When do you get stuck in past?

Day 46

One of the best seller novel and the adaptation movie that became a blockbuster in this decade was “Notebook” by Nicholas Sparks. The main theme of the story is based on the concept of Alzheimer’s. In my healthcare career I have witnessed patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia disease. There are times they are unaware of the present but their mind is racing in the past. But there are times even though we don’t have any Alzheimer disease we are stuck in the past.

  

So here is my question: When do you get stuck in past?

High school prom stories, College stories, War stories, first love, people, Past Glories, etc. are some of the examples when people normally get stuck in the past. They have physically moved on in life but mentally somewhere in their subconscious mind they are stuck. I believe the human minds have excellent power to store past things with feelings, experiences, success, etc. in the subconscious area of the brain. The conscious mind is busy analyzing the current episodes of life and recording items to the subconscious mind.  

The feeling of being stuck in the past could come to you in a flash and could last as long as a flash to couple of days. The feeling of being stuck could become as intense as the feeling of being imprisoned to the past to happen. It is like the mind is forcing you relive the episode all over again. One of the biggest challenges people encounter is identifying the thought process in correlation to a past, and to focus on the present.

The feeling of being is stuck in the past normally shows signs of an unengaged brain, an ideal mind. Many psychological studies indicate the inability of the brain to find a closure of the past source the effect of being stuck in the past. The key is to train the brain to focus on the present and engage in current events.

“Past indicates trail of our journey but Present focuses on the steps we are taking now”

~Lenji Jacob