When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships

by David Richo

When unresolved issues are writing our life story, we are not our own autobiographers; we are merely recorders of how the past continues, often without our awareness, to intrude upon our present experience and shape our future directions.

Matter-of-fact, straightforward transactions are neutral, reality-based, and happen entirely in the present.

Transference is memory-based and is directed by the past.

A you-and-I (also called I-thou) relationship is intimacy-based and happens in the unedited present.

Matter-of-fact transactions simply inform us.

Transference relationships affect us.

You-and-I intimacy connects us.

If we are angry, our anger does not take the form of blaming opposition but of communication of a feeling that easily coexists with love.

The word soul refers to the realm of the between, that is, between conscious and unconscious, past and present, time and eternity. A soul mate is one who bridges these with us, as the metaphor of a guardian angel shows and promises.

Now I feel criticized and shamed. If this is reminiscent of how I was treated in childhood, I take what the teller said at level 2, transferring my father’s face onto her and feeling instant rage. My ego will tell me I am justified in feeling abused and that it is the teller’s fault that I feel as I do. The neurotic ego is the part of us that defends us in ways like that.

It is a wonderful accomplishment when the fire of love eventually burns away the transference so that only heart speaks to heart and a true I-thou blooms.

Communication problems occur in relationships when one partner means to express something at the matter-of-fact level and the other receives it at the transference level.

This is because the first task of development, to separate from our parents, has not yet happened. As long as we need to find others to play their parts in our lives, we have not yet left home.

We are attentively, acceptingly, affectionately, and appreciatively present to the other, allowing her to be who she is in that moment rather than making any attempts to control her.

We are open to perceiving her for who she is, what she is saying, and what she is feeling. This is how someone feels truly loved by us.

Love unfolds best between two real people who greet each other with no phantoms from either one’s past crouching in the room. Only then is there space for intimacy.

Such present-moment love restores, repairs, and rebuilds the inner world of our psyche, perhaps long ago misshapen or damaged.

Then, through a combination of our work on ourselves and the confirming love others give us, a coherent sense of ourselves and an esteem for ourse...

This increase in awareness and self-definition makes it possible to return love to others ...

In a true you-and-I relationship we are present mindfully, nonintrusively, the way we are present with things in nature.

How do we contact others just as they are without letting our own portraiture get in the way? It is the mindful presence that happens with the five A’s and without ego mind-sets—fear, desire, judgment, interpretation, control, fantasy.

In a relationship, we can sit mindfully with a problem and shave off mind-sets to see what it is really about: “What is this issue with my partner without the layers of fear, judgment, the need to fix or control, my illusions about it, my transferences around it?”

We begin by simply noticing the physical facts about others as they are in this very moment: he is standing; he is talking; he is waving his arms; he is looking to the right.

Allied to this is asking someone what she is really saying or feeling, or repeating what we hear to make sure we understood her.

Whenever possible we make our transference conscious and call ourselves on it, acknowledging the object of our transference as a spin-off of earlier stories.

We ask others to point out what they may see as our transferences onto them.

We notice when we are trying to find in others what we lost out on in childhood.

Learning to be present to someone without the interferences of transference consists first in setting an ongoing intention to be present fully in an I-to-you way. When we are then actually with others, we can check in with ourselves by ticking down the list of the five A’s:

Am I paying attention or am I planning what will I say next? Am I on the defensive rather than open? Am I noticing feelings and body language, or am I hearing only words?

Am I accepting him as he is, or passing a judgment on his lif...

Do I appreciate her, or am I devaluing or minimizing her? Do I see her worth and cherish it? Do I value the place she has in my l...

Do I feel affection—that is, friendliness—or do I fear closeness and therefore distance myself from her? Do I show physical affection in appropriate ways? Do I show intimacy by holdi...

Am I allowing him to be himself, or am I trying to control his behavior by censuring him for his ch...

In authentic presence we let go of the grab-and-cling style in favor of allowing something or someone to come and go at will. We let go of addictive clinging while still being able to hold and relate to others. For instance, we stay in relationship with a relaxed rather than controlling grasp so that the other feels free and yet connected.

When we repress our feelings or hide from reality, we are aggressively attempting to control ourselves and the world.

Mindsets are “thoughts about.” Mindfulness is awareness of how we think.

Mind-sets evoke stressful feeling reactions based on fear or desire. Mindfulness changes our emotional experience so we can be present without reacting from such compulsions.

Mind-sets seek out what is pleasant and avoid what is unpleasant, thereby attempting to control experience. Mindfulness shows us ways of tolerating any experience so that our fears can ...

Transference is not limited to persons. It can happen between us and any animal, event/ritual, place, or thing. We attach feeling-laden meanings to things.

When parents or former partners were continually judgmental of or humiliating toward us, we might have introjected their disparagements.

We clobber ourselves with others’ weapons.

Critical remarks that become introjected are those that shame us with our failures rather than help us overcome them.

The sense of helplessness we felt when these statements hailed down on us can lead us later to overcompensate by trying to be in control of everything in life.

The true self is delicate, easily browbeaten by years of brainwashing into believing how dangerous its emergence would be.

It willingly goes underground until it hears the “all clear” that comes from the five A’s of love from someone we trust or from ourselves.

The danger is not in the memory of mother’s words as she said them but in how we hold on to the critical voice today or look for those who will imitate it.

A strong inner critic makes the criticisms we hear from others in our present life come at us with heavier weight.

A healthy response is to recognize that such conversation is impossible and becomes toxic, frustrating, or hurtful to us. It then becomes necessary to limit our conversations to small talk.

We take care of ourselves best when we know the limitations of others and act accordingly.

We stay away from any subject that may lead to criticism of us or to inappropr...