Closure is a popular idea among our society. Your relationship breaks down, you are fired, you have hurtful memories of things that happened in your childhood, you have hurt other people and that bothers you.
We put a lot of belief in closure as a powerful action that can help propel us to live a better life. But waiting or expecting closure to happen is like waiting for the wind to blow you all the way to work.
The 4 Myths of Closure
Myth #1: Closure will help you to move on. In reality, you do not have the ability to close yourself off and no longer feel anything. You don’t need closure to move on. Moving on is a decision, followed by many other decisions to move towards a better, more satisfying life. Even if you don’t have closure, what is more destructive is denial. You may not feel closure, but you can still acknowledge what has happened, accept it, make room for it and include it in your life.
Closure does not mean the end of painful feelings or memories. It will not make you bulletproof, painproof, or hurtproof. You are a human being, not a bank vault.
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Myth #2: Closure happens when you can talk to the person who hurt you. Even if you talk to the person who hurt you and they apologize, you may never get what you want from them. You will need to talk to someone, probably a professional. When you are vulnerable and talk through your experience, you gradually are able to put distance from it so that you are not so troubled by it.
Myth #3: Closure helps you to forget. The reality is that you may never forget, but you can learn to change your relationship with your pain, memories and emotions. Memories are like emotions and often they cannot be controlled. What you can control is your reaction. Taking action is the thing that will change you, that is why closure feels like it is helpful: because you are no longer waiting for something to happen, you act. When you act, you take back your life.
Myth #4: You need closure before you can live a productive life. If you search your past, you will find many relationships, jobs, dreams, or experiences that are not “closed off.” We all have issues in our lives that are “unfinished,” but we are not troubled by them. In reality, each day brings situations that are unfinished but what do we do? We get up, decide what to do, and we do it. This is how life works. Instead, being troubled/haunted/overwhelmed by your experiences is a sign that you need to do some work.
Closure may never happen, but acceptance is within your grasp
Closure does not mean the end of painful feelings or memories. It will not make you bulletproof, painproof, or hurtproof. You are a human being, not a bank vault. Acceptance will make you more flexible, more able to respond to life and experience. It will help you to be more present to yourself, your experience and your life. It will help you to live more by your values, rather than being driven by emotion or unmet expectations.
My father was an alcoholic. At times he could be distant, mean, and critical. His behavior caused wounds that festered in my life for years. He died over 20 years ago, but in my mind he lived with me and continued to injure me. I isolated myself, avoided vulnerability and intimacy, and I couldn’t accept love. But I learned to move on… not because I had closure. He died long before I was able to talk to him about my pain and even if he was alive, he wouldn’t have given me what I wanted. I was able to move on because I was able to accept my feelings and memories, realize that my pain does not define who I am, and make daily efforts to live and become the person I want to be.
You may never get what you want from another person in order for you to feel that you have closure. It may be because they are dead, out of your life, unwilling or unable to talk, or that you have spoken to the person and what they say or how they respond to you is just not what we wanted or needed. You may never be able to fix a past job experience that bothers you. Or you may have unlived dreams that may never be fulfilled.
Waiting for closure to happen will not free you. It will force you to relive unhealthy and disempowering behaviors as you try to cope, avoid, numb or fix yourself.
Maybe it’s time to give yourself the gift of closure?
Waiting for closure to happen will not free you. It will force you to relive unhealthy and disempowering behaviors as you try to cope, avoid, numb or fix yourself.
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How do you do give yourself the gift of closure?
For-give-ness has at it’s core “give.” Forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself. It is a gift of acceptance that you cannot change what happened to you, so you take the action that you can take: you move on. You feel the pain, the anger, the frustration, the disappointment and the loss. And you take accountability for the choices that you have.
Acceptance is not a passive act, rather it is actively feeling and experiencing, and then deciding on the best and most helpful choices that you can make. It is taking stock of your life over the long run and making healthy choices for yourself.
If we go to the dictionary, we learn that closure means “bringing order to something.” Closure is not an ending or new beginning. Instead, it is a type of fence, like one with wooden fence posts and boards or even barbed wire. A closure creates structure and order. It is a barrier with gates and used to both contain and also keep out. What we forget is that closure is a fence that is rooted to the ground, but it is not impenetrable. A closure is a living space not a fortress or vault.
In your relationships, your work and your dreams, closure can help you to bring order to and make sense of your life. You give yourself the gift of closure when you accept what is, honestly assess and make room for your experiences and emotions, and then give yourself permission to make the most helpful decisions that you can make. That is closure.
I will repeat myself as a way to give “closure” to this article:
Closure does not mean the end of painful feelings or memories. It will not make you bulletproof, painproof, or hurtproof. You are a human being, not a bank vault. Acceptance will make you more flexible, more able to respond to life and experience. It will help you to be more present to yourself, your experience and your life. It will help you to live more by your values, rather than being driven by emotion or unmet expectations.
You are worthy of a better life and it can begin today. Don’t wait for closure. Instead, give yourself the gift that only you can give: acceptance.
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If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to see some of my other work:
Why Expecting Yourself to Always be Better is Ruining Your Life
A New Definition of Emotional Healing: Acceptance
Are You at War with Your Pain or with the People in Your Life?
I write articles that talk about the kind of changes I am trying to make in my own life. I hope that my writing also helps you. My topics include addiction and mental health recovery, relationships, and personal growth. I work as an Addiction Therapist, an Editor for the Good Men Project and freelance writer, and Adjunct Professor at City University, Edmonton. But what is most important is that I have a family and I am in recovery from depression and anxiety. My mental health experiences are part of my personal University degree, but they do not define me.
I hope to inspire you, to inform you and on occasion to entertain you. But most of all, I want to connect with you. Sign up for my blog if you want to receive the latest and best of my writing. If you like what I have to say, please share my work with your friends.
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Keep it Real
Photo by Simeon Berg
In California, there is an organization that gets victims of crimes to meet with the criminals in prisons to give them a chance to talk to the prisoners on how their violent actions on their love ones have affected their lives. The programs seem to work pretty well because the criminals finally realize that the victims were human beings like themselves. Of course, the criminals have to meet certain criteria before meetings with the victims’ families. So see, there is some possibility of getting closure depending on what the situation is.