Last Updated on July 25, 2020
Many of us who are affected in one way or another by our experiences and relationships with others when we were young. Psychology studies have always based their theories on how the relationship, mainly with our parents or caretakers (people who took care of us when we are young and needed protection)- and from there, are able to understand why a person choose to live life in a certain manner- an unhealed emotional wound will result the person forming dysfunctional relationships that somehow, sadly caused the sad events in life to be acted on again and again.
Then, past life regression is slowly gaining acceptance when the area of conventional psychiatric and counselling had failed. One of the notable persons who promotes the use of this theory is Dr Brian Weiss.
Dr Weiss wrote books on healing through releasing unresolved past life issues. Initially, Dr Weiss was only treating his patients using conventional prescribed theories. He had used hypnosis to treat behavioral problems. Using hypnosis, he gradually regressed his patients memories back to their childhood and to bring out events that could have triggered a certain dysfunctional behavior.
To his surprise, a few of his patients started describing scenes and events that have occurred years ago. His patients were able to recount events that had occurred hundreds of years ago with much accuracy and after the regression, his patients were miraculously healed.
Like any doctor who had been trained for years in conventional psychology and who does not believe in past lives, he was very skeptical. But because the method had seemed to be so effected, Dr Weiss started conducting research on this topic and realised that there were similar documented studies conducted by other doctors such as Dr Raymond Moody.
This is what I call as a true healer- someone who genuinely wants to heal others and are not in the profession for just money. And if the methods worked and helped his patients, Dr Weiss was willing to learn about it and even risk being out casted by the medical community. Of course, today, Dr Weiss is being recognised for his work and he has clinics specialising in this form of treatment.
Some experiences that Dr Weiss shared in his books:
- a woman had terrible chest pain- and all medical tests shown that she does not have any medical condition. So much so that her doctor referred her to psychologist. When Dr Weiss performed regression through hypnosis, she recalled at one life she was stabbed in the chest during a fight and died. She relived that traumatic experienced, released it and the pain just went away.
- there was a couple who was constantly fighting and even to the extend that they wanted to kill the other. Conventional therapy does not seems to work. During past life regression on both of them, Dr Weiss discovered that the couple had been closely related for a number of lifetimes, mostly as husband and wife. It started with one of them killing the other. Then the next life, the victim (the one who’s been killed) reincarnated again and ‘took revenge’, killing or hurting the other. Even though in certain lives they do not kill the other, they inflicted considerable damage on the other person. When the couple realised their past life connections, they understood their extreme love/hatred relationship and decided to work on healing the old wounds. They want the damaging cycle to stop in this life.
If you read his books, you will realise that Dr Weiss is not someone who is superstitious- he really done research and does not only use past life regression in all his treatments. He only resort to regression as the last option when conventional treatment does not work.
Having said all that, there are not many of us who have access to hypnosis treatment or even really trained therapist who can really helped us. You also have to be very careful with hypnosis treatment because it can alter your subconscious level and if you go under someone who is unethical, you could cause yourself more harm than good. You would have read in the local papers about mediums or bomohs who place their patients on trance and they molest/rape them.
Many of us harbor a wounded inner child within us or probably from a different lifetime. That explains why 2 siblings, growing up in the same background can grow up to become 2 totally different persons. Even though someone were to going through your childhood, the person will likely turn out very differently from you.
Whatever that happened in our past should be understood, forgiven and released. Many people who carry around their hurtful past, almost like a medal on their sleeve. Perhaps we tend to wait for someone to come and rescue us and heal us of the painful past. Meanwhile, till our ‘rescuer’ comes, we felt we have every right to remain miserable. We prefer to believe things that we could never love unconditionally, never can commit or open up, never be happy or deserved to be happy…..the list goes on and go.
Signs of an inner child at work:
- Substance abuse- alcohol, cigarettes, sex, drugs
- Inability to commit
- Co-dependency
- Abusive behaviour or excessive anger.
It is up to us if we rather dwell in suffering or find a way out. Seeking professional help may help to make us understand more about the source of our problems. At the same time, it may unleash the inner demons- suppressed/ignored feelings- and we have to be prepared to deal with them.
It’s so important to understand, forgive and let the past go. We need to move on, let go of emotional baggage that rob us of genuine happiness. When we respond like how our inner child wants us to respond, we close the door to real happiness, to real freedom.
And we owe it to ourselves, to this precious life- not to waste it away hurting.
Note: This article was originally written in 2007 in my Life Blog but I have transferred the article to this blog as it is more relevant.