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An Echo of Past Hurts by Emily Grace (Alexander's Partner)
🕑 Added 2024-10-03 07:54:04 +0000 UTCThe human brain and nervous system is endlessly fascinating. Our nervous system is the human body’s global communication conduit, and while is has not changed all that much since our primitive beginnings, it is an incredibly complex system with many impacting components. In order for us to understand our own individual, nuanced experiences of life, we must consider how all of the factors affecting our nervous system, including the plethora of our past experiences, have converged into impacting us in this moment.
Every individual on this earth has a unique experience of life. An individual’s subjective experience is influenced by many factors including how you were raised, who raised you, your attachment style, your caregivers’ attachment styles, your personality, your culture, your gender, your temperament, the goodness of fit between your own temperament and that of your caregivers, the environment in which you live, your home life, your parents’ relationship, their communication style, their conflict resolution strategies, their discipline style, their religion, their political leanings, their relationship to their own emotions, their relationship to yours…. As you can see, the list is somewhat endless. It can seem sometimes a tedious process to work out how all these factors might be influencing and impacting your present moment experience, but that’s where an individual therapist can be useful - to explore these factors together.
Regularly, difficulties in adult relationships, particularly romantic relationships, have at their root, a core challenge arising from our early relationships. Unfortunately, until we resolve some of the hurts and injustices, the difficulties and the traumas, we are likely to repeat them. It is the way our nervous system seeks resolution. Often people ignore these calls for resolution. We might recognise the patterns of relationship troubles or be aware that we seem to have an attraction to a specific type of person – maybe they are always unavailable? Maybe they are regularly abusive? though this is often not apparent in the early stages of dating. Perhaps you find that something just doesn’t feel quite right when it comes to your dating and romantic life, but you’ve not yet been able to put your finger on it.
If you have found your way to Alexander Grace’s channel, it is likely you have at some time, struggled to comprehend exactly what has been going on in your relationships. Why do the women you attract to your life always appear to be like this? Why does the same old pattern seem to play out in every new relationship? The answer could lie in the wisdom of your nervous system. Therapy is the process of diving deep into your present experiences to explore how the echoes of past hurts are keeping you stuck in these old patterns - by exploring and understanding how your wise, but primitive nervous system is attempting to resolve these experiences for you. So how can you harness your own innate drive to figure things out in a productive way, to find satisfaction in relationships, and start breaking these patterns? This is the question we ask in therapy, and it’s a process.
In my numerous years of self-work, both studying psychology and seeking my own therapy, I have come to recognize that insight alone into how our early experiences are impacting our present moment is not enough. Our nervous system is wise in this way. It seeks out new experiences, triggering the emotions and hurts from the past so we can FEEL the past hurt, with a fresh experience to be impacted by. Triggers can be ‘helpful’ in this way – to generate emotion which has its root in past hurts. Without the present moment experience, the old hurt is often all too easy to dismiss. But we don’t truly ‘move beyond’ our past without this piece of the puzzle. When trust is generated in the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist, clients can begin to feel the impact of their experiences with the therapist. In good therapy, the therapist will feel along with you – a mutual experience where two people impact each other in a shared moment of understanding and acceptance. This is the work of therapy. It is vulnerable. It is scary. It requires courage, and it takes time. But I tell you what, it’s worth it!
I currently offer zoom therapy sessions at a significantly reduced rate ($35 USD) while I am completing my internship, as I require these sessions to be recorded in the interest of my professional learning. Recordings will only ever be viewed by myself and my supervisor and will be deleted following viewing. All recordings are stored on a password protected computer and will never be shared via email or via any other platform. If you are interested in having a session with me, please book here:
https://calendly.com/emilyfaygrace/
I look forward to meeting you.
Emily Grace
Comments
Eric Linden
@castirodude - The Heroes Circle is a better choice for most men. A trusted friend is also a better choice. Therapy for men is usually a waste of time. It is often pushed on men by women. In my experience, when that happens, the woman is the real problem. For men, therapy is indeed needed in cases like you describe above, where the layers need to be pulled back. In those cases, I recommend a male therapist or someone like Emily. Women are a different story. Talk therapy is designed for women. For men, try a trusted friend or the Heroes Circle first.
castirondude
There are layers to the pains of old hurts. When you are hurt badly, particularly as a child, you develop coping mechanisms that help you survive the best you can. For instance if you have an aggressive parent then a coping mechanism may be to flee, comply, hide, or appease / agree with the parent even when they're clearly wrong. But then as an adult those coping mechanisms will work against you. You cannot build a lasting relationship based on the habits you developed from your childhood. Step 1 is really to get out of the bad situation you're in. Step 2 is to start the healing process. In this process you analyze your experience in great detail , with the purpose of determining where things went wrong. There may be things that your parent did well, some things not. There may be cases where you were wrong. The main purpose is to acknowledge that your defense mechanisms, the shield you put around your soul, were needed under the circumstances, and now circumstances changed so you need to update your habits. Maybe as a child you could not speak up or you would be severely and unfairly reprimanded, but now as an adult you can and HAVE to speak up. Step 3 is when you get your life in order, have a set of behaviors that work for you and you start making serious progress in the direction you want to go. From this point you fine tune and iterate , and be on the lookout for issues, which everybody has to do. Even when you think you have a handle on things , certain situations can trigger you in ways you may not expect. Therapy is like you and a friend looking in the mirror together , describing what you see, and comparing notes. Other people will notice things about you that you won't, and even you will notice things about yourself that you never noted until asked to describe yourself to another. I would say it's definitely useful, but it doesn't mean you need to hire an expensive therapist. If you have a trusted friend you can do it with them as well. Or maybe start with the therapist and continue with a friend/spouse. This Hero's circle sounds like a great group too. I've been wanting to try it myself, just been too busy...
Eric Linden
Do you believe everything has to be resolved? Do all old hurts need to be brought to the forefront, understood, and discarded? I think of the warrior, beaten to a pulp and left for dead being brought to the healer. The healer tells him he will fix him up and make him like new, like nothing had ever happened. The warrior stops him. He says to leave this scar, as it taught him a lesson he wants to remember. And leave these scars, as they made him who he is. My wife is proud of the pain she went through in childbirth. She thinks the epidurals and other pain meds most women get make them miss something special. I like some of my pains and hurts from the past being right where they are, beneath the surface. I don’t need them brought to the surface; and I also don’t want them to disappear. Can therapy have any ill effects, by bringing to the surface experiences that shaped us? Can therapy backfire?
Kent Johnson
Allow me to simplify. Young women chase Chad (biology) and then get traumatized (by Chad or even by themselves). Then society tells them they are a victim, which they believe. They then externalize everything into their 40s, 50s and even 60s. Somehow it is all men's fault.
