By Rev. Dr. Nadine Rosechild Sullivan, Ph.D

Age regression, past life therapy, and life-between-life regression are exciting ways to explore the Self.

Even a single excursion into one’s own past may be exciting and have a profound impact.

But true regression therapy is a process.

Whether you end up exploring past lives, the state between lives, or earlier parts of this life, session by session you find your knowledge of yourself, and your perspectives on life, changed.

People are often hesitant about regression.

Sometimes, their initial hesitation is out of mythologies about hypnosis that make it seem mysterious, or worse, like giving control over to a stranger.

- At no time under hypnosis can you be made to do, or to forget, anything that you do not consent to do or forget.

- No hypnotist can make you do things that are not in keeping with your own will and character, and in hypnotherapy you are at least quietly aware of your surroundings and actions (and the actions of those in the room) at all times.

- You will never do anything against your own character.

- As a hypnotherapist, I have no power over you.  

- I merely facilitate the processes that are entirely under your own command (consciously and “sub”consciously).

Even more often, their initial hesitation is based in fear of Self.

Sometimes, people are afraid of exploring themselves, especially if they know (or suspect) there may be painful memories buried deep inside.

Such fear is rarely groundless.

However, where there are painful memories—known or repressed (buried, forcibly forgotten)—they affect us still.

- We’ll have a flash of memory detached from emotion,

- or a flood of emotion, detached from memory
- and inappropriately apply it to a present life situation in ways that may seem all out of proportion to our conscious minds.

Repressing memory does not heal memory.

It is necessary to bring it to the light, examine it, and struggle to find the way to exorcise its “demons” and release ourselves from its effects.

Self-knowledge, self-understanding, is the path to self-compassion, self-acceptance, self-love, and self-ESTEEM (esteem of Self).

Most of us are harder on ourselves than we are on anyone else.

When we manage to excavate all the layers of memory, we find the treasures that we actually are and were always meant to be.

Even you are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The Source that made the universe, “whatever you conceive” that Source to be, by some means, made you.

It is only right that you should know that your soul has worth, even as you believe that the souls of those around you have worth.

Regression therapies do not create the past that is difficult to examine.

Regression therapies draw out into the light the troublesome things that are already causing such trouble, and in that light, they can become passing shadows.

Whether in any given session the process of exploring Self through regression feels delightful or difficult, for those willing to do the work, it uncovers *why* you do *what* you do and *why* you feel *what* you already *feel* and brings release.

It is a gift to me to work with counselees and clients.

The more deeply I delve into the treasures and secrets of their, and of my own, conscious and “un”conscious minds, the more in stand in awe of the human inner wisdom and human resilience.

Some of us have had wonderful journeys, at least this time.

And some of us, either at this time or another, have had very difficult journeys.

Yet for all we have come through, the good and the bad, we all have gifts, strengths, beauties.

Regression therapy can help you see the beauty, the good things, in your own Soul.

Regression therapy (this life, past life, and between-life) can facilitate the clearing of emotional blockages that contribute to emotional and physical pain (see Through Time into Healing by Brian Weiss).

When we truly begin to understand why we do what we do, and why we feel what we feel, we can let go of much that has bothered us and held us back.

Ongoing regression therapy is a process of discovering spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical release/s.

We seek to uncover the origins of chronic or repeating situations.

Say we have had experiences that have affected our self-esteem - whatever they may be.

Through regression therapy, as we continue the work, through the process of deeper and deeper
regressions, we can uncover a sense of Self that is older than the problem.

By moving through time, to the origin of the problem, we may glean a glimpse of life before the problem
began,
- life
- and our Selves
- without the problem.

If we have been abused (physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally), we may find it difficult to love our Self.

The more prolonged and ongoing, the more extreme, the abuse, the more difficult it may be.

Abuse does not stop when the act is finished.

Its greatest victimization is in the ongoing-ness of its effect.

Against all logic, it can leave the one who has suffered (rather than the one who has caused the suffering) 
with a devastating sense of guilt, shame, and unworthiness.

In regression therapy, we can go back to the origin of the problem, and then, back to BEFORE.

In finding the Self before the victimization, you may repair your current sense of Self.

The Self before the abuse feels “clean,” free of the irrational yet overwhelming sense of shame that comes from the abuse.

If “before” is in this life, age regression should suffice.

If, however, there has been a pattern of victimization in more than one lifetime, then (as documented by Brian Weiss in chapter 6 of Through Time Into Healing) past life regression can lead us to the Self BEFORE.

The combination of age and past life regression allows client and therapist to find the source of the pain, the origin of the pattern, and helps to release it.

And if we have not been abused (or whether or not we have been abused in one or many lifetimes), life-between-life regression can allow us to grasp hold of the sense of *who we are* in a spiritual sense.

If you think of Your Self as someone who has had many experiences
- both those we count as positive and those we count as negative -
you can get an overview, a greater view, of Your Self, and
- gain the advantage of an academic distance.

You can come to see the forest, not just the trees.

You can come to see *who* You truly *are.*

Let us reason together.

Imagine a very “together” person.  

She has it all.

- Health.

- Intelligence.

