Alexandra, I agree wtih you all the way....the first step is 'awareness' of our emotional experience. Then, to label our emotions, and that's a lota work too...noticing them....allowing them to be, to exist.....not needing to change them.....

I think when a current experience evokes a huuuuggeee reaction in us, that is when it behooves us to put the rage/pain/shame etc. where it belongs (in the past).

Please let no one fool her/himself when we are feeling current pain, hurt, etc. please remember there is very possibly a REAL reason for it. It is not always a trigger of historical stuff. I think it's VERY important to recognize the validity of your emotional experiences as they pertain to the PRESENT. Sure, my t was NOT listening. By all objective measures she was NOT able to hear me (due to her own unexamined or examined-but-unresolved transference). The anger I felt at not being heard by her was absolutely VALID. And warranted.
But, the intensity of my anger, the overwhelming sense of RAGE that I experienced was definitely an indicator that historical experiences were being re-awakened in me, and that accounted for the intensity of my rage.
Indeed in my mind I was able to separate the two, but separating the two didn't in any way make the current anger go away.
The current anger served to alert me to something. (The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner talks about anger serving a very useful function of alerting us to something that needs to be tended to). It alerted me to the fact that my needs were not being met, that I wasn't being heard. And if she could not hear me, I would do well to find someone who COULD hear me.