Not all Ts want you to dig into your past and remember stuff. There are different theories. You really can go overboard with focusing on the past (my T draws from various theories and psychodynamic, which emphasizes the past a lot, is one of the main ones she uses, and she calls me out for dwelling on the past too much, since it's so long ago and we can't change it, and we really need to focus on the present). There are some things from the past that we do need to understand though. There are feelings that we have now that come from the past. If we understand where those feelings originated, then we can recognize that it isn't something happening now, and we can let go of it. There are also patterns that were established in the past, that persist now, and many of them are not working too well for us in the present. Discovering where those came from can also help us to change the patterns that are hurting us now.