Cleaning house: de-fragging our mental and emotional hard drive

What quantity of s--t are we dragging around over the years?... and I'm exhausted just thinking about it. We are told to de-frag our computers and apparently we can benefit similarly from cleaning house with our emotional life accumulations. We tend to want and/or need to put the past behind us as quickly as possible. We proceed to throw out all of the old photo's and any other reminders of the ex, who just became somebody we don't know anymore. We kinda want this person to disappear from our existence asap and we try to burry the memories along with all of the suddenly icky mementoes. Are we saying this is wrong? ... Well, what the experts say is, as crap as it sounds, we may need to (even if we don't want to) sort through some of those memories before we give them their much deserved funeral. The goal is to "process" the past, so that we are not doomed to repeat it. Sequels can be boring at the best of times and re-living the crime scene is not high on the list, but we don't really want to replicate the painful break ups do we? All the experts are saying is that if we're willing to "mine" our past, we may be surprised at the insights we uncover and this could be worth the pain of the exercise. So, what are we supposed to be doing?

In whatever form we so desire (because there are a gazillion options out there), we are supposed to review our past and "deal" with the problem occurances. To each his own in terms of the depth and breadth of scrubbing the past, but with options like EMDR (processing and removing past trauma's from our hard drive for sure) we can really clean house. The benefit of doing this sort of life review can be huge. With  EMDR in particular, it is said that we can remove the sting from a whole thread of troublesome life events, which should free us up for the present moment's romantic and other life choices. For example, if we knew as a kid that our father/mother had ongoing and secret romantic affairs, chances are we'll end up at some point with a partner who will have affairs on us.... until we go back and process the emotion around this betrayal framework. The professionals tell us sky's the limit if we're willing to bravely face some old stuff. (For more info on EMDR check out Getting Past Your Past by Francine Shapiro).

Blessings,

Chatgirl