Few of us get out of childhood without some trauma, no matter how loving our caretakers were. It may have been an accident, an animal attack, or witnessing a trauma like war or abuse. It could, as we know, be a trusted adult who acts incredibly selfish and irresponsibly towards a vulnerable child.
When a trauma occurs the young child makes a decision that, at the time may be a useful survival strategy, and later becomes a part of his or her unconscious operating system. The trauma event is long over but the early decision still operates in the adult's life creating difficulty.
All childhood abuse leaves emotional scars in the mind and these play out through ones life in a multitude of ways. Low confidence, aggression, relationship troubles, sexual problems, self-sabotage, guilt, anxiety, depression… all are common symptoms one may experience as a result of abuse as a child.
When the child experiences the abuse, it is like an “emotion overload”, and when the subconscious mind just cannot cope at that moment, it uses a process called “repression” to protect the child from being emotionally overwhelmed. The downside of this process is that emotions become “trapped” back there, and cause problems and symptoms in ones present day life.
Memories of abuse as a child are often repressed through the very mechanism, which enables the child to survive the horror - dissociation. He or she gets through the betrayal, the physical assault, the pain and the helplessness by mentally separating from the body. It seems as though the abuse is happening to someone else.
Sometimes this dissociation can be so effective that all conscious memory of the abuse is lost. Sometimes memories surface later, in adulthood. Often as flashbacks or nightmares.
All childhood abuse leaves deep scars, affecting your beliefs about yourself for the rest of your life. And even though the abuse may have happened a long time ago, it may still be affecting your life today. Many abuse victims admit to having low confidence, exhibiting higher than normal levels of aggression, having relationship difficulties, experiencing sexual problems, indulging in self-sabotage or even self-harm, harboring guilty feelings, and feeling generally anxious.
Individuals are imprisoned on the ‘evidence’ provided by memories that come back in dreams and flashbacks. What type of impact can repressed memories have on someone's overall life?
"Unconscious behavior and unexpressed emotion from repressed memories can create uncomfortable patterns in ones life. These patterns tend to keep reappearing and create difficulties, like addictions and their consequences. It may also show up as a strong reaction to a situation, a sudden eruption of anger, or obsessive thinking. As in the case of young children who have been subjected to sexual abuse will exhibit symptoms of increased autonomic arousal in their later life which can be recognized when they:
· experiences sleep disturbances which can magnify symptoms and can encourage psychoactive substance abuse
· becomes irritable or prone to explosive outbursts of fear, panic or anger particularly when the original trauma is recollected or re-enacted
· experiences difficulty in concentrating or remembering
· is continually hyper vigilant and employs survivalist tactics or victimization mechanisms of relevance to the original trauma
· exhibits an exaggerated startle response and increased hypersensitivity.
Past Life Regression Therapy addresses these problems by going to the root cause which either occurred in a previous life or in an earlier part of this life memory of which has since been repressed.
