The past can be a fond time to remember and full of joy. But it can also be an enormous burden. 

When the past stops being pleasant and becomes a weight around your neck, your present happiness can suffer greatly. 

This is especially true if trauma or unresolved conflicts or unrequited desires in the past are weighing on your heart and mind. 

Here are the psychological signs that too much focus on the past is bringing down your current well-being.

1) You dwell on the past

Dwelling on past regrets, pain or unrequited love and unmet needs is painful. 

There are things you can learn from reflecting on the past in this way, but when it becomes a daily occurrence it begins to sap energy from your present. 

Instead of moving forward, you’re stuck in what’s already done and reinforcing it.

As psychology writer Akina Chargualaf points out:

“Dwelling on the past also means resisting what’s in store for you. Trust the process and give yourself some credit for coming this far.”

2) You hold on to grudges

When something really wrong goes down it’s not easy to get over it. 

You do your best to move on, but that injury or abuse that was done to you still rankles. You still feel the sinking feeling of betrayal, the humiliation of exclusion. 

You’re holding on to grudges, and bringing that energy into the present. 

When this happens, it detracts from the present and leads to a lot of wasted energy that could be better spent on proactive pursuits. 

“Whatever your intentions or the cause of your bitterness, holding a grudge can end up hurting you as much as the person who inspired it,” observes psychology writer Sarah Vanbuskirk.

“Clinging to anger can impact you, emotionally, physically, and socially, so it’s important to learn to let go of your grudges and cope with anger in a healthier way.”

3) Your past hurts your self-image

Past pain and regrets are harming your self-image. 

For many of us, a message of not being good enough or being unwanted finds its way into our psyche at a young age. It becomes like wearing contact lenses:

Everywhere we go, we see it through the instinct of not belonging or not being good enough. 

We then begin feeling very alone, our self-confidence suffers and we begin inaccurately perceiving the world and other people as being against us or disliking us. 

When the past is having this effect it’s necessary to often go to therapy and begin uprooting past deeply-set beliefs and narratives.

As psychotherapist Amy Morin, LCSW explains:

“Changing the way you think isn’t always enough to change your deep-rooted beliefs and feelings about yourself…

Building a healthy sense of self will take work and it will likely feel uncomfortable, but it’ll be worth it.”

4) You feel held back by your past

Past experiences are holding you back from pursuing your dreams. You think of past failures and disappointments and end up staying in or not applying to a job you want. 

You end up deciding not to take a risk and move for a new opportunity because it didn’t work last time…

You end up letting a person you like slip through your hands in dating, because you’re scared of getting your heart broken again… 

There’s no shortcut. It takes a strong decision that the past will no longer be your master. 

As Pastor Joel Osteen writes in his book “Your Best Life Now”:

“You must make a decision that you are going to move on. 

“It won’t happen automatically. 

“You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.’”

5) You’re full of negative narratives and self-sabotaging behaviors

You don’t believe in your potential because you’ve had times in the past when you fell short. 

You also sometimes sabotage your own self-interest as a result of not really believing in yourself. 

Your head has many negative narratives running through it and often has black-and-white thinking as well:

You sometimes think of things like “I’ll never be happy,” or “I’m just destined to be single forever.”

As clinical psychologist Melanie McNally, Psy.D. explains:

“Everyone has self-limiting beliefs. They’re the perceptions and thoughts you have about yourself, others, and the world. 

And they’re self-limiting because these perceptions and thoughts are preventing you from doing something that you’re actually quite capable of doing (even though you don’t think you are!).”

6) You turn to the past for reassurance and past identities

You think about past nostalgia quite often and who you used to be. 

The present feels overwhelming, sad, or boring. 

You want to go back into the past and be who you were back then, with the friends you had and the type of body and mentality you had back then. 

“Being obsessed with the past can lead to maladaptive behavior; for instance, not being able to move forward with future plans or foregoing the present day while lingering on a long gone past,” notes Psychology Today magazine.

7) You avoid situations that trigger past trauma

You find yourself blocking emotions and experiences you’re having because it brings up past trauma. 

When you’re in uncomfortable situations or things which challenge your well-being, they are ten times as hard:

The reason is because it’s not just the present challenge which you’re trying to deal with but also the awful memories and self-doubts it brings up from the past. 

As a result you may self-isolate or try to “play it safe” in a way that’s limiting. 

As Dr. Jamie Aten, Ph.D. explains:

“When feeling triggered, it is common to experience negative thoughts and beliefs. These might include thoughts like ‘I am not safe’ or ‘I am powerless.’

Try to challenge these thoughts by looking for evidence to the contrary.”

8) You have trouble trusting people because of what happened before

Past betrayal and disappointment has shaken you up to the extent that you don’t really trust people much anymore. 

You take a long time to warm up to somebody, and even once you do you still keep secrets from them and don’t open up to them. 

It’s not even because of real reservations you have, but rather is because of memories of bad things that happened in the past from trusting too fully. 

You’re so scared to get burned again that you’re barely living. 

“We all want to be loved, to be safe, and to be seen,” writes Dr. Carla Manly, Ph.D.

“When we are betrayed by someone who’s dear to us by a person who’s very intimate, we can go to the very depth of ourselves to all of the wounds that maybe weren’t healed and to the new wounds that are caused by the betrayal.”

9) You resist change and trying new things that don’t fit with your past conception of yourself

You fear change because the worst-case scenario keeps running through your head. 

This issue of metathesiophobia is prevalent in those who are living in fear or sadness about the past or who are stuck on the past in a nostalgic way. 

When you feel like the past was so much better and want to go back, change is your enemy. 

When you feel like past trauma made everything dangerous and upsetting, changes just add more unwelcome shocks to the system.

As psychology writer Morgan Mandriota writes: 

“The fear of change, or metathesiophobia , is a phobia that causes people to avoid changing their circumstances due to being extremely afraid of the unknown. 

It is sometimes associated with the fear of moving, also known as tropophobia.”