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In an effort to find an answer to why our lives do not add up, we are increasingly beginning to stir up childhood traumas. However, sometimes this approach can only lead to a dead end. When it is worth stopping digging into the past and moving on, the therapist will tell.
Regression, hypnosis, the study of birth programs are a real fashion trend. When people learned that it is possible to go back to childhood and see the shadow stages of the formation of the psyche and failures in the family system, they delved into the knowledge of parental secrets with great enthusiasm.
When a person plunges into the past, he becomes a detective. Finds in the back streets of consciousness the most valuable information – causal relationships, patterns of behavior, emotional trauma of parents. One gets the feeling that if he finds out the root causes of his failures, then they will disappear by themselves.
But at one point he discovers that he knows absolutely everything about his family system up to the seventh generation, but his life invariably looks like a vicious circle. Relations with the opposite sex do not add up, there is no money, joy and satisfaction too. It took years to find answers, but the reality remained the same. It turns out that it is not so important when the generic program failed and why. Knowledge does not always cure injuries.
Moreover, this information often puts a person in the position of a victim of the family system. He begins to blame mom, dad, aunt, great-grandmother. He tries to understand why he needs to serve other people’s scenarios, installations and gestalts. He gets disappointed, apathetic, indignant: why should he rake up a pile of problems that he inherited?
Is there any benefit in exploring the past?
Certainly. After all, parents have a huge influence on the psyche of the child. In the first three years of life, all basic neural connections are formed. And how our personality, worldview and social behavior will develop is determined by two factors:
1. Transgeneration scenariosthat are passed down from generation to generation. This is the genetic experience of our ancestors, which helped them survive, achieve goals or avoid unpleasant moments. Sometimes this “baggage” does not allow us to move on. We notice inexplicable fears, negative attitudes and complexes.
2. Emotional reactions of mom and dad. If parents criticize, ignore, manipulate, devalue the child, then this leads to emotional deficit or trauma. When we grow up, traumas are manifested by constant stress, apathy, loss of personal boundaries. Feelings of guilt, inferiority and distrust of the world develop.
How to understand that there was something wrong in the family?
Any emotional discomfort speaks of existing difficulties, the origins of which are in childhood.
- “I constantly choose partners who reject / offend / devalue me”
- “I endlessly criticize and punish myself”
- “I work the hardest and still don’t feel recognized”
- “I live a lifestyle that is destroying me, but I can’t do anything about it”
If we find ourselves with destructive behavior, repetitive scripts, psychosomatic symptoms, or difficulties in relationships with a partner or friends, then we have birth trauma. The main task is to identify them, concretize and work out.
How to act correctly?
Working with the inner world is important and necessary. We can do this on our own, if we know the basic stages of the formation of the psyche, or with the help of a specialist who will focus specifically on the present, and not on an endless inventory of the past.
The most effective ways to deal with emotional trauma are the development of emotional intelligence or the use of modern psychotherapeutic techniques. For example, visualization, work with projective techniques and the therapeutic field. Such methods allow us to bypass the defense mechanisms of our psyche and direct the necessary resources exactly where the emotional deficit has arisen.
Such processing should produce visible external changes and move us towards the goal that we set for ourselves at the beginning of therapy, as well as create a sense of internal stability, maturity, self-sufficiency and security. If for a long time life does not change in any way, this is a reason to think that attention is directed exclusively to healing the past, but not to integrating resources into the present and future.
In this case, it is necessary to reconsider the approach, change the specialist or add other psychotherapeutic tools. The main task is not to delve into the problems of parents, but to remain in reality, here and now. Find a source of energy to improve the quality of life and have time to truly enjoy it. Until our descendants began to investigate our emotional traumas.
About the Author:
Anna Chernigov — psychologist, certified psychotherapist, head of the International Academy of Reparative Psychology and Therapy, author and host of transformational trainings, master classes and webinars. Her .