital it is to identify people who have had an adverse childhood and help them heal the wounds of the past. Regardless of our age, we can overcome the impact of early trauma. My book contains a large number of proven techniques and strategies for doing exactly that. It's a systematic program based upon scientific research and 30 years of experience with tens of thousands of clients. To cite just one technique, writing about past experience because it has been shown to alleviate depression and high blood pressure, as well as reduce the symptoms of arthritis and asthma.

Is your book only for people who had a dysfunctional childhood? What about things that happen after we grow up?

There are basically two kinds of childhood: dysfunctional and very dysfunctional. But the book pays equal attention to adolescence and adulthood. As teenagers, most of us suffer tremendous humiliation, shame and anguish as we try desperately to stand out and at the same time not be different. As we make our way in the world, we get so caught up in the hierarchy of competition and comparison, equating self-worth with net worth, that it's hard to escape feelings of shame, inadequacy and regret. It's also in adulthood that we start to experience losses more frequently, including divorce and the death of loved ones. Making Peace With Your Past deals with all unresolved experiences that rob us of love and joy in the present, whether they happened on the day of our birth or yesterday.

Don't we all have excess baggage? Isn't it just the human condition?

Certainly, but the question is, do we take steps to lighten our baggage or do we let it get heavier and heavier until it crushes us? Do we come to terms with the issues that haunt us, or do we let them continue to ruin our relationships, our success, our enjoyment and our health? This book represents a wonderful opportunity to lighten your load and bring joy and enthusiasm back into your life.

Most people are concerned with the future. Why should they bother looking backward?

There's a big difference between looking back to heal the past and dwelling on it endlessly and obsessively. The impulse to leave the past behind is admirable if it means living fully in the present. But if the past is not completely digested, it continues to live inside of us. Studies show that as much as 80% of our life energy is spent protecting ourselves from the hurt we've experienced in the past. This robs us of our freedom. And try as we may to ignore it, the unresolved past eventually catches up to us—often in mid-life, when we realize we might have fewer years left than we've already lived and the entire past is up for examination. When you make peace with the past, you free your life energy to enjoy the present and build a more fulfilling future.

It's been said that ours is a culture of victimization. We blame something other than ourselves for our troubles. Doesn't a book like yours perpetuate that attitude?

On the contrary, one of the precepts of Making Peace With Your Past is that we're each responsible for our own inner state. Blaming others—or fate, or God—for our pain has some temporary value when it’s used to let the rage out. Otherwise it gets turned inward in the form of self-punishment, depression and the physical illnesses that result from chronic stress. But it’s crucial to take responsibility for getting rid of that rage appropriately so the blaming can stop and you can really take charge of your life.

Does making peace with the past mean we have to forgive the unforgivable? Is forgiveness always necessary?

Forgiveness is not something you give to another person. It’s something you give to yourself. The primary reason to consider forgiving those who have hurt you is for your own peace of mind and the quality of all your future relationships. Otherwise the pain of what was done to you in the past will poison every relationship, whether it’s with your family, business associates or sexual partners. Making the effort to forgive is valuable because it helps you find resolution within yourself, and that’s what matters most. In the end, you may or may not choose to reconcile with the person who’s hurt you.

Resolution is always possible, reconciliation only sometimes.

How does the past influence our current love relationships and our sexuality?

Our bedrooms are very crowded places. Every time you make love, two sets of parents are there—yours and your partner’s. We’re either complying with the sexual messages our parents gave us or defying them in adolescent ways. Of course all our former lovers are hovering over the bed as well. Also present are all the other carriers of sexual messages, such as our peers, teachers, clergy and the media. Unfinished business from the past can have a huge dampening effect on our love lives. Many people nowadays have arm’s-length relationships; they have spouses or lovers but they’re not fully connected to them. They’re holding back, unable to be truly intimate, because they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: afraid of being alone and afraid of being hurt again. This leads to loneliness, terrible conflict and divorce.

Some people are angry with their parents for things that happened decades ago. Can we ever really get over those wounds?

We have to remember that just as we’ll always be a child to our parents, the parents of our childhood live on in our heads and hearts. We may love them today, but as children we may have been shamed, intimidated, forced into roles that were unsuitable for us or taught us faulty life lessons. In order to adapt, many of us made a “psychic contract of pain,” giving up our authentic selves. That’s why it’s vital to make peace with the parents of your childhood. Otherwise, your relationship with them in the present will be constantly disturbed because as soon as you’re together the old roles and tapes start playing once again. We can and must make peace with parents, whether they’re alive or not.

What does making peace with the past actually entail?

One step is to systematically experience the source of deep peace within us. The book contains powerful, practical techniques for cultivating harmony, balance and ease, despite the ravages of the past. The other major steps are: breaking the shackles of shame; stopping the slow acid drip of guilt and regret; resolving the lingering grief of past losses; healing the wounds of love and sex; and ending the bitterness of blame so we can let go of anger and move on and up to enjoy a great future.

What are people like once they’ve made peace with their past?

I’ve seen thousands of people make peace with their pasts. They become happier, more radiant, better equipped for experiencing love, joy and gratitude in the present and building the life they’ve always dreamed of having. They know who they are and accept everything that has shaped their life story and brought them to the present moment. They no longer punish themselves by making the same self-defeating mistakes over and over again. They are in control of their lives. Another distinguishing feature is a desire to serve. Having found inner peace, they want to make the world a better place for others.

It’s one thing for individuals to make peace with their personal past. What about our collective past?

We’ve just lived through the most violent century in human history. In America alone, we face a host of social problems rooted in our common past: slavery and racism, the subjugation of women, the Depression, world wars, the rape of the environment, Vietnam, the sexual revolution—all these and more scream out to finally be resolved. Suffering has been the human condition because we’ve been treating each other with abuse. It doesn’t have to be that way. In this new millennium we can, we can put the era of domination and submission behind us and co-create an era of dominion. One place to start is by raising all of our children with love and respect instead of shame and intimidation. With our collective resources and technology, there is no reason we can’t undo the damage we’ve done, to ourselves and one another, and create a world that works for everyone.