Changing our perspectives and habits can sometimes be painful. Forcing us to think about and come to terms with our past. We’ve already gone over this a bit with the stories I shared about forgiveness. Those were the beginning of my regression therapy.
I believe regression therapy is vital to becoming who we truly are as individuals.
Psychologists say that children develop who they will become by the age 7-8. Their morals, beliefs, personalities, perspectives. I tend to agree with this but look at it from a different angle.
I think that by 7-8 years old we lose ourselves. We learn who to become from listening to other people’s opinions about us. We build our thought patterns around these opinions.
Look at every 3-4-year-old you know. Try to imagine yourself at that age. They are curious, opinionated, risk takers. They know what they want and aren’t afraid to get it.
They don’t give two shits about your opinion of them. You think they’re weird for eating play-dough, they’ll go eat a crayon to prove they don’t care.
My son is a great example of creativity and going after what he wants. When he was about 18 months I would take him to my mom’s. I would rearrange all her furniture to create a cage for him because my mom had a lot of fun breakables that he loved. Take your eyes off him for 10 seconds and he’s through the barricade with a porcelain lighthouse in his hands.
A lot of people see children as a pain when they get into stuff. I see intelligence and creativity. I see an individual who is unafraid. I see perfection.
Within those early years, we start adopting other people’s opinions. Our perspective of the things we experience gets based on those other options, not our own. We start to lose some of our perfection.
I like regression therapy. It takes me back to perfection. With a more mature mind, I’m able to look back and see when a perspective originated. Make amends with it and work to change it. Not only does it help to change thought patterns that have devastated me for years, I became more authentic. The individual I was created to be.
I’ve told you I’ve never had any respect for money. I’ve also been a bit of a clepto my whole life. The regression therapy I did to try to figure these 2 issues out was painful. I had to make amends for some fucked up shit I did when I was about 8.
There were a number of opinions I believed about money. It’s difficult to say which ones played a major role.
There were a number of experiences that surrounded disrespecting money and stealing. One experience stands out the most.
As a child, I would get bored very fast and wouldn’t want something new to play with. We were on the lower income side. I couldn’t just go ask my mom for a new toy even if it were only a few dollars.
This is my earliest memory of stealing. It also involves lying. Lying has also been a huge issue my whole life.
I went into my parent’s room one day while my mom was asleep. I can’t remember if this was preplanned or if I had just gone in there and she didn’t wake up. At some point, I decided to go into her purse. I ended up finding 20 bucks and took it. I snuck out of the room. All clear. I got some money and didn’t get caught.
I wanted to buy a toy gun, but I needed a believable excuse about how I came upon a $20 bill. A few days earlier my brother found 5 bucks in a store parking lot. I figured I could use this excuse.
I went to the Jr. high by our house and chilled for a while. When I got back home my mom was awake. I played it off. I acted excited. I told my mom all about how I just found 20 dollars in the school parking lot. I asked her to take me to the store, so I could buy a couple toys. She needed to go get some food anyways and said yes.
We got to the store. She only had a small list she needed to get and decided to just send me in. She went into her purse for the list and money. She became clearly upset. She couldn’t find the money.
She wasn’t angry or mad. It was a concern and sorrow. She needed that money for food and couldn’t find it. (That’s how I saw it back then. Now, I’m sure that sorrow and concern was about something much deeper than food).
She questioned me about the money I found. She asked me to be honest. Asked me if I took it from her. She needed it. I didn’t budge. I stayed true to my lie.
(This story is full of dirtbag moves. Check this out.) I actually told her I’d only get one toy. A really cheap one. I would use the rest of the money for food. (Don’t take me for some heartless P.O.S. I felt horrible the whole time. I had just stolen from my mom and lied. But I would have been in some serious trouble if I backed out and confessed. I had to play it out.)
I went in the store, got a cheap toy gun. Got the food. I got a box of Good-N-Plenty. My mom loves Good-N-Plenty. I wouldn’t admit to stealing and lying but I would apologize. The Good-N-Plenty was my way of apologizing. She knew this.
She didn’t say one word to me on the ride home. She was pissed. I found the Good-N-Plenty unopened in the trash that night, they were tainted.
Not another word was said about the missing 20 dollars. I never got punished. I thought I got away with it.
