Everyone is familiar with the stereotypical therapy scene: laying on a long couch while the therapist asks you to recount your childhood. While not often 1-to-1 with current practitioners, it is an undeniable fact that therapy as a process often heavily explores clients’ past and especially their upbringings. This can often be a point of confusion for those first starting therapy, so for today I’d like to cast some light on this common line of inquiry.
Exploration of upbringing has its roots in the very beginning of therapy, with Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud believed that by freely speaking for long periods, clients would begin to associate related information and discover patterns in their lives, a process known as free association. Conducting this process on the topic of the client’s childhood would allow them to identify the complexes they had developed during their upbringing and resolve them.
This childhood focus remained a strong element of psychotherapy even as the field branched out into numerous other theories and approaches.
Cognitive therapies posit that problems are often caused by negative beliefs or unhelpful thought patterns, beliefs and patterns which are learned somewhere in the client’s life. Childhood is the most common place those beliefs are formed, as our upbringing shapes so much of our perspective on the world. So cognitivists will explore childhood and adolescence, investigating with you where you learned that your “feelings didn’t matter” or “you can’t succeed.”
Therapies that center on trauma of course investigate the past as a primary course: seeking to define and process and resolve the traumatic events that have led to so much anguish. Even therapies more grounded in current problems, such as solution focused therapy, will seek out the past in order to find those times when things were better and identify those strengths to use in the modern day.
The reality is that people do not end up how they are for no reason. There is an entire life of circumstances, decisions, consequences, chance events, strengths, and traumas that shape who a person is at the current moment. As a result, the only way to truly know who you are, is to know the events that brought you to this very moment. With that knowledge, therapists can help you to decide and become who you want to be.
I am accepting new clients. And as a student intern, my rate is competitive at $85/50 minute session. I look forward to the opportunity to explore your childhood and navigate toward the path of being who it is you truly want to be. What a great thing.
Nick Callaghan is a student intern at Vervewell Counseling, providing dedicated individual therapy for young adults in the Fort Worth, TX area. Currently completing his master’s degree at Lamar University, Nick helps clients identify inner strengths by utilizing an eclectic style drawing from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and Solution-Focused Therapy. He draws from both personal and professional experience to help individuals reframe unhelpful thought patterns, process complex life transitions, manage chronic anxiety, and develop actionable behavioral tools. His approach is built on a history of hands-on county mental health case management, offering support for clients across Tarrant County.
