major conclusions you come to are usually based on your earliest experiences. This means that the nature of your first few hours and of your early and formative years is likely to have a major impact on the way you assess events and situations. However, new learning experiences throughout childhood and into adulthood can also influence how you interpret future situations. They are likely to be less important, however, as you develop an increasing perspective with the years. If you were left on your own (abandoned) for 10 minutes after birth when everything was new and strange to you, this would have been much more traumatic than if you were left alone for an hour when you were five years old. By the age of five you have learnt that Mummy comes back to wake you after your nap; at a few minutes old you do not have such memories to call upon.
If in your teens you had some good friends who were slim, shorthaired and had nice smiles you are likely to trust such people in the future, even though they may turn out to be first-class crooks. If your previous two bosses stole your ideas you will probably find it difficult to trust the third one. If close friends have always stood by you, you are likely to feel you can depend on them in the future. The way you assess your world and your position in it today is based on your experiences of the past.
Keep in mind, however, that it is the furthest past that is usually the most powerful, no matter how relevant you think recent experiences are. If you were frightened by a spider as a very young child you may never get over your fear of spiders even though you have been told they are not dangerous. The earliest conclusions are often difficult to dislodge.
Some people are willing to look back into their past for the basis of their belief systems, their fears, their attitudes and their stresses. Other people are not. Which are you? If you are willing to explore further then do so. You will learn much of value and be able to put what you have learnt about yourself to good use in reducing your stress levels. If you are unwilling to delve into your past then you would be wise to question your reasons. Is it fear of what you might find? Was your past unhappy? Does it stress you to think about it? If, on this basis, you refuse to unravel your present attitudes and belief systems it is a bit like doing the ostrich trick and burying your head in the sand. The more you refuse to explore the past the more likely it is that there are some valuable clues there as to the basis for your present stresses.
This is true, however seemingly logical and valid your reasons or excuses are. You may claim to be unsentimental, you may say that there are such obvious causes for your present stress that the past is an unnecessary irrelevance. You may say you haven’t the time. You may insist that your childhood was such a happy one that going back will produce nothing useful. Commonly the real and underlying reason is based on the disquiet, apprehension or fear that is brought up by the thought of doing this. They may not even be conscious fears. There may simply be a subconscious feeling of discomfort when you contemplate the general idea. The fact remains that, in my experience, the past has enormously valuable clues to help you unravel your present reactions, emotions and stresses, whether you thought it was a happy past or an unhappy one.
Mr J. insisted his childhood had been happy and that he had always had a wonderful relationship with his parents, especially with his father. Yet he refused to go back and explore his childhood as a means of determining the basis for his present insecurities and stress. It was obviously essential to his self-esteem and his concept of himself to maintain this image of family solidarity and integrity. In time I met his brother, older than him by 10 years, and learnt that in fact Mr J. had been relegated to the background as second son and been bitterly hurt by this. It was only when the elder brother left home that Mr J. got the attention he craved and the happy childhood myth had become established.
If you fear to go back to the past with the keen perception of your present maturity there may be something there that you know about but think is too traumatic for you to face. Sexual interference, which is, tragically, much more common than we acknowledge, violence, an alcoholic parent, the death of a parent, or some other trauma may be an acknowledged memory, but something you refuse to think about. Or there may be something there of which you are aware at some subconscious level, but that you do not want to acknowledge, even to yourself. There may also be past stresses which you have buried so deeply that they have been totally forgotten. Yet even so they, or the conclusions you drew from them at the time, do play into the present and exert their effect.
Miss P. was a perfect and surprising example of this. She was in her late 40s and unmarried. She told me that she’d had a happy life. She enjoyed her work and had lots of friends. From time to time she’d had a variety of boyfriends but had shied away from any serious relationships and had turned down two proposals when she was in her 20s. Now a man, considerably older than her, wanted to marry her. She cared deeply for him, felt comfortable with him and also recognized that if she again said no she could well remain single for good. Yet every time she considered agreeing to his proposal she got very upset, felt enormously stressed and returned to the belief that she should stay single.
She came to see me looking for help in her dilemma. When we discussed her childhood she insisted that it had been a happy one. She came from a well-off family, had lived in a pleasant town, gone to a good school and, seemingly, been given every advantage. She loved her parents and brother and the family was still close. There were no problems there she insisted. When asked if she had ever been jilted by a boyfriend, let down by people she loved or had any sexual problems or harassment that could have led to her fear of sex and a close relationship she searched her memory thoroughly and said no. I had every reason to believe her; there were none of the unconscious signs that indicated she was covering up.
She agreed to go back into her childhood and was amazed when she discovered that she had indeed buried some traumatic memories so deeply that, even though she had been 16 at the time the events occurred, she had no conscious memory of them until we unravelled them in my office.
At 16 she had become pregnant. This was in the early 1950s and at a level of society where she was expected to be a virgin when she married, when abortion was illegal and an unmarried mother a pariah. Her frightened 16-year-old boyfriend had taken her to a back-street abortionist who had done a very bad job. Her boyfriend had then taken her, bleeding and in pain, to the home of a schoolfriend whose parents were away for the weekend. After that he had denied any responsibility and disappeared from her life. She had struggled home on the Monday and managed to keep everything a secret.
Certainly, going back to this past event was distressing for Miss P. but the glow on her face when she realized that this had been the basis for her distrust of men and marriage and that there was no need for her to feel the same way about the man who wanted to marry her now, made it all the more worthwhile. Later she reported not only on a happy marriage but on an inner peace and quiet in many little ways and the loss of minor stresses that she hadn’t recognized previously.
The experience of delving back is rarely, on balance, painful. Whenever I have taken any client back into past experiences, no matter how traumatic they were at the time, we have only found that, by the end of the session, the experiences could be released so that they were no longer stressful, either in memory or in the way they affect the person’s life in the present. We have also found that many positive changes are possible and that they start happening almost immediately.
To go back fully in the way Miss P. did you will need some professional assistance but there is much you can do on your own to explore your past programming and we will discuss ways of doing this later. If you refuse to look back you will lose a major tool in reducing the basis of the stresses in your life. If having read this far, you still don’t want to explore the past you will have to rely on the other tools given in this book and do the best you can.
‘I’m over-stressed and don’t know how to cope,’ said a smart business executive in his early 30s. ‘I know I do a good job but I often worry that I won’t live up to people’s expectations. All it takes in a big company is one failure and you can kiss your chances of promotion goodbye. If I fail, my marriage will be on the rocks. I have nightmares
