The Art of Putting Your Ghosts to Rest

How to heal unfinished emotional experiences so they stop haunting you

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As a former counsellor and mental health professional, I know people benefit from understanding that their repetitive fears have a purpose and can help them grow and become happier. “The Art of Putting Your Ghosts to Rest” is written with this in mind.

Your ghosts are unfinished business that haunts you, namely, the unexpressed emotions and painful or scary experiences that were never resolved. These uncomfortable feelings return until you’re brave enough to meet them, and, open-eyed, gain closure. Here’s what I’ve found most helpful and would recommend for this purpose.

What are ghosts?

In the context of psychology, ghosts are memories that scare you, bring pain, or you find gut-wrenching. They could stem from frightening incidents that you didn’t process well. Or, they might be about an unresolved crisis, tragedy, relationship breakdown, or fear of not having done the right thing.

Ghosts, in a wider framework, are the stuff of nightmares, ghoulish horror flicks, and terrifying tales told around the fire on dark winter nights. When we examine myths and stories handed down via cultures, we often discover they have a dual purpose. They aren’t just meant to scare the bejesus out of listeners, as modern horror movies sometimes do.

Rather, they often describe an emotional journey that takes us from unfinished, fearful experiences to healing and empowerment. These ghost stories can aid transformation, helping you grow and understand yourself better.

Perhaps one of the most famous transformational ghost tales is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is forced to confront his own, previously silenced ghosts: Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

Scrooge, having swallowed his emotions about past deeds, encountered their consequences. His ghosts showed him what he’d overlooked to avoid suffering. Scrooge hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that he’d behaved unkindly and hurt people, or that his actions isolated him and left him lonely.

A Christmas Carol serves us by showing that our ghosts exist because they have never been fully recognised and expressed. When they confront us, instead of avoiding them, we can be brave, take a deep breath, and lean in closer to uncover their wisdom.

Unlike Scrooge, many of our repetitive fears don’t stem from having treated others badly and worrying about the consequences. They are about feeling abandoned, lost, or not good enough.

I’m reminded of a transformational Buddhist exercise called “Feeding Your demons.” Here, the term “demon” is synonymous with “ghost.” Just as in Dickens’ famous Christmas story, the demon (ghost) can help its creator.

Note: We create our own ghosts. Or rather, our subconscious offers them to us as reminders we’ve inner work to do.

The Buddhist self-help method involves acknowledging your demon, meeting it face-to-face, and asking it what it needs to eat, since it’s hungry.

And it’s hungry for things like safety, compassion, and acceptance rather than a Big Mac and fries.

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Once you know what your demon wants, you can feed it by accepting its needs and offering to fulfil them. Picture yourself feeding it with the love you didn’t get in your childhood, the acknowledgement you didn’t receive when your needs were unheard, or the respect you didn’t get in the past relationship that haunts you.

Ghosts (or demons) grow because they represent feelings that weren’t expressed or needs that were never acknowledged. Like Scrooge, you might have hidden insights from yourself because they were painful to handle.

Unresolved conflicts, according to Jung

Psychoanalyst Jung believed the psyche seeks balance and peace of mind. According to him, unresolved conflicts remain in the subconscious, waiting to be outed and healed, which links with the idea of healing your ghosts.

Your unconscious contains retrievable memories you’ve repressed due to discomfort or trauma. And they will rise at some point.

“Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious” (Jung, 1921).

Your unresolved pain needs processing, which is why it haunts you, prodding you to recognise it. On the surface, you might imagine your ghosts are meant to torment you. But they are just the mind’s way of trying to get you to heal. Left unacknowledged, they grow into bigger ghouls that keep you awake at night and steal your joy. So it’s best to face them.

Your ghosts as gift-bringers

Your ghosts are gift-bearers when you see them through the eyes of personal growth and understanding. The more you attempt to avoid them, hiding from your pain like Scrooge once did, the worse they become.

It’s only when you hold unfinished business and repressed emotions up to the light that you can deal with them, and they fade. But uncovering what they represent requires courage and compassion.

Think of them as needing the very aspects of caring you’ve held back from yourself, and those positive, feel-good emotions will grow. Consideration, kindness, acceptance, love and other positives will expand within you, and those ghosts won’t hang around anymore.

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Name your ghosts

Naming your ghosts (painful memories and unfulfilled needs) will start the perception-shift required for mental healing. Scrooge’s ghosts had names, remember? Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Likewise, your ghosts represent real events and emotions.

To uncover them, ask what’s haunting you. What painful memories are set to replay, creating disturbance? What troubles you repeatedly? You may find your ghosts reveal themselves in unhelpful behaviour patterns like staying quiet when you need to speak up or getting upset when you’re better off being calm.

Or, your ghosts may appear as memory pictures playing on your mind’s inner screen, reminding you over and over of an event that hurt you.

Identify your ghosts, and you’ll have taken the first step toward wishing them farewell.

What will set your ghost to rest?

What does your ghost need? Consider the earlier description of the Buddhist exercise involving feeding your demon. What does your ghost crave that’s been denied?

You can sit quietly and ask your ghost what it wants, be it compassion, understanding, freedom, company, creative expression, or something else. When you’ve found out the answer, let yourself feel kindness toward your ghost, remembering how hungry it’s been and how it’s been ignored. Then feed it whatever will make it feel less hurt and afraid.

After feeding your ghosts, they evaporate. You might feel lighter and relieved, and experience other positive signs of ease, such as better sleep and greater calm during challenges. And if your ghost ever reappears, don’t worry. Just realise it might need second helpings before it leaves.

Your stuck-record-like fears feel painful. But they serve a helpful purpose. Let them show you where you’re hurt so you can raise self-awareness and heal. As Jung suggested, you’ll regain your inner harmony.

If you’ve found this story helpful, please consider buying me a coffee. Every bit of support helps me keep creating, and I appreciate it more than words can say!

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