the most fundamental idea at the heart of modern Psychotherapy is that in order to heal ourselves
from our neuroses in the present we've got to understand what went on in our childhoods
though this thesis makes impeccable theoretical sense there's one enormous problem with it Amnesia
simply put almost no adult remembers a single thing that happened to them before they were three
years old countless days and nights a succession of complicated moods Sensations and events will
have vanished Into Thin Air like a library of precious books that sent up in smoke or dumped
unceremoniously into the sea furthermore most of us remember very little of what went on before we
were seven this may seem like an obvious point but it has momentous implications a period that we've
identified as extremely important is also going to be entirely nebulous another basic fact of every
childhood is that even though the past may have been extremely strange and regrettable it will
also in key ways now seem rather normal and Beyond easy analysis or questioning our childhood is
quite literally what we've grown up with and as we know what's always been around has a habit of not
signaling its Oddity we might sense that something was peculiar around our caregivers but to really
get a proper understanding of what these people were up to tends to be far beyond our ordinary
Powers we prefer to think of something else and to run fast in an opposite direction this fixes us
in a conundrum which entrenches our neuroses but there is one extremely useful way to make progress
we should look at ourselves in the present and start asking ourselves questions everything we
need to know about the past is actually contained in what's going on for us right now we don't need
to try to remember all sorts of things that have in reality escaped our memories totally we just
need to check in on who we are today the legacy of the past will be active rich and vibrant for
better and for worse at every moment of our actual adult lives so one of the first questions we need
to ask ourselves as archaeologists of our past is what day to day in the adult world we are
afraid of let's imagine a list of someone who is asked to complete the sentence I am terrified of
I'm terrified of being thought an idiot of being found ugly and unacceptable of being humiliated
mocked and rejected I'm scared that people will be extremely nasty to me now what we dread at the
hands of everyone we meet nowadays is inevitably going to be a version of what we once feared
at the hands of very specific caregivers in a very specific and yet very forgotten childhood
this gives us a huge amount to go on indeed it offers us nothing less than the tools for
our recovery it means that we can take our list as an archaeological map to guide our thinking
self-questioning might go like this someone terrified you of being an idiot so who might it
have been and how did that happen someone found you ugly and unacceptable so what might have
occurred here someone has it seems arbitrarily humiliated mocked and rejected you does that ring
any bells someone probably gave you an experience of extreme nastiness is this somehow familiar
though we might not be used to thinking in this way with such prompts at hand Rich and vibrant
thoughts may rise up from the unconscious we might get a new perspective on our caregivers and on
what we underwent framed in this way we might see with Newfound Clarity that quite a lot more was
going on in those early days than we generally like to imagine the what will be the next step
we'll need to go back over the past with a lot of patience and courage while also bearing in
mind that what we've been projecting willy-nilly onto every man and woman in the present and every
difficulty we face in the here and now actually had very particular Origins which the more we
understand them the more we will feel liberated and unburdened our future won't have to feel so
constantly difficult or fear Laden once we can trace back its real difficulties to a point of
origin a Psychotherapy is always insisted and promised remembering truly will set us free
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