Can we just skip over the childhood stuff please?

Some of us may have images, perhaps inspired by pop culture, of the therapy process. The client is lying down on a couch talking about their childhood while the therapist, not looking at the client, languishly takes notes. Heck, some movies still portray this view of what therapy is like! While the lying down on the couch aspect has changed (we now prefer to have you sitting so we can face each other), the bit about childhood remains important. I can hear you….”Oh…not another one….a therapist who insist I need to talk about my mother, or how my father wasn’t there….boooooorriinnngg!”

And with that introduction in mind dear friend, let us dive into the world of your inner sanctum.

Many issues, especially those where patterns repeat themselves continuously and persistently no matter what “solution” you throw their way, can be traced back to our early and very formative years.

When children are born, they are helpless and completely at the mercy of their caregivers. Children do not yet have the verbal skills to share with caregivers what it is they want and so rely on non-verbal cues to communicate their needs. For those of us lucky enough to have caregivers that were attuned to us, we may have had most of our needs met. We cried, we got fed. We cried again, we received comfort, a soothing hug or reassuring cooing in our ears. We cried and our nappy got changed and we felt clean, and secure and comfortable all over again. This is an ideal scenario. However, many of us had a different experience, or we experienced this some of the time, and other times we didn’t. We cried and no one came. Or were told to suck it up, that only “girls” cried, that we would be given something to cry about. We wanted food but went without. We came home upset from school and wanted a hug but no-one was there to give us one.

Now, let me be clear, this is not an opportunity to blame our caregivers or behave angrily towards them and resent them for all the things we did not get. Most caregivers are doing the very best that they can given their own life experiences, skills, and resources. Nevertheless, I want to introduce the idea that with repeated experiences, incidents such as those shared above set up particular ways of being that can stay with us for many years, often operating in the background of our lives unawares.

For example, if we were punished in some way for expressing our anger, we learn to shut it away, but it may “leak” out in harmful ways when we become adults. Perhaps we had to become hyper-independent because our parents, for whatever reason, were not emotionally available to us and now we struggle with asking for help from others and feel overwhelmed and stressed as a result. Maybe someone close to us died and now we find it hard to get close to others for fear that we will once again lose them and experience the excruciating pain we felt previously. The point is, if you’re struggling to make sense of why you engage in certain behaviours or why a particular scenario happens over and over again, you may be well served by exploring your childhood and adolescence to see whether there may be some clues as to why your past is showing up in the present.

As always, please feel free to reach out if I can help you with this process.