Why Do Psychotherapists Delve Into The Past?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Recently, a new client asked me: "Ruth, I don’t understand why digging into the past? Well, what difference does it make what problems my parents had in their lives and how it affected me. Well, understand? And now what?" I'll try to answer.

When we come to an understanding of our life history, its connection with the history of the family, we begin to see causal relationships and outdated, now not effective mechanisms of protection, interaction, and so on.

I will give a concrete example: my grandmother survived the blockade and all her life forced her children and grandchildren to eat every last crumb, fried pancakes fatter, stored food for future use. Result: obese children and grandchildren. From the point of view of the grandmother, this is good if the blockade is again, so they can hold out longer, and the reserves will last for a long time. Grandma has good intentions. In the light of her personal life experience, she acts for the good of the family. The true result: obesity in children and grandchildren, diseases associated with it, psychological problems around this, which have been added and wound up. Ineffective behavior patterns and bad habits have been developed.

The mechanism is roughly clear. And what to do? Swear with your grandmother? No way! The point is not to look for the guilty (I am not talking about cases of violence), but to change life for the better. When a person realizes that his problem is not only his personal problem, "it is not clear where the gluttony came from," but grandmother's is no longer an actual attempt to "survive the blockade, eat enough for the future", constant preparation for war, trauma transmitted through a generation (there is wars and blockades, a lot of things are spinning, not only the relationship with food), then a new stage begins, the construction of new, healing models of relationships with food, grandmother and trauma.

Gradually, everything is laid out on the shelves. The understanding comes that the war is over, that the blockade is grandmother's pain, which reverberated through generations. And it's time to start working on yourself. To heal the trauma of this generation, do not drag into the next

So what? - you will say - yes, everyone needs to run to therapy, all grandparents have gone through a war, if not a war, then repression, if not repression, then emigration, alcoholism in the family, violence and you never know what else!

First, not all trauma survivors develop post-trauma, and not all develop ineffective trauma coping models. It even happens that trauma cultivates new strength and develops a person. Maybe you're in luck?

Secondly, not only therapy helps, there is a lot of useful things for the soul in the world.

Thirdly, and indeed, it is often still worth going to psychotherapy.

It is important to remember that a look into the past, not to search for the guilty and idle digging in wounds, but in order to discover the protective mechanisms that were relevant for past situations, have remained as a familiar model, as a norm, but now they only harm.