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Therapeutic time travel – Helping your younger self see things differently

We all know that the way we are now is largely a result of our past. How we were brought up, things people said to us, what we observed in the world and other people have all shaped how we think, feel and behave. Essentially what we have experienced has shaped our view of the world and we behave accordingly.  Unfortunately, our experiences, especially as children are taken on board and believed without question unless there was someone there at the time to help us understand the truth of those experiences.  Most of the time however, the child does not have the opportunity to filter out potentially damaging input from what he/she experiences.

The Time Machine

So now Imagine this....you come across a time machine that enables you to go back in time to any period of your life. Not only are you able to do this, but you can also interact with yourself from those periods. What would you do, what would you say to your younger self? Here is a golden opportunity for you to put right the things that have had a “negative”* impact on you in the present. When I say “put right”, I mean to simply re-educate the younger you, to help yourself see what was really going on at that time. You know exactly how you felt and what you needed at that time, so you as the wise adult who has travelled back in time now have the perfect opportunity to give yourself what you needed, to say what you needed to hear, to help that frightened child feel safe. And the great thing is that once you succeed in making that younger you feel better, those feelings will travel through time and affect you NOW. If this were possible would you want to do it?

Going back in your mind

Well let me tell you now that it is possible, and your mind is the time machine. You can use your imagination to go back and speak to yourself at any point in your past. I hear you ask “How will that help?” Well, what happens when you think of something “negative” that happened to you? You experience the same feelings; it makes you feel as bad now as it did then. To your subconscious mind time does not exist...all it sees is the present moment, which is why experiences you had long ago still affect you now, and when you imagine that event from the same viewpoint you had at the time, you are just reinforcing the negative feelings. You see, another thing about the subconscious mind is that it can’t tell the difference between what you imagine and what is real, so that’s why actually purposely using your imagination to go back and help your younger self see things differently will have such a positive effect. Using this idea with controlled techniques under hypnosis, dramatic changes can take place in the way a person thinks and feels.

A case study using this idea –

Sarah is 25 and has grown up thinking she is stupid, ugly and worthless. She thought this because her father actually told her so, not to mention what she observed in his behaviour towards her. He never really had a meaningful conversation with her which reinforced her feelings of unworthiness. She began to hate her father and had fantasies about moving far away from home. Eventually she did move away, but still nearly every day she would think about and relive the hideous things he said to her...she imagined it so vividly he may as well have actually been there in person. So as long as she keeps on reliving her past in this way, she will just keep on compounding those feelings.
After months of conversation with her, Sarah began to understand what had actually happened to her. She began to recognize her father’s own deep feelings of insecurity and unworthiness, and that he was trying to offload those feelings onto someone else to make himself feel better. Once she understood at a conscious level, she now had the tools to actually go back and tell her younger self the good news....he never meant any of it, she is actually very intelligent, very beautiful, and just as worthy as anyone else.
So now rather than imagining what happened from the belief that he meant what he said, I asked her to give her younger self this new positive information whenever she found herself remembering what happened. If this is done enough, she WILL begin to believe it fully, she is already a long way forward from where she was, and is beginning to feel empathy towards her father rather than hate. She has gone back in time in her mind and changed some long held negative beliefs about herself. Well done!

By Mark Turnbull