We all carry past pain or trauma to some extent.  Some of us much deeper than others.

Pain and trauma live and breathe inside of us, and until we come face to face with the deep wounds, the self-sabotaging behaviors we learned as a result of those pains will continue to affect our lives and relationships in debilitating ways. 

The pain that we don't heal within us will, with amazing accuracy, become the pain of the next generation (and of those we love). 

It is vital to examine our past.
To acknowledge and work through our pain.
To detach from the labels we have given ourselves.
To realize, maybe for the first time, that we are NOT the things (insert character traits) that we have always thought we were.  Those things are only character defaults we learned as kids so that we could cope. 
We are so much bigger and brighter, and our true golden selves are hiding beneath the traumas and begging to be set free.