Clinical Psychologist Reveals The Therapy Breakthrough That Leaves Many Clients Sad And Angry
When you finally start to feel bad for your younger self, it can be a jarring break-through in therapy.
Lacie Cueto | Unsplash There's an inflection point on the road to finally developing self-compassion and a wider perspective about the narrative of your life.
Many clients come into therapy struggling with an epiphany: they are finally able to look back on their childhood and feel sad and angry on behalf of their younger selves.
While this indicates a lot of progress in self-growth and self-compassion, people often don’t know what to do with the intense negative emotions that arise from visualizing their struggling younger self. There are many examples of individuals struggling with this; here are a few common ones.
- A woman finally feels compassion for her teenage self, who suffered from an eating disorder and what she now sees as body dysmorphia
- A man realizes that it was pretty messed up that his stepdad made fun of him every day, and he feels bad for this teenage boy, rather than shrugging it off
- A woman realizes it was very hard to be home alone with two kids, 12 months apart, and realizes how isolated and depressed she would expect any other young woman to be in this situation
- A man realizes how young he was when he was first in combat, and feels sad for this young man who ended up with PTSD and chronic pain from combat-related injuries
Often, when your child nears the same age as you were when you felt alone and struggling, you begin to look back at your younger self with more objectivity and compassion.
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You feel as much empathy and concern for your own younger self as you would for your child in the same situation. You wonder where other people were, and ask why nobody was looking out for you. That’s why this sort of sadness and anger on behalf of one’s younger self is often accompanied by newly discovered anger at someone else.
Usually, this anger is aimed at two types of people: the ones directly responsible for the bad treatment, and the ones who averted their eyes and failed to get involved when they should have. In the above examples, people may express the following:
- “Why did my mother say I looked better when I hit 100 pounds instead of recognizing I never ate dinner and was obsessed with thinness?”
- “Why did my mom marry that loser and not stick up for me?”
- “Why didn’t my husband come home from work early during those early months of having two small kids, when I begged him to?”
- “Why wasn’t my dad involved in my life? Then maybe I wouldn’t have had to prove that I was a man by enlisting.”
When you finally realize that your younger self is deserving of love, care, and support, it is easy to blame others for not providing it. When you have done some more reflection, often with the help of a therapist, you will likely recognize that the people who you wish would have intervened on your behalf or would have treated you better just could not do so.
They were likely treated poorly by their parents, or could not empathize, or did not recognize your pain because they were mired in their own. This doesn’t mean that you have to forgive people who treated you poorly, but it can help you move out of anger and into acceptance.
This can take weeks, months, or years. There is no timeline on moving past hurt and trauma, especially if you have been pushing it down and ignoring it for years to power through other aspects of your life.
If you confront others with your past pain, it can go many different ways. In a best-case scenario, the person will empathize and even apologize for their part in your pain.
Other people will deny your experience and act as though you are ridiculous for bringing up something from long ago. Other people will even say that you never thought the situation was bad before, so you’re just lying about being hurt now. This reaction is one of the most invalidating.
Therapy can help you process your sadness and anger about your past pain and hurt.
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It can also help you figure out what kind of relationship you want currently with the people in your life who you wish had protected you. Here are examples of different ways this could go for our above examples:
- This woman talks to her mom about her eating and body issues. Her mom apologizes for her positive reinforcement for what she now knows was unhealthy weight loss, and discusses how she has always struggled with her body image.
- The man talks to his mom, who is now widowed from his emotionally abusive stepdad. She refused to say anything bad about her late husband, saying it is talking ill of the dead. The man is angry and decides that he and his mother will have a mostly cordial but less close relationship moving forward.*
- The woman goes into couples counseling with her husband. He says he was struggling with work stress when the kids were that age, and didn’t realize how much she was struggling with what she now thinks was post-partum depression. She starts to remember how little he slept during these years and wishes that both of them had reached out for more family help at that time instead of suffering individually.
- The man goes to a support group for vets and discusses his sadness and anger. He talks to other guys who felt they didn’t have strong male role models and feel less alone, although still sad for his younger self.
As you can see, there is a wide range of possible outcomes of discussing and processing your emotions with someone who was there. Therapy, support groups, reading books, and posting on/reading online forums can all help you if you are in the process of grieving a situation that harmed your past self and trying to move forward.
If you are finally sad and angry on behalf of your younger self, this is a positive development that shows that you have really matured and grown as an individual. You are ready to confront something difficult, and when you work through it, you will be a more integrated and authentic person, with a fuller capacity to engage in all the relationships in your life.
If you or somebody that you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, there is a way to get help. Call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or text "HELLO" to 741741 to be connected with the Crisis Text Line.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice, Best Life Behavioral Health.
