From Powerless to Empowered: Heal Your Past and Change Your Story

You cannot change what happened to you, but you can change the meaning you have given to what happened and choose how you allow your past to define who you are today.

I think for generations many of us have been taught to deal with difficult and painful experiences in much the same way. We push them under the carpet, pull up our big-girl pants and get on with it. We tell ourselves not to dwell on the past, that what’s done is done and there is no point looking backwards because we can’t change it anyway.

And there is some truth in that. We can’t change what happened, but that doesn’t mean we can’t heal from it.

There is a huge difference between getting on with your life and actually healing what happened to you.

Perhaps you have just left a difficult relationship, or you are trying to rebuild yourself after narcissistic abuse or a controlling relationship. Perhaps you have lost someone you love and are navigating grief, experienced something that changed your life, or finally stepped away from a dysfunctional family situation that had been hurting you for years.

Perhaps it isn’t one major event at all. You may have spent years living with stress, anxiety or overwhelm, putting everybody else’s needs before your own, without ever really understanding where those patterns began.

It may have happened one year ago, five years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago or it may be happening in your life right now.

You can leave the relationship, leave home, stop speaking to someone, move somewhere new, build a career, raise a family and create a completely different life. You can become successful, capable and independent and genuinely believe that whatever happened is safely tucked away in the past.

But is it?

Because your body keeps count, and you can’t simply hide from your past and expect it to have no influence over your future.

The Story You Created From What Happened

What interests me isn’t only what happened to you, but the meaning you gave to what happened, how that meaning may still be influencing who you believe you are today, and whether it is keeping you stuck in patterns that no longer serve who you are now or who you want to become.

Imagine being a small child and somebody continually criticises you. You don’t have the emotional maturity to sit there and think, This person’s behaviour is probably a reflection of their own childhood, insecurities and unresolved emotional issues, so I’m not going to take this personally.

Of course you don’t, you’re six. Instead, you might decide, There must be something wrong with me.

If you aren’t listened to, you may decide your voice doesn’t matter. If affection is withdrawn when you don’t behave as someone wants, you may learn that love is conditional. If keeping everybody else happy makes life feel safer, you may become incredibly good at reading a room and taking care of everyone else’s emotional needs.

And then you grow up.

The six-year-old becomes 36, 46 or 56, but some of those conclusions can come along for the ride.

You may become the person who can’t say no without feeling guilty, who constantly puts everybody else’s needs ahead of your own or who feels responsible for keeping everyone around you happy. You may find yourself over-explaining your decisions, frightened of disappointing people or repeatedly ending up in relationships where you aren’t valued.

You may be enormously capable in other areas of your life and still find criticism almost unbearable. You may know intellectually that somebody else’s opinion shouldn’t have so much power over you, yet emotionally it can take you straight back to somewhere you thought you had left years ago.

And you may have absolutely no idea why.

That’s the fascinating thing about the subconscious mind. Something that once made perfect sense as a way of navigating your world can continue operating long after the original situation has disappeared.

So while consciously you may believe, I’ve dealt with that. It was years ago, another part of you may still be living according to the meaning you gave that experience at the time.

That is what I mean when I say that you can’t hide from your past, because what you haven’t healed can end up running your future.

Who Are You?

At the heart of all my work is something very simple: helping you understand who you are.

Not who somebody told you that you were. Not who you learned you needed to be to keep the peace, feel loved, stay safe or belong. Not the version of you that developed around somebody else’s expectations, criticism, behaviour or limitations.

Who are you?

Because after years of adapting ourselves to the people and circumstances around us, it can become surprisingly difficult to know.

If you were repeatedly criticised, you may have learned to doubt yourself. If you weren’t listened to, you may have learned that your voice didn’t matter. If love felt conditional, you may have learned to please other people rather than risk losing their approval. If you grew up in an unpredictable environment, you may have become incredibly good at watching everybody else, anticipating their moods and adjusting yourself accordingly.

Eventually those adaptations can feel so much a part of your personality that you stop questioning them.

This is just who I am.

But is it? What is genuinely you, and what did you learn to become?
What belongs to you, and what have you been carrying for somebody else?Which beliefs reflect the person you really are, and which were created by experiences that happened when you didn’t yet have the understanding, voice or power you have today?

For me, this is where healing your past becomes about so much more than revisiting painful experiences. It becomes a journey of understanding yourself.

You begin to understand why you think the way you think, why certain situations affect you so deeply, why you respond in particular ways and why the same patterns may have appeared repeatedly throughout your life.

And once you understand something, you have far more power to change it.

You can keep what genuinely belongs to you and begin releasing what doesn’t. You can stop allowing other people’s words, actions and limitations to tell you who you are.

And underneath all those layers of experiences, expectations, coping mechanisms and old beliefs, you can begin rediscovering the person who was there all along.

You.

You Are Not That Powerless Child Anymore

This is where I believe healing can become incredibly powerful.

You cannot change what happened, but you are no longer the person who originally experienced it.

You can look back at something that happened when you were six, twelve, twenty, fifty or seventy through the eyes, wisdom and understanding of the person you are today. You can look again at all the characters who played a part in your story and begin questioning the meaning and power you gave to them.

