Letting go of the pain of the past does not mean that you are turning your back on yourself, or failing to validate your feelings. Sometimes I think those of us from psychological or social work backgrounds want to make sure we have acknowledged the experience and our feelings before we move on. We analyze ourselves, to make sure we haven't missed something, or contributed inadvertently to the disappointment.
But at some point, letting go is loving yourself.
If a friend repeatedly hurts you, disappoints you, betrays you or fails you in other ways, letting go of that person is loving yourself.
If you have disappointed yourself, or failed in some way, beating yourself up by repeatedly reviewing what you did or didn't do will not change the past. And while you might be reviewing to make sure you don't repeat the mistake, the thoughts we dwell upon drive our future. For example, in psychology we know that the old schoolteacher's punishment of making a child write "I will not...." 100 times only reinforced the behavior, as attention and energy are being directed at that behavior. There are positive ways to reinforce desirable behaviors. (Mather & Goldstein, 2001, http://www.ldonline.org/article/6030/). There are also less desirable ways to deal with behavior that you want to change.
We need to be as skilled at working with ourselves to implement change as we are in working with others. If we know that beating another person up verbally won't change their behavior, why would we do this to ourself? I think sometimes we feel ashamed, and confused, and we aren't sure why something happened. We ruminate (review repeatedly) to search for clues. But really, this is an anxiety based response and is not helpful. Anxiety is usually fueled by "What-if's." The what-if's do not usually lead to constructive change, but they do lead to anxiety.
Letting go of the What-if's (What if I had done this differently? What did I do to cause that person to be mean to me?) actually frees us to be receptive to positive thoughts and positive changes.
And so, though you might be tempted to wonder why disappointments happen:
If someone has hurt you, let it go.
If someone has made you sad, let it go.
Do not lose your future or the present by living in the past.
Look for the joy in the moment.
It is there.
