Thinking and Talking About Your Childhood

Coming from a therapist, it might
sound strange asking you to consider if you might think and talk too much about
the unhappiness you experienced growing up. Don’t therapists want you to open
up and examine your origins and history? Don’t you benefit from time-tunneling into
the shadowy events and murky corners of your childhood?

Well, yes and no. For example, say
you took a walk in the woods every morning and thoroughly enjoyed yourself. I’d
say that’s a wonderful way to start your day. However, if you had frequent
terrifying experiences in those same woods—being mauled by a bear, bitten by a
snake, and had contracted a wicked case of poison ivy—yet still insisted on
heading into them each morning, I’d wonder why. Wouldn’t you? 

To be sure, I’m not in any way speaking
here about looking backward if you’ve never examined or have just begun
exploring how your childhood connects to your present. If you haven’t taken
that gold mine of a journey, by all means, go to it with gusto.
I’m talking about those of you who
keep thinking and talking about your parents doing this to you and not doing
that. I doubt you even know why you persist
in returning to the scene of the crime when you already know who done it. Are
you trying to figure out why you were mistreated? Are you trying to decide if you
were or weren’t abused or neglected? Are you still questioning whether you
deserved the abuse? My point is that once you recognize that y...

Source: Normal Eating - August 5, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs