Where does the past hurt you?
The main topic of our training in Eger was to assess the level of consensus making capacity of the participating professionals. This capacity gets organicly built in into human character, and getting to know it, requires also knowing some details about the personal history of a given person.
What does it mean to us – helpers of families – to digest the past? Who decides if the past hurts, or we can build new things from it?
In theory we all know that events and experiences themselves are neither good nor bad. Neither pleasant, nor unpleasant. Neither useful, nor useless. They just exist.
Whatever adjectives we place around facts, these are only our creations. Well, not so simply ours of course, as our viewpoints are not all chosen freely by us, but we inherit them as heritage from others. These learnt viewpoints later get modified or amended by us.
During the training, we collected the sources of our inherited models and viewpoints. Where do they come from?
· From the family,
· from society (which is a wide cathegory of course that encompasses the mainstream culture and subcultures also),
· from friends,
· and we also form them along the way.
Participants shared experiences of how digesting earlier conflicts affects their current work experiences.
We all agreed that the role of ltraining – i.e. learning from our experiences – is crucial in our lives. As a helper of families it is vital to acknowledge my own patterns coming from my own family.
The one who knows himself/herself realizes his/her own values, and boundaries, has respect for himself/herself, and for others, and whatever he/she does comes from his/her free will instead of some compulsion.
A person who knows himself/herself knows his/her own history, and accepts it. He/she can draw conclusions from the past and leaves the past to remain in the past, thus enabling iving in the present moment. This is how a well equiped helper can help others too.
During the training, we listed our attitudes – also to be passed ont o our clients – toward digesting the past:
First comes the decision to process the past.
Next comes self knowledge and self acceptance helping the handling, and re-tuning the feelings that come from the past.
Everything has its time and place, and when we realize which memory keeps us from reaching a desired goal, the we can remember it, and face it fully, and find a way to re-experience the events in a delibaerating and catharctic way, so that the trauma does not keep me in the past, but get disolved as a pattern.
From here, the road is traight toward new possibilities, and toward a free planning and to the living for the moment as it is. We have more than one possible ways to get there, and it is good for everyone to find their best paractices, but we all have to keep in mind that asking for help in such matters is not lame. (The same is true for supervision.) Also, we have to communicate towards our clients that there is nothing wrong with them for needing help and turning towards a professional. The reverse is true though: the one who dedicates timet o develop oneself, and get to know oneself better, and to grow better in handling problems, becomes a better and more mature person, who is also a better company for others.
Thank you for this interesting self-exploring journey, that we had during this two days training!