At least that’s what I thought then. I look back and know that I had been found out. It’s just hard to accuse someone without proof.
I thought I was pretty good at lying and stealing. I went on to become very good at both. I started to believe that money wasn’t important. It comes and goes. I didn’t get in trouble, it didn’t matter, money isn’t important.
Like I said, there were other situations that compounded these beliefs. Going back and reliving this experience with an outside view has helped me in many ways. I now respect money. I see the pain and distrust lying causes. Stealing has no place in my life anymore.
Being locked up I’m very dependent on help from my family. I look at the money they give me and visualize what else they could have done with it. Was that money my mom just put on my account money she could have used to go to a movie or out to eat? Maybe she might need it later for gas. IT might be a sacrifice, it might not be. I respect it either way.
Where we get confronted about lying or stealing, it’s still wrong and we still get found out. I don’t remember many times that I would go to a store and not take a candy bar. I lied my way through life I was so damn good.
I couldn’t really tell the truth because I lied so much. Telling the truth would most likely contradict a lie I had already told. It’s a pain in the ass to constantly have to remember old lies and make up new ones. It’s so much easier to tell the truth and deal with the consequences.
I don’t even need to go into stealing. Even taking a single fun sized piece of candy is wrong. We all know this.
I’m not perfect, I still have some issues with lying. I was talking to a friend the other day who is invested in going to school to work on diesels. I caught myself wanting to tell him I had gone to UII. For whatever reason, I wanted to make myself look good. I could have bullshitted him the whole way. I know a decent amount about diesel engines.
Why lie to him though? It goes against everything I’m working on in my life. I told him the truth. I told him how my church had wanted to put me through school to become a diesel mechanic. I told him how I was an idiot and didn’t take advantage of it.
I was talking to my sister a couple weeks ago. She asked me about my 2nd attempt at PSI basic. She asked if I had specifically done something while I was there. I lied. I knew for a fact that I had done what she was asking about. I told her “I might have” when I knew I had. I felt guilty instantly even for this “half lie.” It took me a couple minutes, but I decided to fully admit it. “Yes, I definitely did do that.”
It felt good to tell the truth. Even about doing something that was screwed up on my part. It feels good to be honest and have nothing to hide.
There are many ways to do regression therapy. It also goes by other names. A counselor of mine was talking about “shadow thinking,” it’s basically the same thing.
Regression therapy can be done through guided meditation, in an office with a professional. Just taking some time to do some deep thinking on your own. Putting pen to paper.
Most of mine is done with just me and my thoughts. The more I write this website the more I enjoy putting pen to paper. There is power in this. When I take what I’ve thought about pretty well and write it down I expand on it more. I read what I’ve written and know that it goes deeper than I thought, more emotion. Other events that added to an issue. More to make amends for.
As I was writing this story about stealing from my mom I realized, I don’t think I’ve talked to her about this. There is power in pen to paper. Uninterrupted, unedited communication. Pen to paper can bring new revelations every time you reread and rewrite.
I didn’t have a bad childhood and this stuff is still painful. I don’t know what it would be like to live and mentally relive a childhood full of abuse, drugs, homelessness, neglect. I did live it later in life thought I know it is fucked up.
For those of you with a childhood like that, I don’t recommend doing this alone. Have someone there to support you. A close friend, mentor, or professional.
I definitely don’t recommend taking any medication. Just my thoughts on it but I’ve taken meds and they only did one of two things. They either numbed me mentally which was only a cover up and didn’t fix anything. Or, they made the issue worse.
I’ve been clinically diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I’ve been told by a counselor in prison that I am manic depressive, bi-polar with suicidal tendencies.
I’ve taken a number of meds that did nothing to help. I stopped taking the meds and started dealing with the source of the issues.
I’m not going to say these issues like depression are gone. But, they are far less severe and far less often. I can recognize the signs/symptoms very early. Figure out what’s causing my issue and correct it. Meds won’t help fix anything. Your mind will.
Although these are events later in life that can mess us up, I think most of the changes/healing will come when we realize those early years of innocence. When we make amends with these events where our perfection was slowly stripped from us.
What events stripped away some of your perfect authenticity?
Do you want it back?
I sure as hell do!