Memories surge in our minds and we cringe, wondering why we had to do that thing which caused us so much shame. On one level, we identify strongly with the past version of ourselves who did it, and on another level, we strongly resist it - not wanting to believe that we ever had the capacity to do such a thing.
In On Becoming A Person, Carl Rogers describes in many ways how his patients would almost always reach a certain point in therapy, where they let go of many ideas and ideals about who they believed they were. They realized that their identities were more complex and fluid than any paragraph or summary. They were complete people, ongoing processes that were free of definition.
In that scenario where we are plagued by some cringey memory, we can make a choice to let go. We can let go of the resistance, embracing our past self as an aspect of us. We can let go of the identity, accepting that we are more than could ever be defined by one event.
