Put Your Past in the Past
Why You May Be Reenacting Your Trauma, and How to Stop
by Beverly Engel
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Pub Date Mar 18 2025 | Archive Date Not set
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Description
Stop repeating your past, and find lasting healing for the future.
Millions of us are desperately trying to rewrite our past by unconsciously repeating it--unknowingly reenacting the traumatic events in our lives in an effort to complete unfinished business or undo what was done to us. These unconscious efforts to undo trauma only bring more pain, more disappointment, and more psychological damage. Reenactments can take the form of self-destructive behavior, unhealthy decisions, choosing the wrong partners, getting stuck in repetitive emotional cycles, or sabotaging chances at success. Understanding and eliminating these reenactments is an essential part of the healing process. Unfortunately, this topic hasn't been addressed enough by psychotherapists and other mental health professionals.
In Put Your Past in the Past, renowned psychotherapist Beverly Engel offers the first accessible and comprehensive book on emotional reenactments. First, the book will help readers make their unsuccessful efforts to repair their past more conscious. Next, Engel offers powerful strategies to help readers truly heal their past, not by unwittingly repeating it, but by attending to their original wounds, and embracing self-compassion.
Unless we process past traumas, we can't heal them. Put Your Past in the Past will help you face your past head-on to find true and lasting wholeness.
Advance Praise
"Beverly Engel has created a wonderful literary resource for trauma survivors--a well-thought-out, easy-to-understand guide on how to heal from cycles of trauma reenactment. This book helps you understand why you continue to find yourself in unhealthy relationships, or why you may have turned out exactly like your mother or father despite your best efforts not to. Beverly's well-researched guide feels very much like a warm, caring therapist helping you understand how trauma has impacted you and how to navigate your healing journey. If you have ever found yourself repeating unhealthy patterns or cycles, or attracting toxic people over and over, this book will give you newfound clarity and raise your self-awareness. Even if it seems you have read every book on trauma imaginable, you will learn something new in this one. What I love most about this book is the normalization of human experiences of pain and how easy it is to become stuck in hurtful places. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is recovering from trauma."
—Dr. Natalie Jones, PsyD, LPCC, psychotherapist and creator of the A Date with Darkness podcast
"It's amazing how unaware we can be to the fact that we are reenacting a past trauma in our present lives--whether it be continually getting involved with abusive or rejecting partners or becoming abusive or rejecting ourselves. In this powerful book Beverly Engel helps readers to identify their reenactments and shows them how to discover their origin. Then she expertly guides readers through a program to help them process their trauma and unfinished business and break free from their past. I enthusiastically recommend this book for anyone who is stuck in destructive patterns."
—Randi Kreger, author of the Stop Walking on Eggshells series of books
"Beverly Engel's new book on trauma is a comprehensive, powerful, and in-depth workbook for identifying and healing trauma, including unremembered trauma, because 'symptoms and triggers are your memories.' It's an incredible resource for psychotherapists and anyone who has behaviors and relationship issues that have been resistant to change."
—Darlene Lancer, LMFT, author of Conquering Shame and Codependency and Dating, Loving, and Leaving a Narcissist
"For decades Beverly Engel has been an important source of understanding, support, and healing for many survivors. This book will, no doubt, be a valuable addition to the recovery literature, and will inspire its readers in their recovery."
—Mike Lew, author of Victims No Longer
"Unconscious reenactment patterns can wreak havoc on trauma survivors' lives and the lives of those who love them. Beverly Engel skillfully and thoroughly addresses this important and often-overlooked topic in Put Your Past in the Past. The book includes excellent reflections and practices to help readers identify and eliminate a deep-rooted need to reenact, freeing them from some of the strongest and most painful binds to their past."
—Erika Shershun, LMFT, author of Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook and The Healing Sexual Trauma Guided Journal
Marketing Plan
- National and online publicity campaign targeting mainstream media, psychology and health media, and self-help and women's media
- Social media and digital campaign targeting self-help readers and helping professionals
- Trade and consumer advertising
- Seasonal promotion including Mental Health Awareness Month
Available Editions
EDITION | Hardcover |
ISBN | 9798889830436 |
PRICE | $29.99 (USD) |
PAGES | 288 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Beverly Engel has a gift for straight talk. This book is a revelation about the neglected and misunderstood topic of trauma reenactments. It offers explanations for inexplicable trauma reactions we are blind to due to the unconscious ways we handle, in her words, our “unfinished business”. She explores the impulses and compulsions we are doomed to repeat unless we take a brave look at why we are stuck in repetitive, self-destructive patterns. Her book makes that scary first step toward self-knowledge possible. She identifies and also provides guidance on how to heal unhelpful thought patterns through workbook-style questions at the end of chapters. She reminds us often to be kind to ourselves and how, in doing so, we free up space to be kind to others. She offers a plan to help ourselves stop living between our ears, either in a less than (not worthy) or more than (grandiose) persona that we think protects us, but in reality hurts us. Engel’s reminds us that our responses to trauma are not our fault anymore than the original trauma was. Shame causes us to numb out, sometimes leads to substance abuse, eating disorders, hypersexuality, and other unhelpful, recurrent coping mechanisms that echo the initial trauma. Self-destructive thought patterns keep us stuck and sinking in quicksand, an apt metaphor used by the author. She offers client’s stories, and her own, and guides us through exercises to help us work through what happened to us. She offers us the possibility to regain our true selves by first identifying and then putting a pause on chronic hurtful behaviors. Engel’s book is readable and she shows comprehensive knowledge about a myriad of unexpected reactions to trauma. She is expert at explaining these difficult concepts in an understandable way. This book is immensely helpful to all those who wonder where their incomprehensible repetitious behaviors come from or are unaware of them. Some readers will recognize them here for the first time. I am so glad to have found out how to identify where these sub-conscious impulses come from, in myself and in others. The understanding this book encourages opens up empathy toward those who suffer, even when their behavior seems to show an inability to care. It’s offers a new way out of self-judgement and judgement of others. It offers hope that we all have a path toward becoming more self-aware. She helps us to name the blocks that keep us stuck so we can get out of our own way. This book is a must-read for trauma survivors.
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