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

Dear All,

I have recently ended my first attempt with Psychodynamic therapy as I felt I was no longer making progress and possibly getting worse. There could be a whole number of reasons why this was happening and I am sure I am partly to blame, anyhow, I would like to ask you the following.

How is going back to painful childhood/adolescence memories supposed to help? My T seemed to be keen to bring me back to that topic, but quite frankly it just makes me feel worse, it gives me nightmares after therapy and it has made me more resentful and detached from my parents, which I think doesn't help at all.

I asked my T and she just answered with another question "is it better to keep it all inside?". It took me ages to think of an answer to this one, but I am coming to the conclusion that yes, I think it is better to keep it all inside or even better, forget it and get over it. There is no going back. I had the childhood I had, so had my brother, and now we're grown-ups with issues. Big deal. Not that I can do anything about the past.

I just can't see how going back to such memories can bring any good whatsoever to life. I have already decided not to become a parent myself therefore there is no risk I will re-enact such episodes with my own children, as T knows.

I received messages from my parents as a child/adolescent that greatly shaped my view of myself. For a very long time, I thought I was just broken and bad, and I wasn't aware that those messages came from outside myself originally (i.e., the messages were not necessarily accurate or backed up by evidence). After talking about some of those relationships and incidents, I started to see where my parents didn't fully do their job and where their skewed perceptions were still hurting me to this day. I talked to myself the same way they talked to me ("get over it" or "I don't know why you're so upset, it's not that important" etc.). Getting a handle on that old dynamic and learning to accept my own emotions has helped me have better relationships in my adult life, hate myself less, and feel less depressed overall.

That said, if you aren't ready or willing to go back to those memories and experiences (either not now or not ever), then I don't think a therapist should try to force you to do it. Digging around in that stuff can be really painful, and I think it's important for you to feel stable in your current life before you go opening up things like that.

I tend to agree with your concerns. I did not have a very traumatic childhood, for me the real hard times came later as an adult. I believe that I have a lot of biological predispositions to mental health issues - organic things I was born to develop, which is not surprising given how packed both lineages of my family are with mental illness or at least challenges. I find it important to remember the parts of the difficult past that could have been avoided by my making different choices when I had the freedom to do so, or at least resolving issues earlier. I do not really get anything out of rehashing the past though other than it's making me disappointed and depressed about lost time and opportunities. Childhood challenges and traumas are quite different in that, in most cases, children don't have the freedom and cognitive maturity to make better deliberate choices and carry them out - for me, it's more yet another reason not to dwell on them and discuss those memories endlessly. It is good to remember and be aware of how old events still influence us, but that does not require digging up every single detail and especially not for years, IMO. Of course many emotional blocks in the present derive from earlier experiences, and it's good to understand them to a certain extent, but I think better with the mindset of changing (if change is necessary) in the present.

There are studies showing that rehashing old traumas over and over can actually be very destructive - there is a reason why our brains have ways to suppress them and shift focus. Going back and bringing them up excessively can lead to those memories becoming further ingrained and influental rather than giving room to development and mental peace.

I also decided not to have children when I was very young and never changed my mind. It is quite clear that my own childhood experiences played a role in this decision but I still think it's for the better, in many ways (including not propagating those predispositions further). Many people tried to get me to change my mind during my adult life, including my own parents, and I am happy I did not let them influence my choice. I would say it is important to carefully and deeply consider the reasons though as this is something some people sorely regret when it's already too late.

As for using psychodynamic therapy and working with the past, my opinion usually is that it's better to do it in a focused, specific way. Say, there is a stubborn problem here and now - where does it come from and how can I use lessons from the past to do better with it? Instead of the often aimless wondering all over the place many psychodynamic therapists encourage. I got into that myself in my therapy, it came surprisingly easily to me as my mind is prone to following all sorts of associations and following the traces can actually be enjoyable for me. It turned out little more a distraction from what I truly needed to work on, a form of dumping ground (sharing them with the Ts). Not much practical benefit, really. It's just my experience though, you will see many reports here about people apparently benefiting a lot from years of psychoanalysis, for example.

