Both positively and negatively, our history affects our present. Although we are not fully aware of it, our past programs us, conditions us and makes us the way we are. For this reason, when emotional problems arise, looking back can be the key to healing ourselves.
Some psychological currents focus their therapeutic work on solving the present. They offer tools to deal with the symptoms that people show when they go to the consultation. However, they ignore the essential step in therapy: delve into the person’s past to find and heal the origin of this discomfort. And by not working on the person’s background, their problems are never really solved.
By reinforcing the behavior that we want to encourage and punishing the one that we want to eliminate, it may be possible to achieve temporary advances. However, in the long run, these changes are merely temporary. In order to overcome current blocks or fears in a definitive way, it is essential understand its origin.
learn from the past
Must delve into our past to understand the harmful patterns we follow today. Otherwise, sooner or later we will go through some vital crisis that will force us to fall, again, into the toxic attitudes that we thought were already solved. It is not about delving into the past to remember and suffer, without more. It is about carrying out, by steps, a healing therapeutic process:
- 1. Connect with the emotions of the various traumatic situations experienced in the past. In this way we will be able to understand how the harmful patterns that we still carry in our present were forged.
- 2. Assimilate the fact that the circumstances of the past are no longer the current ones. We will thus understand that those patterns that we created to survive in those adverse situations today no longer make sense in our lives.
- 3. Free ourselves from the toxic patterns we created in the past to help us survive in those dire circumstances. We will be able to do it as we connect with our past and understand ourselves as children.
- 4. Draw conclusions about our present life and reinforce new learning to apply in our day to day. Thus, the changes introduced in our life will be much more stable and lasting than if we had focused solely, and without having taken our past into account, on forcing a change in behavior.
Olga’s case and her low self-esteem
I frequently receive in my office people who have not been able to solve their problems after having undergone one (or several) therapies focused on symptoms and do not work their origin in the past.
This was the case of Olga, who, despite having gone to three psychologists before contacting me, He had not been able to overcome his serious problem of very low self-esteem.
The young woman achieved small improvements by following the exercises that were proposed to her, but when push came to shove, when she had to face situations that were challenging for her (such as speaking in public, defending herself or asking her boss for a raise), their blocks reappeared automatically.
All the psychologists he had consulted told him that it was no use looking to the past. That he should focus on improving his social skills and his attitude towards life in the present. However, despite having made little progress, she Olga She felt that she still had a long way to go to feel as strong and confident as she wanted.
Throughout her sessions in my office, Olga reviewed different episodes of her life related to her low self-esteem. She did not remember feeling loved at home. His father was away for long periods of time and, when he was around, hardly paid any attention to him. In turn, her mother was always scolding her and blaming her for every mistake she made.
Angry with life, frustrated by the bad relationship she had with her partner, little Olga was the perfect scapegoat to unleash, under any pretext, maternal anger. Over the years, Olga came to believe, as her mother made her see daily, that she really had a serious problem inside her and that, furthermore, she was silly and clumsy.
The girl closed in on herself, stopped protesting what she didn’t like and ended up letting others decide everything for her.
Thanks to her work in therapy, understanding her past, Olga was able to glimpse the enormous influence that his childhood had on his self-esteem. The young woman realized that the very negative vision she had of herself came from the toxicity of her parents.
After making an effort and therapeutic work, she was able to connect with her authentic self and muster the self-esteem to challenge all the negative messages that he had received throughout his life.
After this realization, Olga began to appreciate herself without filters, accepting herself as she was. She stopped caring about the opinion of others and began to be governed by what she wanted to do at all times.
Little by little, she gained confidence in herself and began to plan for her future, the one she really wanted.
Carrying out this work of connection and understanding, we can look to the future with a new, much freer and more authentic perspective, make our own decisions and project, without the conditioning of the past, what we really want for our lives.