I think we have to look at what's there, face it (and that might cause genuine pain and/or disappointment) and also look to see if what we saw is the same as what we see now. If they are the same; we are now, as adults, in a position to "do" something about whatever was holding us stuck before. We can get therapy, help, support and learn to identify friends "now" rather than based on old experiences or feelings. My issues can't be tied to childhood memories because I have no childhood memories. So, I am identifying with traumatic events from 15 years ago. I probably reacted to them based on my childhood experiences but I can only look at how I responded and acted in my recent history.

Let's say you are a fat child and don't fit in your chair in second grade (in second grade, I went to the bathroom in my pants, despite our own private bathroom in our classroom; I wasn't able to raise my hand and ask to "go". My teacher literally "sniffed" me out), the whole chair-the-size-of-the-child, for a child, not an adult, thing will have a different meaning to you when you are an adult than for another adult looking at the small chairs and desks and having to adjust their thoughts and feelings and do the "I remember these!" thing. You may now, as an adult, be the right size (I no longer go to the bathroom in my pants :-) but you still have that horrible memory of not fitting the chair/desk they gave you (I'm left handed and 90% of people are right-handed so most of those one piece school chairs/desks are right-handed, it was daunting in college to find one that was left-handed, same principle). But the fear of not fitting and all the children making fun of you and maybe teachers too, doesn't belong to now but if you don't remember and work with the original thoughts, feelings, fears, what you "took away" from the experience, you can't ever get to "now" because your now is based on then instead of on the literal now. Talk about mud-colored glasses!

One doesn't even have to reframe the meanings; the children were/are cruel and called you names; the 7th grade teacher who called me a liar when I was wearing my full girl scout uniform and humiliated me in front of the class should not have been teaching my age group; all these horrible things DID HAPPEN to us, as we experienced them at the time! They hurt and thinking of them now can still hurt and confuse us. However, we need to look at how they affect us now in our present world, because they are no longer happening. When we have an intellectual understanding of something but our emotions tell us something else, that's a problem! Thinking and/or feeling "I'm fat" when one is not, is a problem. As far as I'm able I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; there's no one to notice, no one to yell at me, my stepmother won't fill the bathtub with three inches of water and three large shovelfuls of dirt - grass, worms, sticks, rocks and all - fresh from the backyard and make me "bathe" in it because I'm a bad/dirty child, undeserving of compassion and understanding for going to the bathroom in my pants; I've been working on that for 10+ years now as it is a problem when doctors need me to pee on demand

Yes, just going round and round with the actual experience from the past would just make it harder to jump the groove and work on whatever problems the experience caused, now in the present.So I probably shouldn't try to 'feel' the pain from my trauma which I had built up an emotional wall to protect myself. I should look at the situation rationally and try to identify what emotions were in play, why, and how I should respond now since my situation now is different. Right?In the present, I need to go to the bathroom sometimes for doctors. I can work on being able to do that. In 2003 I was hospitalized for a week and had a heck of a time (and got criticized by medical personnel!) but, I was criticized because I, as an adult, refused them. I made decisions for myself and they had to deal with that the best they could. Yes, they could not help me as much as they would have liked, and I had to deal with that as an adult. It was all in the "now". I did the best I could and they did the best they could and we were honest with one another. That's the whole point of therapy, to help one be one's best self, "Now".