In any case, if therapy is making you worse beyond maybe a few days of contemplation, I would seriously reconsider whether it is useful in any way. For me, most of the really gruesome things in my past (for me it was mostly self-destructive things) were better to share with friends/peers who experienced similar and understood from the inside, shared their own experiences in an open way - then move on. I also personally really don't like working with the values, needs and lacks of childhood much as I am very far from being a child or adolescent now, my needs and values are radically different. I believe that a mistake we often make with self work is to ignore the development and life experience and judge ourselves and our lives based on earlier stages and selves that no longer exist. Again, my opinion, I know many people will not agree with me on this.

I’ve had the exact same thoughts. My T is a psychotherapist- she’s almost disappointed when I talk about what’s happening in my current life instead some childhood memory. I started going to her for current issues that, yes, were reactions I had that had lineage down to reactions I knew from childhood. But I 100% believe that the whole process made me feel worse than I would have if left to my own devices. She made me dredge up the same old stuff week after week, and it made no difference to her that it hurt me because they weren’t her feelings or her memories. It’s easy for her to sit there saying nothing and laughing all the way to the bank while I go home feeling absolutely terrible. Clearly, I’m bitter. But I do think she just added to my problems by throwing me into dark places and not facilitating my way back into the light.

For me personally, I feel like if I don't explore the roots and evolution of how my current patterns came to exist, I will end up continuing to repeat them indefinitely. Which is not what I want. If it were possible to "get over" that stuff by force of will, or "reframing," or forgetting, or just wishing really hard, I'd be over it by now. For me, the best option for making the change I want to make is unburying those difficult memories and feelings and trying to understand them.

But that kind of exploration of the past needs to be handled carefully and supportively by any therapist who works that way, with full informed consent from the client. Therapists who work psychodynamically should be open and forthcoming with clients about the possibility that they'll feel worse before feeling better, and cautious about uncovering difficult material.

I have done this kind of therapy with two different Ts. One fairly good, one horrid. The good T and I worked on the skill of recognizing how patterns from painful childhood/teen years could re-surface in my present, and how I reacted when I saw those situations playing out.

For example, I had a "perfect" sister. She could do no wrong; I could do no right. My father played us against each other. During my "fairly good" therapy, my T would urge me to look carefully at instances - particularly in the workplace-- where this kind of pattern could play itself out.

I tend to be the rebellious person at work and cast my "goodie" two-shoes colleagues ...particularly women...in the same light as I cast my sister.

This is a trivial example, but I wonder if it throws any light on your question.

For years, I thought therapy was just more pain than progress as I looked at these wounds. Now I can see how it can be helpful in the long-run, but not always. There is a lot of grey area here.

I hope this helps.

This is so true for me as well. I did this journey with a pretty good T and I tried it again with a real problematic one and the pain was overwhelming in the midst of zero support. Enter at your own risk, is my view.

I think it's probably good that you terminated when you did. That was probably a very good self preservation instinct.

There are many people who believe as you do, that going over childhood memories is not always helpful and can hurt. I had a very bad experience with a psychodynamic therapist the first time I went to therapy. She kept encouraging me to find more and more traumatic memories. I'd find them and she'd give me lots of attention and empathy for them. I think it got me into a victim mindset, which made me more depressed and hopeless. I wasn't suicidal when I started with her, but I became that way six months into therapy.

After that experience I stayed far away from psychodynamic therapists. I still wouldn't choose to do that type of therapy exclusively. I think it misses some of the key points of therapy...of changing thoughts and behaviors that you are having now.

I have found some use in going back into memories though. Sometimes I will have a very quick, instinctive fear or anger reaction to someone or something someone says. It's been helpful when my therapist asks me "when do you first remember feeling that way?" I can usually tell him. I think knowing that there is a reason for my fear makes me feel better about it. But the next crucial step is realizing that although I didn't have any choice when I was a child of how I responded, I do now. I might still feel the feelings that I did then, but I don't have to stay in victim mode. I can act differently now because I'm an adult.

Here is one of the possible problems, I think. People don't typically go to therapy when they feel very stable in their current life. Maybe some do as a curiosity exercise but not most. The T can be as professional, consistent, and supportive as possible, which helps, but that alone will not make a vulnerable client very stable and able to cope, especially outside of therapy sessions. Add to it that, based on what I have seen and experienced myself, some Ts are far more unstable and ***ed up than the client and project their own issues into the therapy and onto the client, which can easily lead to no longer even knowing whose issues begin and end where. I had one T in particular who kept trying to almost create false memories for me that had nothing to do with my life, and when I complained and sometimes got very angry due to it, he would turn that back onto me and my apparent issues again. It was textbook gaslighting, luckily I recognized it quite quickly. At the same time, he tended to dismiss and minimize true patterns and issues I brought up, I think because they did not fit into his dogmas and he did not understand them. How can one explore the past in that way? It's not only unsafe but hugely distorted and potentially misleading. Of course not all Ts are this way, and I have respect for the ones that aren't, but it's common enough.

