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

by David Richo

This is not cowardice on our part. It is a respect for the right time and place for free speech and ...

Shaming is the opposite of loving.

The inner critic is the main culprit. He has believed the myth and now seeks to prove it.

Inner beliefs become so habitual that we come to believe they are valid.

Inner judgments become so habitual that we come to believe they are deserved.

Our emphasis on the inner critic cannot preclude an honest look at ourselves: We can still grow so much in self-knowledge by bein...

We can indeed be arrogant, mean, prone to repetition of mistakes, selfish in our demands on others. We have been this way before and can be again. We seek neither punishment nor full pardon but openness to our ong...

We grow spiritually when we balance our willingness to admit our shortcomings with a commitment to...

Indeed, commitment means continual dedication to the work, not once-and-f...

The danger in judging others is threefold: • We hurt people’s feelings. • When we see others as stereotypes or jump to conclusions about them, we may not grasp what they have come to teach us. We also miss out on intimate moments with them and on noticing how unique, how touching their story is. These are the qualities that can open us to compassion. • When we criticize, we stand to lose compassion for the difficult conditions that are behind what others may do.

Could it be that we judge others so that we will not feel the full impact of that power of love? Could it be that others criticize us because they don’t want to love us quite so much?

We cannot easily replace a negative voice with a positive one. Our healing happens when we notice our critical inner voice, peg it as only a thought with no authority, and then make room for constructive feedback to ourselves.

We take responsibility for our behavior and make amends if we have acted unjustly. But we can also see when we are innocent, and rejoice in our integrity.

We trust that we can alter our behavior to act more wholesomely. We also believe that we contain the positive quality that is the opposite of the negative one that has been pointed out to us.

Comforting ourselves with the statement that the inner critic is “only in the mind” makes our mind seem paltry and is another put-down.

When our mind is cleared of alien voices and focused on contributing to the development of a healthy ego, it becomes a wonderful tool.

We can acknowledge that and change our statement to “This inner critic is a stowaway in my mind, a...

Our adult challenge is to maintain the connection but not become caught in a dependency. Our adult challenge is to be respectful but not obligated.

We meet up with our (1) shadow side, (2) our ego, or (3) our early or any past experience (the realm of transference). However, we might also act from (4) our authentic self, the self that shows and receives the five A’s; we engage in you-and-I relating.

Negatively, the shadow refers to the unacceptable impulses we have repressed in ourselves but see so disturbingly in others. Positively, the shadow consists of the gifts/talents/virtues that we disavow in ourselves and admire so much in others.

We may find that our entitled arrogant ego has been activated by someone’s behavior toward us. This is the autocrat within who demands full control over other people, events, and predicaments.

We may also react to others by transference, in which our early life issues or earlier relationship issues come back to find us through what sounds like our father’s severe or gentle voice, our mother’s or former partner’s warm or too-fleeting embrace.

We work on transference by making the similarity between past and present conscious, admitting the truth of what we have been caught up in, and ceasing to act in ways that make the transference interactions persist.

Not only is the enlightened state in us, so is the unconditional love we so much want to find. In the you-and-I moment, a mutual unconditional love can be released. It is unconditional because it is not conditioned by shadow or ego projection or by transference.

To be open to a full experience breaks the ego’s habit of self-centralizing.

We begin by noticing what we feel. We also notice how much force is in our reaction or in how we feel or show it.

This means listening to ourselves and holding our experience rather than overriding it with defenses or excuses, running from it, blaming others or retal...

Second, we ask, “What is the message here? What work do I need to do on myself? What shadow, ego, or transference iss...

Finally, we say, “Yes. ...

In the first step, by noticing, I am open to seeing what I feel. I am opening to my own truth.

In the second step, I am opening to what I can learn and how I am responsible.

In the third step, I am opening to the challenges of accepting my own reality and then getting on wit...

F.A.C.E.—fear, attachment, control, and entitlement.

What am I afraid of? What am I attached to getting or proving? What am I trying to control? What do I think I am entitled to?

We meet the challenge to let go of ego with a practice of loving-kindness. We then ask: How can my fear and defensiveness become love and openness? How can my attachment turn into letting go? How can I allow others to be who they are and let things unfold as they will, rather than try to control people and events? How can I let go of my attitude of entitlement and instead responsibly stand up for my rights and let go without seeking reprisals if they cannot be secured?

This is accepting the given that life can be unfair no matter h...

This practice is a spiritual alchemy, since the leaden ego becomes the gold of the loving Self.

Answer these questions in your journal and then share them with someone you trust. (The first question simply calls for a deeper acceptance of ourselves, because it seems to be part of our psychological DNA.) • Am I mostly an introvert or mostly and extrovert or evenly both? Do I notice with some people or in some situations that I am more introverted than extroverted or vice versa? • Is my definition of self-esteem based on how much others admire me or on how accurately I portray myself, inadequacies and all? • In the course of life, have I found myself mostly in leadership positions, or do I do better as a support person in projects? • Have I mostly sought partners who would be parents to me, children to me, or peers of mine? • Do I tend to see the humor and playfulness in events, or do I tend to see a darker side? • Have things come easily to me and worked out for me in my life, or has it been pretty much an uphill climb? • Do I express feelings easily and openly, or do I tend to hold them in? • Do I see myself as having an addictive personality? Do I routinely deny myself? Am I able to act in moderation? • Do I mostly find myself carefully planning, or do I act impulsively? • With respect to money, am I usually spendthrift, generous, stingy, overly indebted, or appropriate? • In intimate relationships, do I give with healthy boundaries, or am I codependent? Do I receive with gratitude, or with a sense of entitlement? Am I mostly a giver, or mostly a receiver...

Have I mostly found work that fulfills me, or that simply makes me a living? • What is the spiritual path I am on and what are my spiritual practices?

Our reactions are triggered by what others say or do or by how they treat us.

I want to unfold. I do not want to remain folded up anywhere, because wherever I am still folded, I am untrue. —Rainer Maria Rilke

First, those onto whom we transfer do so in return. In psychoanalysis, this is called “countertransference” and it happens in most close relationships.

Second, some people transfer feelings and expectations onto us while we see them only in a matter-of-fact way.

1. Others compete or compare themselves to us and exaggerate the differences between themselves and us to make themselves superior.

2. The urgent need on the part of others to rescue or fix us may be a ploy to avoid or manage their own pain.

3. Some people cannot understand or even see certain features of our personality or behavior.

4. Bias and hate can be a manifestation of transference.

It is important to validate the perception of the one who is transferring onto us, to see how it makes sense in some way. How am I really like his former partner? Only then do we move from transference into an I-you moment.

Explanations without defensiveness contribute to authentic intimacy. An explanation is a launching pad for deeper truth between people, especially when it reports feelings and meanings without blame or making anyone wrong.

We are not yet truly ourselves as long as we are being defined by others’ needs and demands.