- Adequate financial resources.

- Superior education.

- Looks.

- Youth.

- Possessions.

- Family.

- A happy (loved) childhood.

- Friends.

- Personality.

- Compassion (emotional intelligence).

- Pursuits.

- Purpose.

This young, beautiful, healthy, outgoing, vibrant, well-to-do, bright, educated person is going about her life.

Imagine her sense of Self, her understanding of herself as whole and complete.

She has a healthy sense of her own identity.

She has the ability to be truly loving toward others, even while she honors her own wants and needs.

Everyone responds to her love.

She loves herself.

She believes in herself.

One day, unexpectedly, she is captured and carried away—perhaps to a remote location by a single abuser or perhaps in a convulsion of history (e.g. genocide).

Suddenly, against her will and without any desire or action on her part, she is taken captive and abused. Her sufferings are unspeakable. She is harmed at her essence. She is tortured. She is tormented. Every evil thing you've ever experienced comes into her experience, and more.

But then, she is set free. She is liberated. She is rescued.

By some means, she is delivered and once again, set back on the streets of her own life.

Who *is* this person who has suffered these atrocities?

Is she the “shamed” victim of her recent past? Forever damaged goods?

Many ideologies, specifically those related to women, in many times and cultures, have posited just that
answer.

Even today, in many parts of the world and in many cultures (and under many religions, including
Christianity), women who are sexually abused by non-family members (or who act autonomously in regard to sex or marriage) may be killed to save the family's “honor” (“honor killing”). The family may be considered “dishonored” by the “shame” of the woman’s “sexuality,” for example, having been the victim of rape, while the rapist goes free— un-accused, un-prosecuted, un-ashamed, and un-shamed.  

- Even when our culture doesn't so judge us for being victims (as in the present day mainstream culture of the United States), we may judge ourselves so.

Or is she the “together” person of her longer-ago past?

“No,” you say, “she is not the “together” person.

Her own sense of identity has been permanently altered by the things she has struggled through.

Yet, if she can remember her former self, she can come to see that it is the perpetrator who should be ashamed, not the victim, and she can emotionally “rise from the ashes”—at least in her own heart, in her own sense of Self—to construct the new identity of Survivor.

It is possible, within the experience of human resilience, for this person to move along a continuum from victim to survivor—if she remembers who she was, if she can assess what she still has.

Whether or not she can recover all or most of her health, whether or not she can recover some or all of her financial resources and possessions, she most likely still has her intelligence and access to the internal resources of her education—to which she has added a new,  if difficult, knowledge gained by hard won experience.

If she was captive only briefly, she would still have youth.

As she mentally and emotionally heals, she may find that she still has some (or all) of her “looks.”

Depending on circumstance, there may still be family and/or friends.

And with that compassion and winning personality she had BEFORE, there can be new opportunities for human interconnectedness.

Her interests, pursuits, and sense of purpose may have changed, but she can allow them to be changed in ways that demonstrate growth.

Time and circumstances have changed her, as they change us all.

Yet, she can come to see herself again as bright, educated, vibrant, and "together."

Altered? Yes, but able to heal.

And able to honor and love her Self again.

- Perhaps even able to take the risk of truly loving again.

But what if she has no memory of the time before the catastrophe?

What if she doesn’t remember that she was (is) beautiful and bright and full of life?

What if all she remembers are the bad times? The perpetrator’s words? The perpetrator’s lies?

Ongoing regression therapy—this life, past life, between lives—can take us back to the time before our
personal tragedies, back to the Self before we were injured.

As we persist in exploring, in excavating, the pasts that lie buried in our own “unconscious” (or
“subconscious”) minds, we will discover—not only memories of the trying times (which are there, bothering us, anyway)—the point in time in which we were taken captive—and with it, the moment (and Self) before our captivity began!

Through a series of regression explorations, we can unearth our own memories—this life and before—and, following the prompts of the unconscious, find the hidden treasures of Self *before* anyone hurt us.

And finding our True Selves, we can learn anew to ESTEEM our SELF, to count our own Self worthy of esteem.

Even if you can’t now imagine loving your Self, in the recovery of the memory of the “together” person, there is an innocent, undamaged YOU BEFORE the injury.

All of us,
those to whom this life has been kind and
those to whom this life has been unkind
have a Self before this life (past life)
and a Higher Self that is always in spirit (life-between-life).

In the process of multiple regressions, we uncover a sense
- of our own, personal, eternal-ness
- of having lived, extensively, through Eternities Past
- that we (the personal stream of consciousness we can “I”) will continue into Eternities Future
- of who our Greater Selves must be
- of our Purpose in this life
- of the Purpose of our Souls in birthing and rebirthing in many lives
- of the path to follow forward through the rest of this earthly sojourn
- And of an ABIDING PEACE

When we get a good long look at *who* we *have been* (of our own Soul’s genealogy) and
*why,*and a good long look at the best we can be in this life, we lose all sense of hurry and of torment.

Regression therapies can reduce the fear of death.

One session is just the beginning.

It is the process that is the door of liberation.

It is in commitment to the process that we can construct the identity of vibrant Survivor,
and ultimately
of Sage.