I should say that I have never done pure psychodynamic therapy, so maybe it's different. With my T, the first stages of therapy (on the scale of months to a year or two) were much more about dealing with present-day stressors and relationships, building a rapport, her being supportive, me learning coping/self-care skills, etc. I didn't dive deep into the past until I was stable and ready, once the hugely stressful life events that propelled me into therapy were mostly over. I didn't think of that other stuff as preparation for going into the past but rather I came to a crossroads where I could have terminated (and probably landed in therapy the next time I hit life stressors) or I could go deeper into the core stuff that was rooted in the past with the goal of making longer-lasting changes to myself. I chose the second route because I wanted to, but terminating at that point would have been a reasonable choice too.

As for finding a stable therapist who has their own self together, that's much harder to gauge. Aside from heeding any clear red flags, I think unfortunately that sifting process involves a lot of trial and error. I feel lucky that my T seems to mostly have herself in order, but I couldn't have ever known that going in.

I am someone with a significant traumatic past, CSA in childhood and other sexual attacks by authority figures in adolescence. The abuse from my past is documented in permanent injuries on my body, which also signifies the seriousness of the physical piece of the prior abuse.

From my experience, being able to talk about what happened to me in pretty extensive detail was key to beginning to understand its impact on me. The other thing that happened in the telling, with three good therapists, is that I became empowered over my past, had a different relationship with it, because I was able to talk about it and not be silenced anymore. I felt stronger, bolder, less imprisoned by my past and the things in my life that symbolized the past for me (like a ridiculously power hungry work supervisor). It was significantly painful to talk about, but it was also freeing and enlightening. I felt like I "beat" my past by releasing it from inside into the universe, like a balloon that has no impact on the environment. I could only do this by digging in and talking about it. I stopped having PTSD and other anxiety symptoms for the most part, especially the severe dissociation and flashbacks and nightmares and panic attacks.

The theory of why it helps to bring up memories in the context of therapy is that one's neurological pathways that were created by the trauma become unstuck and new ones are created. Whatever the old messages from the abuse (like I am a terrible person) become something entirely different (such as I am a person who terrible things happened to, but I am still okay). I can feel the change of automatic emotional reactions and negative thoughts (caused by those old neural pathways) into ways of thinking that allow me to cope better.

I think there is a burden of proof issue here. She needs to justify the claim that rummaging thru childhood is both productive and worth paying for. Her answer is an evasion.

Also there is risk in catharsis and discharging of emotion, and if the goal is to do no harm, there has to be some risk-benefit case made.

Seems to me we are all equipped to understand ourselves without hiring an expensive quasi-interpreter. I would rather read a few books on psychology and human development, then reflect and meditate on things as I see fit.

I don't think this is the answer for everybody, but for me it helps to sometimes talk about it because I didn't know at the time how to deal with my feelings. So I did unhealthy things with them. And now that for example shows by having flashbacks. I know that it happened, and that it doesn't matter anymore now. For example I was bullied in high school, I'm not in high school anymore, I don't have contact with any of these people anymore and it certainly does not affect me directly now. Yet, when I see a movie with kids walking down a hallway which just remotely looks like the one at my school, I can't stop thinking about things that happened.

Some things in your past can affect you directly right now like this. I can't do anything about flashbacks, I can just learn how to control them in some way. Other things might not show this openly, it might be that you always worry about something because something happened with your parents. If these things are bothering to you, it might be worth talking about things that have happened in the past because you can get help in processing them and not be bothered anymore.

But I don't think there's any use in talking about it just to talk about it. If you don't feel the need to talk about your childhood, then I don't think a T should insist on it. The T can't know what the issue is for you, where it comes from and so on. Even if there was trauma in childhood, some kids develop just fine, if it's not bothering you currently and on your mind a whole lot and so on, I think there's plenty of ways to have more useful sessions.

