Regression is about uncovering past memories that may provide the key to unlock and release potential therapeutic benefits. There are many different facets to regression therapy
Sometimes past memories, thoughts and feelings may have been repressed and end up creating uncomfortable symptoms such as anxiety, fear, back ache, inappropriate anger etc. Once these repressed memories, feelings and thoughts are allowed to come into conscious awareness a catharsis can take place and the symptoms normally disappear. It isn’t necessarily about the recovery of deeply repressed trauma in which the memory has never before come into conscious awareness. Often events or memories aren’t repressed from meeting different challenges in life but the more unacceptable emotions and thoughts connected with them may be. So if a client has an emotional block such as abandonment, or powerlessness, its much easier to process and heal this feeling by locating it in a past event.
Regression isn’t always about negative, painful feelings. Often people repress their strengths, talents and natural resources because they don’t fit into other peoples expectations such as at school or within their own family system. By reminding clients of their own hidden abilities can open up a whole new pathway in life.
Many people associate regression with past lives and although its true that memories from past lives can be responsible for causing difficulties in this life, its not always the natural starting point for the investigation. For example taking someone back to when they were in the womb for instance will help them discover more about the background they inherited from their parents. It will also help a person to identify certain aspects of their personality, certain entrenched belief systems of their mind that are responsible for what they are surrounded by in their life today, which might be their inability to pursue relationships, that they are violent, that they are depressed, that they can not merge in life and blend and socialise with people or some other issue. With this insight they can begin to understand what changes they need to make in this life to make the necessary improvements.
One of the best ways of using regression therapy is to invite the client’s inner child to identify what exactly is causing them discomfort in their life right now. Once the emotions and feelings related to the discomfort are identified, a diagnostic trance technique can be used to find the past memory that is connected to those emotions and feelings. This memory can then be healed using the most appropriate method.
Remember we internalise all our experiences and these are perceived by us uniquely and subjectively. Memories are often distorted by our state of mind and the mood we were in at the time. So these often effect the emotions and feelings we associate with those memories. These past experiences are with us in the present, affecting our everyday lives. It's not just the memories but the mood states, the repressed feelings, the dissociated parts of us and the underlying dynamics between different parts of our personality that affect us. We're often not aware of this until we want to change ourselves and then find it difficult. In reality we can’t change what happened in the past but we can help explore our internalised version of events and transform them so our internal world can feel more comfortable and allow us to move forward. The more we understand how we became the person we are today by revisiting past events the easier it is to transform our experiences and how we are.
Regression can help us start to unravel what is sabotaging us going forward. Past events and what we report about them can give us an indication of the dynamics at play in our psyche. For example we may have felt disempowered by a harsh father or a bullying sibling and discover that we projected this power onto other people in our current life situations. As a result of this we may feel dominated by our boss, our partner, our friend, in the same way we felt dominated by our father or sibling. By recognising a repeating pattern gives us the opportunity to work through this in therapy so we can stop acting the role of a disempowered person.