So why is it that us humans hold on to the past? And punish our selves over and over?

Answer 1

Some do, some don't.
We hold on because we can't believe what we did or said didn't work. We go over and over it in our head as to why we think we failed.
If we learned from the experience, we didn't fail, we grew.
Self destructive tendencies come when we believe we could or should have done something different at that time.
Hindsight is always 20/20. We are not perfect, we make the best decisions with the knowledge we have at that time. We do our best.
We do not know the future, it might be that what happened was the right thing and we are saving ourselves from future grief.
We hold on because we believe we failed even with our best efforts.
Perfectionists punish themselves all the time. Nothing they do is as good as it should be.
We are human, letting go will free us, holding on to something past keeps us in a prison that does not allow us to see the possibilities of a beautiful future.
My brother used to do this.
He wrote on a letter what he did, how he felt, how he felt later, then buried it in the back yard. He then planted a beautiful flower bush over it. He has a beautiful garden and is at peace.
God Bless and let go, be free for your beautiful future

Answer 2

This is really two questions. No. One would be So why is it that us humans hold on to the past?

The answer would be that in the process of evolution, animals discovered that they were more likely to survive if they remembered the closest shaves from the past, so they learned to do that and passed the capacity on to us.

Second question is Why do we punish our selves over and over?

Well, as the first responder said, some of us don't. Those that do probably do it because they received the consistent lesson while growing up that they were never right about anything and should feel bad about being so stupid. The truth of the matter here is that the grownups who taught the children these lessons were the ones who failed here, and left innocent and normal children to carry the burden of their caretakers' bad feelings.

Answer 3

Well dude, unfortunately it goes with the territory of having an evolved brain and mind which gives us a conscience. We have the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong, and that means we are going to feel guilty or ashamed if we do wrong--unless of course you're a sociopath, who KNOW the difference but just don't care. And even though there is often times nothing we can do about our past mistakes, the conscience just won't let us off the hook that easily, and it stores those reminders in our memory banks.

Answer 4

I think it's because we have a lousy sense of proportion. We need to remember the past and learn from it, but some people just take it a bit too far and, as you say, punish themselves over and over. Life will punish us enough, we don't need to do it to ourselves.

Answer 5

education~~~~~look at how long it takes to get through it~know that being tricked by both your parents and the teacher has to work perfect to make u get the guilt trips, mostly they want u to get screwed over because they got screwed over when they got educated, it a club of weird people but they get paid for it and the kid gets to be an underachiever if he screws it up, allot of bad stuff out there u have to puke it up when you become an adult and you run the old films in your brain, hopefully u can recover, some even teach so they don't have to fallow but that's impossible to happen and leave the pecking order

Answer 6

First of all, i hope you'll understand me, i usually right in french.

People are not nessesarely looking for self punishement, but simply answers. Investing in a long terme relationship implies giving alot of love and patience to the one's we loved. Imagine giving 22 years of your life........to finally find out you did it for nothing.
How can you thrust your jugement about love after losing so much time?

Answer 7

for some people the past is all they have .
their present is not as good as once was.
they only punish the people who love them by dwelling into the past.
They don't make time or effort to think or imagine any further with their lives.
Have pity not hate for them.

Answer 8

To be honest with you I don't, there's things in my life that I'm not proud of and that have affected me and I have to live with those consequences but I take what I can learn from it and move on. You just need to accept that you, along with everyone else, are not perfect and you never will be but you can always improve, so as long as you learn from stupid decisions, cos that's all you can do.

Answer 9

Hi,
Being 'Nostalgic" , according to so many writers and philosophers, is human nature. It is in our instinct. We always long for what we don't have or what we have lost. So, all this leads to nostalgia and we love to live in past. Although there is so much emphasis put on that don't live in past. Past is history. Living in past is being dead. There is no past and no future, what we have , is only PRESENT. But we love to live in past and continue to do so. Past is ours. Past are the moments and memories what we have lived either fully and happily or bitterly.
That is what I think.

Answer 10

It's a lot funner, at least in my case...just look at me, I'm a freakin has been who is now answering stupid questions on yahoo.