Who told you who you were?
Who made you believe you weren’t good enough?
Who made you feel that your needs didn’t matter?
Who made you believe you had to earn love?
Who made you afraid to speak?
And why should that person still have the authority to define who you are today?

This doesn’t mean pretending something didn’t happen, minimising the pain it caused or making somebody else’s behaviour acceptable. It means being able to look at the experience through new eyes and recognise that the conclusions you reached about yourself because of somebody else’s behaviour may never have been true.

You may have been powerless then, but you are not powerless now.

The child who had no choice can become the adult who chooses. The child who felt powerless can become the adult who recognises their own power. The child who didn’t have a voice can become the adult who has a powerful voice and knows how to use it.

And the child who didn’t feel seen, heard, understood or celebrated can finally experience what it feels like to be seen, heard, understood and celebrated simply for being who they are.

There may be wounded parts of you still sitting within some of those old experiences, carrying fear, shame, rejection, abandonment, grief or beliefs that were formed a very long time ago.

I don’t believe we need to leave those parts of ourselves there.

We can find them, understand them, heal them and bring them home to us.

Healing Doesn’t Mean Erasing Your Story

Sometimes people are frightened of looking at their past because they think it means opening a door they have spent years trying to keep firmly shut.

But healing isn’t about spending the rest of your life analysing everything that ever happened to you, nor is it about blaming your parents, your ex-partner, your family or anyone else forever.

For me, healing is about taking your power back.

It is being able to look at something and say, Yes, that happened to me. Yes, it affected me. But I get to decide what happens from here.

Your experiences may have shaped you, but they don’t have to imprison you.

Even some of the most painful chapters of our lives can eventually be viewed through different eyes. We can recognise what we survived, understand what we came to believe because of it, decide what needs to be released and choose what we no longer want to carry.

The event doesn’t change. You change your relationship with the event.

And when that relationship changes, the story you carry forward can change too.

Healing From the Past: How I Can Help

This is where the work I have gathered over more than 25 years as a therapist comes in.

I don’t believe every person or every problem fits neatly into one therapeutic box. Human beings are far too complex for that. Over the years I have built what I often think of as my therapeutic arsenal, and I draw upon different tools depending upon the person sitting in front of me and what we discover together.

Through RTT and hypnotherapy, we can journey into the subconscious mind and explore experiences and beliefs that may still be influencing your life today. We can revisit them through your adult eyes, challenge the meaning you gave them and create a different understanding of yourself and your story.

I also combine hypnotherapy with my Energy Alignment & Clearing work, particularly when helping someone heal after narcissistic abuse or a controlling relationship. You can physically leave a relationship and still feel its hold long afterwards. Together we can work with what remains, helping you reclaim the parts of yourself that became lost along the way and break free of that hold.

Within dysfunctional family relationships, there can also be patterns that travel from one generation to another. Through my energy work, we can identify and break energy contracts and unhealthy ties within those family systems, helping to break cycles of abuse rather than unconsciously carrying them forward into another generation.

Grief and loss require another kind of understanding. I would never want to take away the love that sits beneath grief, but through Energy Alignment & Clearing I can assist you on that journey, helping you work with what you are carrying while beginning to see that there can still be a new path ahead.

Stress, anxiety and overwhelm can also have roots that go much deeper than what is happening in our lives today. Understanding where those responses began and what your mind and body have been carrying can help you understand yourself with far greater compassion and begin creating a different way forward.

I also use powerful hypnotherapy, Command Cell Therapy to address physical ailments, working with the connection between the mind, body and the body’s own cells and healing intelligence.

This is why I don’t start with a therapy and try to make you fit into it.

I start with you.

I want to understand what happened to you, what you came to believe because of it, what you are still carrying today and who you are underneath all of that.

Then we can begin looking at who you want to be now.

Your Past Does Not Get to Write Your Future

I think one of the greatest realisations we can have is that understanding our past doesn’t mean we have to live in it.

Quite the opposite.

Sometimes we need to look backwards precisely because we are finally ready to move forwards.

You may begin to understand why certain situations trigger you, why you keep repeating a relationship pattern, why you struggle to use your voice, why you feel responsible for everybody else’s happiness or why some part of you still doesn’t feel good enough despite everything you have achieved.

And instead of judging yourself for it, you can become curious.

You can stop asking, What’s wrong with me? and start asking,
What happened to me?
What did I come to believe because of it?
Is that actually who I am, and is it still true today? Very often, it isn’t.

You are not that frightened child anymore. You are not trapped in that relationship anymore. You are not standing in that family home without a voice or a choice anymore.

You have choices now.

You can reclaim your voice, your worth, your confidence, your boundaries and your power. You can find those wounded parts of yourself that you left behind along the way and bring them home to you.

Most importantly, you can begin to understand who you really are when you are no longer looking at yourself through somebody else’s eyes.

Your past will always be part of your story. We don’t need to erase it, deny it or pretend it didn’t matter.

But your past does not get to hold the pen forever.

You do.

If you recognise yourself somewhere in these words and feel ready to understand your past, reclaim your power and discover more of who you truly are, book your free Discovery Call with me today.

Pass It On

If something in this article made you think of someone you care about, please feel free to share it with them. Sometimes a different perspective, arriving at the right moment, can be the beginning of seeing an old family story in a completely new way.

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