REFlection 6: the past me/future me trap

Lately, I’ve been noticing a pattern in my own inner world that I’m calling the past me / future me trap.

It’s the quiet habit of standing in the present and turning in two directions — backward with judgment and forward with perfection.

In therapy, my therapist reflected something back to me that landed deeply:
I often look at my younger self with shame, as if she should have known what I know now.

As if she should have had the wisdom, perspective, and tools that only time, heartbreak, growth, and lived experience could have given her.

It’s such an unfair burden to place on a version of ourselves who was simply doing the best she could with what she had at the time.

And then I realized I do something similar in the other direction.

I create an imagined version of future me — a woman who has it all figured out, who no longer struggles with the same fears, flaws, or challenges I carry now.

She is polished where I feel uncertain.
Certain where I still question.
Whole where I still feel in process.

And without realizing it, I use her as a way to judge the person I am today.

The result is painful:
the past self is punished for not knowing enough, and the present self is punished for not yet being perfect.

What gets lost is compassion for the person who is actually here.

The truth is, both my younger self and this current self deserve the same grace I imagine extending so easily to others.

Growth is not supposed to erase our humanity.

The present version of us is not a problem to solve between who we were and who we hope to become.

She is a person to know, support, and stay with.

The more I sit with this, the more I realize the real invitation is not to become perfect.

It’s to stop using imagined versions of myself as weapons against the one who is living life right now.

There is so much freedom in meeting the present self with the understanding we wish we had offered the past — and without demanding she become the fantasy of the future.

Points to Consider

• Where are you judging your past self with knowledge she could not yet have had?

• What imagined version of future you are you using as a measuring stick?

• How might compassion change your relationship with the self who is here right now?

• What would it feel like to release perfection and simply stay with your present humanity?