past, past experiences

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The past is a lot of events up to the present moment.

Past experiences are events that are stored in memory that influence current behavior. What has already been experienced and recorded in personal history as past and unchangeable.

More precisely, past experience lives not only in the person himself — he lives in the memory of the people around him, and in the work book, and in the records of police protocols … Past experience is distinguished from direct experience acquired here and now.

Types of the past

The past, past experience can be processed and not, it can be both positive and negative. If the experience was unprocessed, then very often this past experience was negative. The burden of past experience. Processed experience is an experience with conclusions for the future, then it is a life experience and, as a rule, a resource. It is important to learn how to gain all the experience as a positive experience: as life lessons and pictures of success.

Referring to a positive experience is useful, to a negative one is debatable. If the negative experience of the past has not become a lesson, it turns out to be only a burden, often traumatic. See →

Past in human life

Ordinary people often live in the present, active people live more in the future, neurotics live in the past. You can use the past, you can work with the past, you can go into the past, you can run away… You can forget the past… See →

Past Experience in Practical Psychology

Working with past experience

Oculomotor reactions allow you to access the processes that a person is aware of. However, these processes directly affect his well-being, behavior, certain decisions. Once a young man came to a consultation about the difficulties of communicating with girls. During a conversation, he often, after moving his eyes to the upper right corner, and then to the lower left, uttered the words: «No, I can’t do that.» And then he added something like: «It’s hard for me to just go up to a girl and talk about something.» After one of these statements, the counseling psychologist asked him: “Tell me, please, what did you just see? What event of the past do you remember? It turned out that before his inner eye was a picture from early childhood. One day, a friend of her mother came to visit. She came not alone, but with her little daughter. And because of his great embarrassment, he still could not come up and greet the girl.

This image arose before the inner gaze of a young man whenever there was an opportunity or need to communicate with girls. Moreover, the image itself was not realized, and at the level of consciousness there was only a feeling of “difficulty” of communication. Eye movements to the left down indicates access to kinesthetic sensations. The young man experienced the same stiffness in movements, communicating with the fair sex, which he had many years ago, in early childhood. He reacted stereotypically to the image, completely unaware of it. In this case, simple awareness solved the problem. The guy got rid of the obligation to always feel a certain way in a situation of communicating with girls.