When I went into therapy one of the first things the therapist asked me was had anything significant happened when I was the age my son was at that time, apparently it's quite common for people to 'associate' with their own trauma in that way. If that makes sense.

Most of the time I don't think backwards, but when I'm depressed my self esteem plummets and I'm momentarily pulled back to the kid who was bullied, not many friends, teacher came onto inappropriately. I tend to agree with Fizzyo, we do develop but there's a bit of us which can revisit that place, we can definitely move on though.

DisorganisedMind, things can be overwhelming sometimes but if you take things one step at a time, very slowly, small steady gains can be made bit by bit.