Thank you everyone for your replies...

I guess it is helpful for many people when it is used to break patterns that are affecting their current life.

In my case, I believe the issue is that I can see how my childhood and adolescence contributed to messing me up, but I can't see a way out of it. I am an anxious, depressive and obsessive person. There is nothing really tangibly wrong in my life, except I cannot sleep well or stop obsessing about any problem I start analyzing. There is nothing I can really change in my life, it's the head I need to change.

Prozac shut off the noise of obsessing for me. I remember very clearly my first weekend when i took it. The dr had given me 10 mg capsules. I took one pill, nothing. An hour later, i took another. An hour later, i took a third, and all of a sudden, there was quiet. Ive been told that they are not supposed to work like that, that i have a different diagnosis (i forget what), but i dont care. It stopped the chatter in my brain.

Dwelling on/wallowing in the hurts and unfairness of childhood or adulthood was my PhD in how to become a depressive. It’s not even reality because the glass is usually both half empty and full.

I really ripped into hell, only to be left entitled (due catering for all the unfairness) self involved and even more fragile. I became much more isolated after therapy because friends were never careful and solicitous enough for my new standards.

I no longer believe in the steam valve theory of personality. I see “catharsis” as a literary device —that only works in books.

The kind of stuckness you are describing seems to me like a typical neurological loop-de-loop. I found a couple of non-therapy books helpful in understanding some of the issues involved:

Buddha's Brain: https://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Brain...ard+Mendius+MD

Mindsight: https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New...ords=mindsight

When I'm trying to make a decision about something, doing some reading often clarifies things for me.

Anxiety, depression, obsessive thoughts, sleep problems... many possible biological and environmental causes. I see therapists (also MDs) as dangerous in this regard. They are programmed to automatically view these problems as "psychiatric disorders", and robotically preach about therapy and/or drugs.

I wonder how many people have been convinced their "childhood" is the cause of suffering, when something much more tangible is driving a lot of it. Cleaning up sleep enviro is non-negotiable requirement for good brain health.

For me, therapy is what helps keep self-reflection from turning into something destructive. I'm perfectly capable of pondering the past on my own, but without a skilled, attentive outside perspective there's a higher likelihood of my using that self-examination in the service of self-loathing and other old patterns.

In the context of therapy with a competent therapist, I'm able to modulate that reflection on the past in ways that are helpful rather than destructive, and look at things I've been blocking out and/or ignoring that add new meaning.

My experience in psychotherapy was somewhat different. I began in 1990. I stumbled around for several years, in and out of therapy. The biggest problem I had was my self-destructiveness. I repeatedly sabotaged myself time and time again.

I saw several therapists over the years and all were different. I kept going to therapy because it did benefit me. Somewhere around 2001-2002, my physical health began to deteriorate and by I think, 2003, I was disabled. I was also drinking heavily and overeating myself into oblivion every chance I got. I had serious anger and rage problems and I trolled some people online. That's a story for another day.

I moved out of St. Louis and moved to a small rural community in the Ozarks. My life was a mess physically, financially, mentally. I started with a therapist locally and went to her for 8-9 years. My self-destructiveness was still active and I racked my brain in therapy trying to understand why I was doing that. Nothing, I could not come up with anything.

She suggested hypnotherapy. She could have said dance naked in the cemetery at midnight and I would have done it. I was desperate for answers.
Doing the hypnotherapy, I found out that buried inside me was a massive, violent, hateful iceberg saturated with the repugnant abuse I endured from mother and my two older sisters, Annabelle and Melissa. I recorded the sessions and I would listen to it two or three times a day. I would sob, almost without end, but I got through it and slowly, I began to heal.

If I had not faced that rank venom they buried inside me, I would not have gotten better. But, that is me. Someone else could manage that differently. But for me, facing head on what troubles me has brought me consistent and genuine healing. A lot of what used to trouble me is resolved. I still have flashbacks and somethings trigger me and I have no idea why because so much of my childhood is repressed, locked up in my head, out of my reach.

I am finally happy today and moving forward. I am in school to better my writing skills, I have a blog I have developed, and I am determined to find the way where I can support myself with my writing, using my skills and talents. Poverty is hard, but I keep moving forward, accepting along my way what troubles me, getting it behind me for good as best I can.