Is There Real Healing for Past Pain?

Most of us have experiences of childhood pain that linger so deeply in our hearts we can’t imagine ever healing from them. We want healing and peace, but some part of us thinks we might be betraying that younger version of ourselves that so wanted things to be different if we allowed it to be over and in the past. It’s a strange thought, but many of us are holding out for the possibility that we can make things turn out better in the past.

Logically, we all know that’s impossible, and search for ways to allow the past to be in peace. How do we find a way to give ourselves peace about the past even while admitting it could never be any different than it was?

It turns out we can change something about the past, but it’s not the people, places or events. We can change the meaning. In the end, it’s all about the meaning, anyway, and much less to do with the actual events than we tend to think. What did it mean that our father neglected us? Is it that he didn’t care about his children and found us to be a burden? Or is it that he was trying to make his own father proud by working himself to the bone and be a father who brought security to the family?

The first is a killing kind of meaning. In that world of meaning, you might need to spend your time trying to figure out whether you are worthy of your father’s love and avoiding being a burden to anyone ever again. In the later world of meaning, your father loved you the best he knew how, and was desperately trying to be a good son to his own father, which endears him to you, and releases you from any negative meanings about you and your life.

Both NLP and Constellation work effectively “install” these new meanings in ways that transform and stick. They respect the old meanings we made, but invite us to step with courage and gratitude into something that raises the dignity of everyone involved—our parents and ourselves.

We learn that what healing requires is not “approval” (we can’t be expected to approve of what is often objectively horrible human behavior), but rather “consent,” which is based in the recognition that as long as we protest against these people and events being the truth of our past, we are protesting our own existence and ongoing liveliness.

When we consent to the experiences of our life, we say “yes” to our lives, to our self, and to the miracle that manifested in the improbability of our being born at all. NLP and Constellation work invite you into this transforming experience of consenting to your life, and falling in love with it anew.