How is going back to painful childhood/adolescence memories supposed to help?

(((HAPPYcrafter))) glad to see you back!

Thank you, Unaluna!!! I am glad to be back! xoxox

I can relate to a lot of what you have written. My experience has been very different in many ways but I can still relate.

I knew there was "something" "down there" in my psyche, I didn't know what, and went to therapy (over and over) not knowing that therapists could hurt me, because the hurt from the "normal" (probably unconsciously) passive agressive, sometimes haughty and demeaning females in my family had been numbed out. I was like that, too, sometimes -- I could kinda feel it, kinda not, but my awareness of my own feelings, as well as the dynamics in general, was all in that numbed out, iceberg space.

Eventually, my last therapist haughtily demeaned and shamed me, too, and I did feel something, mostly just overwhelming, undoubed shame, but somehow also a smidgen of a little cognitive capacity to debate within myself whether it was her or me that was at fault. Or, even if it was my "fault", I had been coming to therapy all these years, with her and before that with others, so how was shaming me in any way "therapy"?

That smidgen of cognitive capacity has been helpful in the last 2 years as I have processed the pain from my childhood that the experience with the therapist activated/reactivated. I've done this on my own, with the support of this forum and others and some IRL support groups.

My problem with therapy, and therapists, is that maybe they know how to help one get in touch with some of the pain, but then what? Like a toxin, it ran rampant in my system, poisoning the functioning of parts of me and relationships that, before, had functioned pretty well. And this can go on for years.

Particularly with regard to trauma and psychodynamically-oriented therapy, once I was "opened up" and attached somewhat to the last therapist, I was vulnerable to her emotional/social "poison", too. Which I didn't have a healthy defense against, because of the coping methods and dissociation that I depended on in childhood. I now believe that a mature healthy ego is like a psychological skin, keeping out the bad stuff, but I didn't have that. I think I'm getting one, now -- but I don't think it is in any way a "given" that one can develop it. I've been lucky, and persistent, as well as unlucky sometimes. And I think of people in one support group who are still getting nowhere, despite years of therapy, and one

Im in a similar place. I need to pull myself out of a bad situation right now, going back into the darkest parts of my past, won't help that.

I will join the voices of those who have been helped by processing painful childhood experiences.

I had a very traumatic childhood that affected my ability to make good judgments in major areas of life such as relationships and work, my social skills, my self-image. I can't even imagine being able to do the healing work I have done without looking at my family history and my childhood experiences.

I don't believe one can just "get over it". There has been substantial brain research done by people like Dan Seagel, Bessel Van der Kolk, Vincent Felitti, Alan Shore and others that demonstrated that we cannot just "switch off" the effects of traumatic experiences. We can suppress them but we can't make them go away by the sheer act of the free will. Those feelings are energies and, as any energy, if it doesn't get released or channeled in some way it eats away from you.

That said, not everyone needs to go back to childhood to solve their present day problems. Many current problems can be solved in the here and now through either getting a different perspective or through observing your thought process and your feelings in the here and now. If you simply learn how to be present with whatever you experience in the moment, which means you have to accept any feeling or thought you have in a moment no matter how unpleasant or unacceptable it may feel to you, this could shed light on your situation and you'd be able to see some sides of it you haven't seen before. Essentially, this is the mindfulness practice that you'd bring into your life that would help you make better decisions.

If you introduce the mindfulness practice into your life, you may be surprised to see at some point that you no longer reject the idea of looking at your childhood experiences. You might even want to do that.

All that doesn't mean that you need to go in the direction I've described. I think, what you need to do is to make it clear to your therapist what your goals are. She, in turn, has to be clear with you about her methods and how she believes the two of you should proceed with your work. If what she says doesn't make sense to you or if you don't like her methods for whatever reason, then you should find a new therapist. At the end of the day, therapy work is supposed to be based on the overt agreement between the client and the therapist about how it should be carried out. If such agreement cannot be achieved, the work cannot be done and you need to find someone else who'd be more suitable for your needs.

I'd like to summarize my previous post and by doing so to clarify it further.

The issue for me in your situation is not whether you should or shouldn't dig out the traumatic material from your childhood. The issue here, as I see it, is a lack of clarity about what your therapy goals are and a lack of clear, transparent communication with your therapist on how to achieve it.

It was your therapist's responsibility to clarify all this from the get go and to make sure she and you are on the same page before the work starts. She didn't do it. She proceeded with her own ideas about how to solve your problems without communicating her plans to you. And, I am not sure, she even understands clearly what you need because it doesn't look like she tried to clarify it with you. She might have her own idea about what that may be which may not at all match your experience.

I would talk to her and simply tell her that I don't want to go with her method. But, then you'd have to tell her what your goals are and what you need from her.