COMPULSION TO RECREATE AND OVERCOME CHILDHOOD HURTS

Key Extracts from Lecture 73

© The Pathwork® Foundation 1999

Very few people realize and personally experience (theoretical knowledge notwithstanding) the strong link between the child's longing and unfulfillment and their present difficulties and problems. It is very important to become aware of this link.

As long as you are unaware of this conflict… you are bound to try remedying the situation in your later years. This may manifest in various aspects of your life. You run into problems and repeated patterns which have their origin in your attempt to reproduce the childhood situation so as to correct it. This unconscious compulsion is a very strong factor, but is so deeply hidden from your conscious understanding!

Since the child in you cannot let go of the past, cannot come to terms with it, cannot forgive, cannot understand and accept, this very child in you always creates a somewhat similar condition, thereby trying to win out in the end, trying to finally master the situation instead of succumbing, as it seems to the child in you. Losing out means being crushed, and this must be avoided at all costs. The costs are high indeed, for the entire process is unfeasible. It cannot ever come to realization what the child in you sets out to accomplish… The only tragedy lies in the fact that you obstruct your future happiness by continuing to reproduce and then to attempt to master the situation. It goes without saying, my friends, that this process is very unconscious. Of course, nothing is further from your mind in your conscious aims and wishes. It will take a great deal of digging to uncover the emotions that lead you, again and again, into situations in which you wish to remedy childhood woes.

In trying to reproduce the childhood situation, you unconsciously choose a partner with aspects similar to those of the parent. And these very aspects will make it as impossible to receive the mature love you rightfully long for now, as it was then. Blindly you believe that by willing it more strongly and more forcefully, the parent-partner will now yield, whereas, in reality, love cannot come that way. Free of this ever continuing repetition, you will no longer cry to be loved by the parent. Instead, you will look for a partner (or for other human relationships) with the aim of finding the maturity you really need and want. In not demanding to be loved as a child, you will be equally willing to love.

When you feel the similarities while at the same time experiencing the pain of now and the pain of then, you will slowly come to understand how you thought you had to choose the current situation because deep inside you could not possibly admit ‘defeat.’

Only after experiencing all these emotions and synchronizing the ‘now’ and the ‘then’ will you become aware of how you tried to correct the situation… You will leave your childhood truly behind and start a new inner behavior pattern that will be infinitely more constructive and rewarding for yourself and for others. You will no longer seek to master the situation that you could not master as a child… You will no longer need to be loved as you needed to be loved when you were a child. First, you become aware that this is what you still wish, and then you no longer seek this type of love. Since you are no longer a child, you will seek love in a different way, by giving it, instead of by expecting it.