Rewriting the Past in Order to Heal

I was reading a book when I was in Spain by my favourite (at the moment!) author - William Boyd. It's set just before and during the First World War, and at the beginning of the story, the hero is in Vienna, where he is having psychotherapy from a pupil of Freud's. And seeing how this unfolded in the narrative, I was struck by a similarity in approaches between what is described in this novel, and some of the energy healing work I do.

The hero is treated by a technique called "parallelism." Basically, the person receiving the treatment talks about aspects of their lives, and the therapist is able to see that there may have been some trauma that led to the particular issue the client is coming to see them about. The therapist then invites the client to "reconstruct" the traumatic event so that those few minutes / hours become as they would like them to have been. Over weeks of therapy sessions, the client, at the suggestion of the therapist, fills in more and more details so that in time their minds believe this new "parallel" reality. (That at any rate is how I understood it from the novel - I may be doing the technique an injustice.) Anyway, it cured our hero!

And I was thinking of some of the healing work that I do that focuses on healing traumatic events in the past energetically. A good example of this is inner child work. In an inner child healing session, I would guide the client back to a time in their life where they experienced something difficult, for example continuing criticism, or being shouted at. (Please note that with really traumatic events, there are ways of working that mean there is no need to go back to the trauma itself in order to release it.)

From the position of the child, they are then able to say what they weren't able to say at the time, including the way the adult's behaviour made them feel. This can be enormously healing and liberating. Once the client-child has had a chance to say what they couldn't say at the time, and feel the emotions that they couldn't feel at the time, I invite them to say what they actually needed from the adult at that time. Typically, it is love, affection, a sense of being seen and heard. And I invite their adult selves to give their child-self a hug, some love, a sense of being listened to.

So, there are similarities between the 2 approaches: in both approaches, it is recognised that a past event is causing us discomfort, or even illness in the present time. In both approaches, in different ways, we go back to that time in the past, and are given a chance to "reinvent" the past energetically. This releases energy that was held in in the past, and so leads to healing and more physical and emotional wellness.

A major difference in the two approaches is the length of time that the work takes (which makes sense - we are talking about nearly one hundred years ago in the novel I was reading!) Often, one inner child healing session can "clear" a very difficult event in the past, and completely alter someone's present day experience. In the novel, the hero appeared to be having sessions over weeks or even months. It also seems as though the "parallelism" approach goes further in "rewriting" events. In the inner child healing, we are given a chance to express what couldn't be expressed at the time, and therefore interpret the events in the past differently, whereas the "parallelism" approach deliberately recreates a more "pleasing" past.

Well... I found all of this really interesting... even if it was only an event in a novel! And if you're interested too, you could read my blog posts about inner child healings, and my post about the difference between energy healing and psychotherapy.