There are many different types of therapy available today, each based on their own view of the person and of what constitutes healing. Some therapies include looking at the past, at early experiences, others don’t. And among those models that do include looking at the past, the level of emphasis on early experiences varies. I work using an holistic model, and this means that past, present and future are included in the work. The level of emphasis is guided by the client, and their particular needs.
So how important is it that therapy addresses your past? I think here of the ubiquitous disclaimer we see attached to financial products: “Past performance is not a guide to future performance”. Which is somewhat confusing when, to identify the best performing stocks, you have to look at the past performance of those stocks. So in a way it is with people. Because something happened in our past does not necessarily mean that we are bound to repeat that event, or that dynamic. But it does mean we acquired templates in our brains that make us far more likely to do so. Our very early experiences shape us because so much is happening in our brain’s development in our early years. And so early relationships become a template for our future relationships, guiding us without our conscious awareness. Therapy can help us shape and alter this template. To work out what aspects of this template work for us, and which do not. And then to work out what doing things differently might look like.
One of the reasons why the inclusion of childhood in therapy is often ridiculed in popular discourse is that early Freudian therapists have suggested quite elaborate theories to link the present day challenges of their clients back to childhood. Early psychotherapy was criticised for over-emphasising childhood. Another reason that talking about childhood creates resistance is the notion that childhood affects us unconsciously, which takes a way our sense of mastery over ourselves, and places us at the whim of unconscious processes we cannot (by definition) see. This is a scary prospect. But if you are feeling quite reluctant to discuss your childhood in therapy, I would suggest that that might indicate that you should do. Advances in neuroscience are providing strong evidence to suggest that childhood shapes the way we engage with the world. Your reluctance may well indicate that there is a lot of valued learning in going there.